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States of enmity establishes the central role of interpersonal enmity and peace-making in the society of southern Italy in the seventeenth century. It demonstrates the roles enmity, in its diverse manifestations, played in early modern politics, legal culture and social relations.
Through analysing the effects of hatred and reconciliation, the book charts a history of Spanish Naples, spotlighting its most evocative yet misrepresented characters: violent bandits and the unruly soldiers set against them; overbearing feudal lords and restive vassal; intrepid missionaries and penitent murderers; grand Spanish viceroys and poor Neapolitan rebels. Notably, this monograph is a rare example of research on early modern southern Italy that uses records from criminal courts, providing the closest encounter with the actual people involved in Naples' notorious 'disorder', constituted by homicide, banditry, feudal oppression and the Spanish regime's governing tactics.
This book shows how states of public enmity and practices of peace-making structured both local politics and the central state's interaction with the provinces of the kingdom. The Kingdom of Naples was one of the most violent regions of Europe in the early modern period, States of enmity explores why this was so.