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The London Hanged: Crime and Civil Society in the Eighteenth Century | 
 enlarge | Author: Peter Linebaugh
Publisher: Verso
Category: Book
List Price: $18.00
Buy New: $13.81
You Save: $4.19 (23%)
Avg. Customer Rating:  5 reviews
Sales Rank: 558283
Media: Paperback
Edition: 2
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 528
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.2
Dimensions (in): 7.6 x 5.1 x 1.7
ISBN: 1859845762
Dewey Decimal Number: 364.942
EAN: 9781859845769
ASIN: 1859845762
Publication Date: February 16, 2006
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: Brand new book delivered from the UK in 10-14 days.
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| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
New edition with a new preface and afterword. Peter Linebaugh's groundbreaking history has become an inescapable part of any understanding of the rise of capitalism. In eighteenth-century London the spectacle of a hanging served the purpose of forcing the poor population of London to accept the criminalization of customary rights and new forms of private property. In this new edition Peter Linebaugh reinforces his original arguments with detailed responses to his critics based on an impressive array of historical sources.
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| Customer Reviews:
 A very great work March 28, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Peter Linebaugh was a student and colleague of E.P. Thompson whose work on 18th century and early 19th century England I had thought unsurpassed until I read The London Hanged. Linebaugh's book is a VERY great work of history in which he analyzes the "thanatocracy of Williamite and Augustan Britain" Except for the afterward (a bit confusing) it is felicitously written (a tribute to Thompson's influence perhaps?) and its intricate arguments linking money, property and the eath penalty are illustrated with examples that show the result of great research. Linebaugh extends Thompson's work by examining enclosure and the slave trade in (to me at least) powerfully original ways. Unlike much contemporary history, Linebaugh's work though clearly the work of a man of the left is not opinionated nor "theoretical". His arguments are open to falsification and resist the hidden tautologies that contaminate much of "New Left" literary and historical propaganda.
As I say my one complaint has to do with the afterward: it feels compressed and hurried. However, this is a small point. "The London Hanged" is a very great work--the best piece of historical writing I have read in a long time.
Violence and capital accumulation in 18th Century London February 2, 2007
11 out of 11 found this review helpful
Peter Linebaugh's "The London Hanged" is an exceedingly well-done overview of the relation between proletarian crime and capital accumulation in the London boroughs of the 18th Century. Together with Marcus Rediker, Linebaugh is the primary Marxist historian of crime, political economy and civil society in this period, and his extensive research pays off - "The London Hanged" is, as the (Daily Mail!) review on the cover says, history as it should be written.
Linebaugh makes much use of the records of the hanged at Tyburn, as well as popular folk-tales about gangs, escaped convicts and trade records to build a clear picture of a London where extreme poverty and extreme violence, the latter from both the wealthy leaders of state and the urban poor, went together to enable the accumulation of capital. This sinister process of hangings for stealing a few shilling on one hand and corruption, slave trade and press gangs on the other hand is well described by Linebaugh in such terms as "Tyburnography" (after Tyburn where hangings were carried out) and "Thanatocracy".
The style of discussion of the subject is best described as narrative. Peter Linebaugh examines various aspects of the London life of those times in the successive chapters, blending anecdotes, statistics and jargon from those days into a powerful whole that leaves one with the impression of having been in London in those days as an investigative journalist. What additionally makes the research of this work so outstanding is the masterful way in which Linebaugh is able to use many different sorts of sources, from anonymous political pamphlets to the works of John Locke, showing the place of each in the ideology of the time and its relation to the underlying socio-economic developments. In this way he shows that historical materialism need not be a regurgitation of vague Marxist jargon, but is the most powerful tool for historical analysis of a whole society we have.
From corn manipulations to Levellers, from plantation lords to famous highwaymen, from black gang leaders to the Black Act, hogsheads and tobacco theft - this book reads as an adventure story and critique of political economy in one. The only possible downsides are the rather high degree of repetition inherent in the anecdotal nature of the work, and Linebaugh's tendency to pretentious terminology. Still, much recommended for anyone with historical interest.
Eeeeeeeech August 14, 2006
2 out of 4 found this review helpful
It will leave you utterly appalled. Giving a thorough account of the British justice system during the mid-eighteenth century, the Tyburn era, Linebaugh sees the law through many lenses: the sailor's, the butcher's, the tailor's, the prostitute, etc.
I used to live with a historian, where I had to read him his homework while he drove, so I can tell you right here and how that this is a GREAT history book.
 Contemporary academic historiography at its worst June 5, 2006
6 out of 38 found this review helpful
If you enjoy reading the sort of books about which someone would write "Death by hanging was also a weapon the privileged ruling class utilized in order to strip the indigent populace into accepting the outlawing of customary rights and newly emerging forms of private property,"; if you believe that events are caused by impersonal social/class/race/gender/whatever forces then this book is for you.
If, on the other hand, you believe events are result from the decisions of individual flawed men and women, you'll despise this silly post-modern/ structuralist/derridafouacault drivel, as I did.
Death by hanging was a weapon of the privileged ruling class May 17, 2003
23 out of 24 found this review helpful
The London Hanged: Crime And Civil Society In The Eighteenth Century by Peter Linebaugh (Assistant Professor of History, University of Toledo) is a fascinating and informative study of eighteenth century London, in which hanging was much more than capital punishment for criminal transgressors. Death by hanging was also a weapon the privileged ruling class utilized in order to strip the indigent populace into accepting the outlawing of customary rights and newly emerging forms of private property. The new property laws were so stringent that nearly all working-class men and women had reason to fear the hangman. The lessons drawn from this history bear special relevance in today's world where capital punishment is a very hotly debated issue. The London Hanged is highly recommended reader for both academia and the non-specialist general reader with an interest in European history.
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