Includes bibliographical references and index.

Introduction : violence and the early modern world

Part I. Coherence and fragmentation

‘None could stand before him in the battle, none ever reigned so wisely as he’: the expansion and significance of violence in early modern Africa

Both benevolent and brutal: the two sides of provincial violence in early modern Burma

Village rebellion and social violence in early nineteenth-century Vietnam

Towards a political economy of conquest: the changing scale of warfare and the making of early colonial South Asia

Ravages and depredations: raiding war and globalization in the early modern world

Part II. Restraint and excess

Breaking the Pax Hispanica : collective violence in colonial Spanish America

Restraining/encouraging violence : commerce, diplomacy, and brigandage on the steppe routes between the Ottoman Empire, Poland-Lithuania, and Russia, 1470s–1570s

Restraining violence on the seas : the Tokugawa, the Zheng maritime network, and the Dutch East India Company

‘The wrath of God’ : legitimization and limits of Mughal military violence in early modern South Asia

Part III. Differentiation and identification

‘Sacrificed to the madness of the bloodthirsty sabre’ : violence and the Great Turkish War in the work of Romeyn de Hooghe

Atlantic slave systems and violence

A ‘theatre of bloody carnage’ : the revolt of Cairo and Revolutionary violence

Conquer, extract, and perhaps govern : organic economies, logistics, and violence in the pre-industrial world