Background
Evans, Richard John was born on September 29, 1947 in Woodford, Essex, England. Son of Ievan Trefor Evans and Evelyn Jones.
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book
Rituals of Retribution (Penguin history)
(The ideals of the Enlightenment transformed execution fro...)
The ideals of the Enlightenment transformed execution from a "barbarous" public spectacle into a far more impersonal, "civilized" process. Yet moves towards the complete abolition of the death penalty ground to a halt in 1870, with the creation of Bismarck's Empire. The Weimar Republic virtually abolished capital punishment - and then gave way to the Nazi bloodbath. It was not until 1949 that executions were outlawed in West Germany; in the Communist East they continued into the 1980s. A history of capital punishment in Germany since the 17th century, this text is an exploration of German society as shown in attitudes to and use of the death penalty. A far more central issue here than in most states, it examines the development of capital punishment in Germany from early modern times to the Third Reich and its two successor states.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0140259279/?tag=2022091-20
Rituals of Retribution: Capital Punishment in Germany, 1600-1987
(The state has no greater power over its own citizens than...)
The state has no greater power over its own citizens than that of killing them. This book examines the use of that supreme sanction in Germany, from the seventeenth century to the present. Richard Evans analyses the system of 'traditional' capital punishments set out in German law, and the ritual practices and cultural readings associated with them by the time of the early modern period. He shows how this system was challenged by Enlightenment theories of punishment and broke down under the impact of secularization and social change in the first half of the nineteenth century. The abolition of the death penalty became a classic liberal case which triumphed, if only momentarily, in the 1848 Revolution. In Germany far more than anywhere else in Europe, capital punishment was identified with anti-liberal, authoritarian concepts of sovereignty. Its definitive reinstatement by Bismarck in the 1880s marked not only the defeat of liberalism but also coincided with the emergence of new, Social Darwinist attitudes towards criminality which gradually changed the terms of debate. The triumph of these attitudes under the Nazis laid the foundations for the massive expansion of capital punishment which took place during Hitler's 'Third Reich'. After the Second World War, the death penalty was abolished, largely as a result of a chance combination of circumstances, but continued to be used in the Stalinist system of justice in East Germany until its forced abandonment as a result of international pressure exerted in the regime in the 1970s and 1980s. This remarkable and disturbing book casts new light on the history of German attitudes to law, deviance, cruelty, suffering and death, illuminating many aspects of Germany's modern political development. Using sources ranging from folksongs and ballads to the newly released government papers from the former German Democratic Republic, Richard Evans scrutinizes the ideologies behind capital punishment and comments on interpretations of the history of punishment offered by writers such as Foucault and Elias. He has made a formidable contribution not only to scholarship on German history but also to the social theory of punishement, and to the current debate on the death penalty.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0198219687/?tag=2022091-20
Death in Hamburg: Society and Politics in the Cholera Years, 1830-1910
(Why were nearly 10,000 people killed in six weeks in Hamb...)
Why were nearly 10,000 people killed in six weeks in Hamburg, while most of Europe was left almost unscathed? As Richard J. Evans explains, it was largely because the town was a “free city” within Germany that was governed by the “English” ideals of laissez-faire. The absence of an effective public-health policy combined with ill-founded medical theories and the miserable living conditions of the poor to create a scene ripe for tragedy. The story of the “cholera years” is, in Richard Evans’s hands, tragically revealing of the age’s social inequalities and governmental pitilessness and incompetence; it also offers disquieting parallels with the world’s public-health landscape today.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/014303636X/?tag=2022091-20
Rituals of Retribution (Penguin history) by Richard J. Evans (1999-06-01)
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01A1M4LO2/?tag=2022091-20
Rituals of Retribution: Capital Punishment in Germany, 1600-1987 by Richard J. Evans (1996-05-09)
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01A1LYS46/?tag=2022091-20
Richard John Evans
Edit ProfileEducation
Master of Arts, University of Oxford, 1973; Doctor of Philosophy, University of Oxford, 1973; Doctor of Letters, U. East Anglia, United Kingdom, 1990.
Career
Lecturer in history, U. Stirling, East Anglia, 1972-1976; lecturer in European history, U. Stirling, East Anglia, 1976-1983; professor European history, U. East Anglia, 1983-1989; professor of history, Birkbeck College, 1989-1998; vice-master, U. London, 1993-1998; acting master, U. London, 1997-1998; professor modern history, U. Cambridge, England, since 1998.
Achievements
Works
book
-
Rituals of Retribution (Penguin history)
(The ideals of the Enlightenment transformed execution fro...)
-
Death in Hamburg: Society and Politics in the Cholera Years, 1830-1910
(Why were nearly 10,000 people killed in six weeks in Hamb...)
-
Rituals of Retribution: Capital Punishment in Germany, 1600-1987
(The state has no greater power over its own citizens than...)
- DEATH IN HAMBURG: Society and Politics in the Cholera Years
- Rituals of Retribution (Penguin history) by Richard J. Evans (1999-06-01)
- Rituals of Retribution: Capital Punishment in Germany, 1600-1987 by Richard J. Evans (1996-05-09)
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Rituals of Retribution (Penguin history)
Interests
Connections
Married Elin Hjaltadottir, 1976 (divorced 1992). 1 child, Matthew John Corton Evans. Partner Christine Corton.
