Corruption, Anti-Corruption, Vigilance, and State Building from Early to Late Modern Times challenges current historiographical approaches, proposing new interpretations to rethink the relation between corruption and the socio-political and economic transformations since early globalisation.
By adopting both transnational and long-term approaches, the book explores the historical dimension of notions such as accountability, transparency, and vigilance in their immediate political, social, and legal contexts. The starting point is to view corruption not as a moral category that emerged in 1789 to delegitimise past, foreign or present state systems, but as a constantly contested concept that must also be historicised in past societies. The collection revisits chronologies and examines different local, regional, and national frames, highlighting that the path to modernity was contested and affected by a variety of unique circumstances, such as revolutions and external political powers.
Building on the latest research and offering new methods of inquiry, this book is a compelling resource for academics interested in political history and the history of corruption.
Table of Contents:
Foreword: A commentary on corruption and control from the perspective of the Cultures of Vigilance Introduction. Corruption and the Modernisation of the State. A short introduction to a long-term process (1600-1900) Part 1: Blurred Lines: Conceptualising corruption in the early modern era and beyond 1. Defining Corruption in the Holy Roman Empire: The Gülich Revolt in Cologne and its Monument to Social Deviance 2. The Pietist Campaign against Corruption 1660-1700 3. The Perception of Corruption in Croatian Public Service in 17th and 18th Centuries: Tradition and Reform 4. Conceptualising Corruption as a Systemic Issue Part 2: From Vigilance to Scandal. Performing Corruption and Anti-corruption 5. How to harmonise republican and social norms in an aristocracy? Election and corruption in the Republic of Venice (1500-1797) 6. Wielding a Many-Edged Sword: Constitutional Struggle, Political Modernisation, and the Ambiguity of Corruption Rhetoric in Early Modern Württemberg 7. A Complicit State? Discourses around Corruption and the Role of the State within the Context of Modern Colonial Empires: the Case of the Dutch Empire, c. 1850-1880s 8. “To new revolutions”: vigilance, mistrust and corruption in France under the July Monarchy (1830-1848) 9. Gratifying Candidates and Rewarding Voters in the Early Twentieth Century Romania: Electoral Practices and Strategies Part 3: The Divergent Routes towards Modernity 10. Time, Context and Language in the Analysis of Corruption in the Early Modern Period 11. Native Litigation, Contraband Trade, and a Corrupt Custiodian of Justice in Colonial Mexico, 1704-1721 12. The Naturalisation of Political Corruption in Spanish Literature: the Generation of 1868 13. A national culture of corruption? Spain in transnational perspective (18th-19th Centuries) 14. Hopeless corruption? Negotiating modernity in Wallachia and Moldavia in the 1830s 15. Some Theses on the History of Corruption in the Modern Era
About the Author :
Ricard Torra-Prat is a Beatriu de Pinós Postdoctoral Fellow at Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. He is the project leader of Political Corruption and Statebuilding in 18th Century Spanish Monarchy, and the author of “Francesc Eiximenis and the Catalan idea of corruption in the Late Medieval Crown of Aragon” (2021).
Joan Pubill-Brugués is a Margarita Salas Postdoctoral Fellow at Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona and enseignant vacataire at the Université de Perpignan. He is the co-editor of Las sombras de la transparencia. Secreto, corrupción y "estado profundo" en la España contemporánea (2022).
Arndt Brendecke holds the Early Modern History Chair at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München. He is the spokesperson of the SFB 1369 Vigilanzkulturen and the author of The empirical empire: Spanish colonial rule and the politics of knowledge (2016).
