Customer Reviews

The London Hanged

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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.

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.

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.

"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."

The above states the case as well as it can be put.

The research is stellar: A+. The synthesis?: C-

Why? There is a non-sequitorial aspect that was endemic within the tome. And my critique is not at all political, as some critics have pounced on the Marxist bent of the author. I can not judge on so facile a ground. But his writing was choppy (read semi-linear) through and through. And he remains unflinchingly, arrogantly pedantic.

I for one, read books like this to educate myself. I should not have to wade through Oxfordian vageries to decode what the historian is laying between the lines. Why drop an item into the text before you have defined it, or properly contextualized it? If I wanted to assemble a puzzle, I would have bought a puzzle, for crying out loud.

I learned a lot, but it was like trudging through ankle-deep snow, encountering, all too frequently, a snowed-covered ditch, into which one plummets violently, unsuspectingly, only to as unexpectedly ramp up, out of said ditch thoroughly annoyed, irritated for the abrupt inconvenience of it.

A fair, nay, a fairly good work, which should have been a contender for better -- even for best. Pity.

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.

I had to read this for a graduate seminar. The book was very interesting, and for the most part I can see how his argument works....BUt and yes there is a a but. While his writing is flowery and well done, I think you can easily become entangled in his words leading to what you may think is a good argument. However, he starts discussing ones background and then 2 lines later someone is hanged. No explanation, no relationship stated, and very incomplete. Also in the afterword he mentions that some of his critics pointed out that hanging or capital punishment was not new to the 18thc. and he agrees, but continues to push his argument as if he was the almighty. I have an issue with his comment that witchcraft was linked to money. That is an absurd and ludacris stance. I won't even go there because i could develope a 600 page rebuff to that point. No back to the idea of capital punishment and capitalism. Sure, it is plausible that people who were very poor were forced to commit crimes. That I buy, but.... and yes there is a but. This was the case long before capitalism, and long before mercantilism. Linebaugh, whether by arrogance or just plain ignorance, ignores the critiques that capital punishment was not a result of emerging capitalism but did, in fact, exist well before. My point here is that, he seems to have cut off centuries of capital punishment cases to force his Marxist theory of history to work. The marxists theory is seriously flawed, and is a dangerous framework to apply to history.

Now I do not suggest burning or abandoning this work, it does have some interesting points. But as long as historians continue to force history into the marxists or any framework, than the history is going to be flawed, inconsistent, biased, and full of agenda. If Linebaugh is discussed with capitalism than so be it, but capital punishment was here long before mercantilism (capitalism) was even a thought, and I suspect it will be here long after capitalism dies. I suppose Linebaugh would argue Joan D'arc was burned because th economic conditions forced her to rebel?

A very interesting read, but a very compressed and narrow scope of capital punishment.

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.