The early modern concept of ‘good police’ referred to good societal order and the means to obtain this order: a set of police ordinances and the areas of social life they ordered such as public morality, luxury consumption, vagrancy, commerce and infrastructure. A police force to enforce this legislation was not created until the end of the 17^th century in Paris and other European cities. Although criminal law and justice was not a police matter, it became influenced by the new police legislation and administration. The purpose of the seminar is to discuss continuities and changes in early modern policing and criminal justice. How was ‘good police’ related to the other long-term changes in the early modern period such as the formation of states and the ‘civilizing process’? How did the police differ in the various state forms of early modern Europe such as absolutist regimes or republican city-states and the later constitutional states of the 19^th century?  

The seminar is open to all.

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