Revenge in the Age of Empire: Civilisation and Violence in the Nineteenth Century

Venue: Carrillo Gantner Theatre (B02), Sidney Myer Asia Centre

Presenters: Dr Jan Rüger

Presented by Dr Jan Rüger:

‘Revenge is a kind of wild justice’, Francis Bacon wrote four centuries ago. It was a form of retribution, he thought, ‘which the more man’s nature runs to, the more ought law to weed it out’. Blood feuds and revenge killings were still a common feature in Europe when Bacon penned his critique in 1625. In the centuries that followed revenge became a taboo within European societies, but it continued to play an important role in the justification of war and violence against others. It still does. Since the attacks of 11 September 2001 there has been an appalling resurgence of vengeance as a rhetorical tool and military practice: terrorism has come to be seen as a form of revenge which in turn justifies violent retribution.

If we want to make sense of the role revenge plays in our own times, we need to know under what circumstances past societies promoted or prohibited the desire for ‘wild justice’. The lecture focuses on the long nineteenth century in which a series of ‘small wars’ and punitive campaigns were fought by which the imperial powers avenged the deaths of Europeans overseas. Most of these campaigns followed a similar structure and were accompanied by similar rhetoric, with ‘punishment’ and ‘revenge’ being the most widely used concepts employed to give meaning to them. Using British, French and German examples, the lecture explores the thinking and acting that was at the heart of this culture of revenge, a culture in which civilization and violence were intrinsically bound up with one another.

from
https://events.unimelb.edu.au/events/7110-revenge-in-the-age-of-empire-civilisation-and-violence-in