Mercy and British Culture, 1760-1960

Download or read book Mercy and British Culture, 1760-1960 written by James Gregory and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2021-11-04 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Spanning over 2 centuries, James Gregory's Mercy and British Culture, 1760 -1960 provides a wide-reaching yet detailed overview of the concept of mercy in British cultural history. While there are many histories of justice and punishment, mercy has been a neglected element despite recognition as an important feature of the 18th-century criminal code. Mercy and British Culture, 1760-1960 looks first at mercy's religious and philosophical aspects, its cultural representations and its embodiment. It then looks at large-scale mobilisation of mercy discourses in Ireland, during the French Revolution, in the British empire, and in warfare from the American war of independence to the First World War. This study concludes by examining mercy's place in a twentieth century shaped by total war, atomic bomb, and decolonisation.