A Mosaic of Controls: The Plurality of Order Maintenance Mechanisms in 16th Century Paris
A Mosaic of Controls: The Plurality of Order Maintenance Mechanisms in 16th Century Paris

Summary/Abstract: How was public order maintained in a giant city in the early modern period? Meeting this challenge before the creation of the Lieutenance générale de Police de Paris in 1667 was the result of unspectacular but effective mechanisms, far from the sensational visions of elite contemporaries and royal agents. Using Parisian criminal records as a window on everyday urban order maintenance at the local scale of Saint-Germain-des-Prés, social history unveils the work of a variety of actors (magistrates, “police sergeants” but also common people, individuals and social groups, litigants and witnesses) and a plurality of regulation processes (complaints and trials, extra-judiciary settlements, social control).

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