Abstract
Peace as Guiding Concept and Object of Early Modern Police Ordinances This chapter surveys the interrelation of ‘peace’ and ‘Policey’ as pivotal concepts and fields of state activity related to the maintenance of the internal order in the early modern period. From the late Middle Ages onwards, various authorities and states issued so-called Policeyordnungen, administrative laws that aimed to establish good order. For that reason, police ordinances also aimed at ‘internal peace’ and adopted regulations from other forms of peace relating to towns (‘Stadtfrieden’), the territory (‘Landfrieden’), or the religious conflicts that grew in number after the Reformation. The chapter explores how early modern police ordinances regulated and criminalised conflicts and deviant behaviour with the aim of maintaining ‘internal peace’ and which specific practices (such as the ‘Friedgebot’ and the ‘Friedbruch’) were used to enforce their provisions. Finally, the chapter considers why ‘internal peace’ disappeared by the early eighteenth century to be superseded by the concept of security.
