General introduction: Violence in world history

[Extract] This four-volume world history is the first collection of its kind to look at violence across different periods of human history and across many regions of the world. It capitalises on the growing scholarly interest in the history of violence, which is emerging as one of the key intellectual issues of our time. The volumes take into account the latest scholarship in the field and comprises nearly 140 scholars, who have contributed substantial chapters to provide an authoritative treatment of violence from a multiplicity of perspectives. It thus offers the reader a wide-ranging thematic treatment of different types of violence, as well as a compendium of an experience shared by peoples across time. The thematic sections vary from volume to volume, but they allow for a comparative history of violence from period to period and from region to region. In this way, the Cambridge World History of Violence will allow readers to assess the nature and the extent of violence across time and place, to examine its causes, and to consider the reasons for particular levels of violence at given moments of history. The project will, we hope, lead to a better understanding of the interaction between the forces that shape violence, and the ways in which institutions, beliefs and the structures of daily life reduce or amplify the potential for it, as well as the ways in which both the anticipation and the memory of violence can shape society.