18th century… Bandits and Robbers of India 9 Feb 20199 Feb 2019 By Stephen Basdeo During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the British East India Company established a number of fortified trading settlements—“factories”—in various parts of the Indian subcontinent. The trading company…
11th Century… The Virgin and the Outlaw 5 Jun 2018 By Stephen Basdeo In modern popular culture, heroes often possess some supernatural powers, or at other times they are so skilled at what they do that their superiority often appears…
18th century… Jack ‘Sixteen-String’ Rann (1750–74) 23 Apr 2018 The eighteenth century was without a doubt the golden age of highwaymen, being the era in which robbers such as Jack Sheppard (1702–24), Dick Turpin (1705–39), and James Maclaine (1724–50).…
17th century… Criminality and Animal Cruelty in 18th-Century England 17 Dec 201717 Dec 2017 I am currently in the final stages of editing a book chapter I have written for Prof. Alexander Kaufman’s and Penny Vlagopoulos’s forthcoming work entitled Food and Feasting in Post-1700…
18th century… Passo di Lupo: An Italian Bandit 12 Nov 2017 An outlaw’s life was not a merry one: in the 1820s, banditry in Italy was rife; at this time, a young travel writer named Charles Macfarlane was touring the country…
18th century… Mack the Knife: The “True” Story Behind the Song 28 Oct 2017 The popular song Mack the Knife was based upon the story of an eighteenth-century highwayman named Captain Macheath. This post traces the literary life of this fictional character. Most people,…
