While Collins discusses both of these senses, different parts of the book tend to focus on one meaning or another.Ĭollins brings out the legal history of martial law in chapters two and three. Martial law was exercised over civilians, but it was an established law. As Collins demonstrates, this was not the early modern understanding. The second is to view martial law as something closer to a state of emergency in which law in the usual sense does not apply, Blackstone’s non-law exercised by the military over civilians. In early modern England, the latter were part of the former. The first is to distinguish between martial law and military law, in the sense of the special laws governing members of armed forces. Moderns tend to make two assumptions in relation to martial law.

The proceedings against Thomas, Earl of Lancaster in 1322 and their reversal in 1327, for example, were a frequent touchstone in early modern material and reappear throughout the book.Ĭrucially, Collins begins by highlighting an important historiographical error: the tendency to think of martial law in something like modern terms. Important medieval material is addressed succinctly early on, but still forms a key part of the narrative. The structure of the book is broadly chronological, with a slight weighting towards the 17th century in the period covered. In doing so, Collins confirms Christopher Brooks’ argument that law was a central feature of the early modern state and that legal ideas had very considerable weight, even to non-lawyers. Martial law was highly relevant to early-modern politics and empire, as well as a method for dealing with the poor. Many historians of early-modern England and associated territories should find something of interest in it.

It is not a narrow history of legal ideas or institutions. John Collins convincingly demonstrates that this depiction of martial law is utterly misplaced when considering martial law in England during the 16th and 17th centuries. no law, but something indulged, rather than allowed as a law’ (quoted at p. Martial law is ‘built upon no settled principles. William Blackstone set the tone of modern attitudes in the 18th century. Martial law does not have a good reputation.

Martial law meaning in history