Las quiebras del orden cotidiano: comportamientos criminales en la sociedad gallega de fines del Antiguo Régimen

Abstract

Crime, far from being a secondary and despicable expression of human life, is a basic way to have knowledge of ordinary people's live. Its study is essential for understanding social relationships, the mental system and the activities executed by judicial institutions in the past, while the results obtained in this scope of investigation can be used to support the hypothesis concerning the economic, social, cultural and political development in the medium and long terms. The actual gap in modernist historiography with regard to this subject leads us to analyse in depth the ways of expression of criminal behaviour in Galicia at the end of the Ancien Régime, the mechanisms used by the population to restore the peace, the penalizing activity of the state, etc. The main conclusions of our study are explained in the following pages.