Preliminary Programme

A genuinly comparative global study of written law-making over the last 4 000 years, focussing on common traits and trends through the lens of cultural variation, such as shifts from outright inequality to explicit equality before the law, from stress on obligations and specific privileges to recognition of individual human rights, from accusatorial to inquisitorial legal procedures, from focus on the criminal action as such to considerations of the intentions behind it as well as the delinquent’s cognitive, physical and mental capacities, et cetera. Then study is based on a method making it possible to make real comparisons between laws that superficially seen appear as impossible to compare. (Show less)

Comparisons between the eastern and western parts of Eurasia show an interesting difference in large scale popular revolts, which partly is a result of more fragmentized polities in the west, but also is related to the whole fabric of society. In the east large rebellions often mark the change from one dynasty to another, and the new dynasty could be founded by rebel leaders coming from the lower social strata. In the west large popular rebellions instead took the form within a negotiating culture, and often had an identified issue, such as lower taxes or religious ideology. Rebel leaders in the west normally came from the middle or upper echelons of the society, and often alliances were formed between for instance the royal power and popular movements. These and other differences has to be identified and a major part of this paper is directed to the quantification of large scale rebellions, with the aim to find if there is a relation to major societal changes not only in China but also in Europe. (Show less)