Corruption, Anti-corruption, Vigilance, and State Building from Early to Late Modern Times

Corruption, Anti-Corruption, Vigilance, and State Building from Early to Late Modern Times challenges current historiographical approaches, proposing new interpretations to rethink the relation between corruption and the socio-political and economic transformations since early globalisation.

By adopting both transnational and long-term approaches, the book explores the historical dimension of notions such as accountability, transparency, and vigilance in their immediate political, social, and legal contexts. The starting point is to view corruption not as a moral category that emerged in 1789 to delegitimise past, foreign or present state systems, but as a constantly contested concept that must also be historicised in past societies. The collection revisits chronologies and examines different local, regional, and national frames, highlighting that the path to modernity was contested and affected by a variety of unique circumstances, such as revolutions and external political powers.

Building on the latest research and offering new methods of inquiry, this book is a compelling resource for academics interested in political history and the history of corruption.

Ricard Torra-Prat is a Beatriu de Pinós Postdoctoral Fellow at Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. He is the project leader of Political Corruption and Statebuilding in 18th Century Spanish Monarchy, and the author of “Francesc Eiximenis and the Catalan idea of corruption in the Late Medieval Crown of Aragon” (2021).

Joan Pubill-Brugués is a Margarita Salas Postdoctoral Fellow at Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona and enseignant vacataire at the Université de Perpignan. He is the co-editor of Las sombras de la transparencia. Secreto, corrupción y "estado profundo" en la España contemporánea (2022).

Arndt Brendecke holds the Early Modern History Chair at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München. He is the spokesperson of the SFB 1369 Vigilanzkulturen and the author of The empirical empire: Spanish colonial rule and the politics of knowledge (2016).