Abstract
Modes of fighting to settle private quarrels have differed between countries and between social classes or estates. In this essay, Elias makes a detailed comparison of the trajectories of development between duelling and boxing and between France and England from the Middle Ages, and especially from the seventeenth century to the present. He shows how these trends are linked to differences in state-formation processes, and to changing balances of power between the main strata within these state-societies.
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- 1.
Stonehenge (pseud. of John Henry Walsh, FRCS), Manual of British Rural Sports (London: Routledge, 1856), preface.
- 2.
No reference given, but probably: Stonehenge (pseud. of John Henry Walsh), The Handbook of Manly Exercises (London: Routledge, 1864), pp. 7–8.—eds.
- 3.
Eugène Chapus, Le Sport à Paris (Paris: Hachette, 1854), pp. 103–6.
- 4.
Ibid., p. 103.
- 5.
Ibid., pp. 108–11.
- 6.
Stonehenge, Handbook of Manly Exercises, pp. 8–10.
- 7.
See for example Stonehenge, Handbook of Manly Exercises, 1864, p. 8: ‘A well-known American writer has expressed, in his own humorous language, the astonishment which he felt at witnessing a short “turn up” [quarrel] at an English cattle fair. The grave propriety of the affair, and the admirable order in which it was conducted, struck him with profound admiration, as contrasted with the “inglorious and inevitable Yankee clinches, followed by a general mêlée,” which in popular language is termed a “free fight”, and in which every one attacks every one else with any weapons and in any manner.’ The ‘Yankee clinches’ and the ‘free fight’ mentioned here are of course among the most elementary and spontaneous forms of fighting which one can find everywhere at one stage or another. From single observations such as this one can certainly not conclude that they had at that time disappeared in England.
- 8.
That is, the noblesse d’épée, the descendants of the old feudal warrior nobility of France, who by the second half of the seventeenth century had effectively been deprived of their power to deploy force of arms independently of the king, and some of whom had become a courtly elite. The crown had also sponsored the formation of a new and separate hereditary elite of magistrates and officials, the noblesse de robe, drawn from families of bourgeois origin.—eds.
- 9.
Footnote symbol given at the end of this sentence, but no actual footnote present in the manuscript. Probably: Sir Richard Carew, Survey of Cornwall (London: John Jaggard, 1602), quoted from the edition of 1769 (London: B. Law), p. 75. Carew actually writes: ‘yet al is good play, & neuer Attourney nor Crowner troubled for the matter’.—eds.
- 10.
See Sir William Segar, Honor Military and Civil (London: R. Barker, 1602), p. 203.
- 11.
John Cockburn, History and Examination of Duels showing their Heinous Nature and the Necessity of Suppressing them (London: G. Strahan, 1720), p. VIII.
- 12.
Sir Thomas Parkyns, Προγυμνασματα: The Inn-Flay: or Cornish Hugg-Wrestler digested in a Method which teacheth to break all Holds and throw most Falls Mathematically (Nottingham, W. Ayscough, 1713; 2nd edn 1714), pp. 11–12, quoted from Maria Kloeren, Sport und Rekord: kultursoziologische Untersuchungen zum England des sechzehnten bis achtzehnten Jahrhunderts (Leipzig: Tauchniz, 1935), pp. 101–2.
- 13.
H. Schöffler, England das Land des Sports: eine kultursoziologische Erklärung (Leipzig: Tauchnig, 1936), p. 42.
- 14.
No reference given, but probably cited from: William Biggs Boulton, The Amusements of Old London (London: J. C. Nimmo, 1900).—eds.
- 15.
At this point, one or perhaps two quite indecipherable sentences in Elias’s handwriting follow. Elias had discussed the general point about the impact of money on human relationships and power balances in his magnum opus of 1939, On the Process of Civilisation (Dublin: University College Dublin Press, 2012 [Collected Works, vol. 3]).—eds.
- 16.
Boulton, Amusements of Old London, 1900, vol. II, p. 89.
- 17.
No reference given, but probably: Scriblerus Tertius [Paul Whitehead], The Gymnasiad, or Boxing Match, London, 1744.—eds.
- 18.
Elias, On the Process of Civilisation.
- 19.
Verses from The Gymnasiad; some spelling and punctuation have been changed in accordance with the published poem.—eds.
- 20.
Francis I, king of France 1515–47; Charles V, king of Spain from 1516 and Holy Roman Emperor 1519–56.—eds.
- 21.
Probably Abraham-Nicolas Amelot de La Houssaye (1634–1706), Mémoires historiques, politiques, critiques et littéraires (Amsterdam: M. C. Le Cène, 1731).—eds.
- 22.
Larousse, Grand Dictionnaire Universal du XIXe Siècle (Paris: Larousse, 1870), art. Duel, p. 1343c.
- 23.
Armand Jean du Plessis, Cardinal and Duc de Richelieu (1585–1642), chief minister of king Louis XIII.—eds.
- 24.
The content of ‘Sport 14’ including SPY notation starts here.
- 25.
Elizabeth I, Queen of England 1558–1603; King James VI of Scotland succeeded her as James I of England, reigning until 1625.—eds.
- 26.
Elias refers in many parts of his writings to the exclusive circles of upper-class people who assembled in London mainly during the winter, using various terms. Often he writes ‘good Society’ or ‘good society’. In the Collected Works, ‘good society’ was adopted as the standard term. Here, however, we have left it as he wrote it, even though its participants would mainly not have used a capital letter in referring to themselves.—eds.
- 27.
John Selden, The Duello or Single Combat: from Antiquities derived into this Kingdome of England, with seuerall kindes, and ceremonious formes thereof from good authority described (London: G. E., for J. Helme, 1610). Selden (1584–1654) was an English polymath and one of the foremost legal scholars of his time.—eds.
- 28.
Selden, The Duello, p. 45.
- 29.
But it is the end to a duel when the other perishes, or admits that he has surrendered.—eds.
- 30.
Selden, The Duello, p. 46.
- 31.
L. F. Salzman, English Life in the Middle Ages (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1926), p. 202. [Henry III came to the throne at the age of nine in 1216 and reigned until his death in 1272; his minority came to an end in 1226.—eds.].
- 32.
Selden, The Duello, p. 34.
- 33.
Henry Plantagenet, king of England 1154–89, who also ruled large tracts of what is now France.—eds.
- 34.
That is, the monarchs of the house of Tudor from Henry VII’s accession in 1485 to the death of Elizabeth I in 1603.—eds.
- 35.
Elias, On the Process of Civilisation, pp. 298–300.
- 36.
The argument that follows is developed in more detail in Elias’s Introduction to Quest for Excitement (Dublin: UCD Press, 2008 [Collected Works, vol. 7]), pp. 3–22.—eds.
- 37.
See Norbert Elias, The Genesis of the Naval Profession, edited by René Moelker and Stephen Mennell (Dublin: UCD Press, 2007).—eds.
- 38.
Ben Jonson, The Magnetic Lady, or Humors Reconciled, first performed in 1632.—eds.
- 39.
Francis Bacon, 1st Baron Verulam and Viscount St Albans (1561–1626), English philosopher—in which role he is remembered as a founder of empiricism and scientific method—and statesman, who served as Attorney General and then Lord Chancellor of England.—eds.
- 40.
Missing reference, but probably from William Blundell. Crosby Records: A Cavalier’s Note Book, Being Notes Anecdotes and Observations of William Blundell (London: Longmans, 1880), p. 185.—eds.
- 41.
After the defeat of King Charles I (1625–49) in the civil wars, a Commonwealth or republic was established under the leadership of Oliver Cromwell, until the Restoration of the monarchy in 1660; Charles II then reigned until 1685.—eds.
- 42.
Sir Kenelm Digby (1603–65), English courtier and diplomat.—eds.
- 43.
Blundell, Crosby Records, p. 152.
- 44.
No reference given, but probably from Blundell, Crosby Records, pp. 219–220.—eds.
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Elias, N. (2018). Boxing and Duelling. In: Haut, J., Dolan, P., Reicher, D., Sánchez García, R. (eds) Excitement Processes. Springer VS, Wiesbaden. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-14912-3_8
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