Workshop: Baltic Bloodbaths – The Use of Political Violence in the Baltic Sea Region 1400–1600.

This years workshop – a semi-related continuation to the Stockholm Bloodbath conference of 2021 – had attendees from Sweden, Denmark, Germany, Finland and Spain. The topics discussed where that of tyrants as a concept from the late medieval period to the early modern period, as well as the evolving thoughts on how bloodbaths could be justified.

The idea with comparing the Middle Ages and Early Modern time was to discuss changes in attitudes and justifications of massacres as a political instrument. How was warfare regulated and attempted de-scaled and limited in the Middle Ages, and was it replaced later with a more cynical attitude which claimed that the power of the prince was sufficient reason for the maximum use of power and killing?

Other important areas of comparison were differences between norms and practises, for example in laws, or the actual extent of mass killing compared to the propagandistic description of it after the event.