ABSTRACT
Using a case study of friendship and violence among lower order Scottish men, this chapter explores how the field of the history of emotion offers novel ways to rethink the operation of gendered power in early modern societies. It charts the development of the historiography of gendered emotion, beginning with early women’s history and moving into its current formation as the ‘new’ history of emotion. It then looks at the new methodologies and scholarship being produced by historians of emotion to locate affection and intimacy between men within structures of social and political order in the early modern world, transforming our understanding of the operation of power and its gendered dimensions. Ever since Alan Bray asked us to take friendship seriously as a relationship between men, historians have been attuned to evidence of male intimacies. Drawing on Scottish court records, this chapter builds on this observation to demonstrate the importance of physical touch, knowledge of the body of the friend and ritual practices of friendship, like drinking together, to lower order sociability and social order.
