Confess and you’ll Feel Better!

This introduction questions long-held assumptions regarding criminal interrogations between 1650 and 1850. It discusses the actors and actants involved in criminal interrogations: interrogators, suspects, and clerks, but also laws and customs. Drawing on a scattered historiography of interrogations, it brings together initial insights and outlines questions and problems that can guide the history of criminal interrogation. Premodern criminal interrogations have often been characterized as “monologues”, dominated by the interrogator. The article argues that they can more fruitfully be characterized as dialogues between a variety of actors with different degrees of power and varying constraints.