From a European perspective, imprisonment began around 1600. The chapter assesses what the last four centuries mean for historical and sociological theorizing; it contrasts a modern view, based on the work of Norbert Elias, with those of Michel Foucault and others. The chapter reviews the various types of punishment, including penal bondage and its focus on the restriction of freedom as a penal measure, transportation and public works. It examines the work of revisionist critics of the 1970s who attacked their predecessors for the emphasis on social control instead of humanitarianism as the major factor in the rise of imprisonment. The chapter discusses the concept of early modern prisons run as complex households with the family as their model, the analogy of Utopia and the prison, and the history of penal bondage from the 17th century onward in France, England and Germany. It examines the relationship between imprisonment and physical punishment, (including changing attitudes toward the human body), solitary confinement and emancipation. Notes