The Historical Decline of European Homicide: A Revisionist Explanation

• In Event: Historical Studies of Crime

Abstract

The steep decline in European homicide rates from 1250-1950 has been well established by scholars working on different countries at different times. The most popular explanation is Elias’s theory of the civilizing process locating the decline in the growth of the state and the emergence and lengthening of interdependency chains. Other factors discussed in the scholarly literature include the growth of towns and cities, the spread of literacy, and the decline of honor culture. Drawing on the theoretical system known as pure sociology, we argue that an important variable has been omitted, a variable prefigured to some extent in Durkheim’s discussion of the link between the decline of feelings of attachment to the group (individualism) and the decline of homicide. We identify the missing variable and specify two principal pathways along which it travels toward the reduction of lethal conflict. We illustrate the argument by drawing on the social history of England, though we believe we have isolated a sociological process that applies to all of Europe, indeed, most likely, to all modernizing countries. Our explanation does not supplant existing explanations but, rather, adds to them.

Authors

• Mark Cooney, University of Georgia

• Jeffrey Patterson, University of Georgia