The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined (16 page)
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Authors: Steven Pinker
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BOOK: The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined
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In 1981 the political scientist Ted Robert Gurr, using old court and county records, calculated thirty estimates of homicide rates at various times in English history, combined them with modern records from London, and plotted them on a graph.
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I’ve reproduced it in figure 3–1, using a logarithmic scale in which the same vertical distance separates 1 from 10, 10 from 100, and 100 from 1000. The rate is calculated in the same way as in the preceding chapter, namely the number of killings per 100,000 people per year. The log scale is necessary because the homicide rate declined so precipitously. The graph shows that from the 13th century to the 20th, homicide in various parts of England plummeted by a factor of ten, fifty, and in some cases a hundred—for example, from 110 homicides per 100,000 people per year in 14th-century Oxford to less than 1 homicide per 100,000 in mid-20th-century London.
2
I’ve reproduced it in figure 3–1, using a logarithmic scale in which the same vertical distance separates 1 from 10, 10 from 100, and 100 from 1000. The rate is calculated in the same way as in the preceding chapter, namely the number of killings per 100,000 people per year. The log scale is necessary because the homicide rate declined so precipitously. The graph shows that from the 13th century to the 20th, homicide in various parts of England plummeted by a factor of ten, fifty, and in some cases a hundred—for example, from 110 homicides per 100,000 people per year in 14th-century Oxford to less than 1 homicide per 100,000 in mid-20th-century London.
The graph stunned almost everyone who saw it (including me—as I mentioned in the preface, it was the seed that grew into this book). The discovery confounds every stereotype about the idyllic past and the degenerate present. When I surveyed perceptions of violence in an Internet questionnaire, people guessed that 20th-century England was about 14 percent more violent than 14th-century England. In fact it was 95 percent less violent.
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FIGURE 3–1.
Homicide rates in England, 1200–2000: Gurr’s 1981 estimates
Homicide rates in England, 1200–2000: Gurr’s 1981 estimates
Source:
Data from Gurr, 1981, pp. 303–4, 313.
Data from Gurr, 1981, pp. 303–4, 313.
This chapter is about the decline of homicide in Europe from the Middle Ages to the present, and its counterparts and counterexamples in other times and places. I have borrowed the title of the chapter from Elias because he was the only major social thinker with a theory that could explain it.
THE EUROPEAN HOMICIDE DECLINEBefore we try to explain this remarkable development, let’s be sure it is real. Following the publication of Gurr’s graph, several historical criminologists dug more deeply into the history of homicide.
4
The criminologist Manuel Eisner assembled a much larger set of estimates on homicide in England across the centuries, drawing on coroners’ inquests, court cases, and local records.
5
Each dot on the graph in figure 3–2 is an estimate from some town or jurisdiction, plotted once again on a logarithmic scale. By the 19th century the British government was keeping annual records of homicide for the entire country, which are plotted on the graph as a gray line. Another historian, J. S. Cockburn, compiled continuous data from the town of Kent between 1560 and 1985, which Eisner superimposed on his own data as the black line.
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4
The criminologist Manuel Eisner assembled a much larger set of estimates on homicide in England across the centuries, drawing on coroners’ inquests, court cases, and local records.
5
Each dot on the graph in figure 3–2 is an estimate from some town or jurisdiction, plotted once again on a logarithmic scale. By the 19th century the British government was keeping annual records of homicide for the entire country, which are plotted on the graph as a gray line. Another historian, J. S. Cockburn, compiled continuous data from the town of Kent between 1560 and 1985, which Eisner superimposed on his own data as the black line.
6
FIGURE 3–2.
Homicide rates in England, 1200–2000
Homicide rates in England, 1200–2000
Source:
Graph from Eisner, 2003.
Graph from Eisner, 2003.
Once again we see a decline in annual homicide rates, and it is not small: from between 4 and 100 homicides per 100,000 people in the Middle Ages to around 0.8 (eight-tenths of a homicide) per 100,000 in the 1950s. The timing shows that the high medieval murder rates cannot be blamed on the social upheavals that followed the Black Death around 1350, because many of the estimates predated that epidemic.
Eisner has given a lot of thought to how much we should trust these numbers. Homicide is the crime of choice for measurers of violence because regardless of how the people of a distant culture conceptualize crime, a dead body is hard to define away, and it always arouses curiosity about who or what produced it. Records of homicide are therefore a more reliable index of violence than records of robbery, rape, or assault, and they usually (though not always) correlate with them.
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Still, it’s reasonable to wonder how the people of different eras reacted to these killings. Were they as likely as we are to judge a killing as intentional or accidental, or to prosecute the killing as opposed to letting it pass? Did people in earlier times always kill at the same percentage of the rate that they raped, robbed, and assaulted? How successful were they in saving the lives of victims of assault and thereby preventing them from becoming victims of homicide?
Fortunately, these questions can be addressed. Eisner cites studies showing that when people today are presented with the circumstances of a centuriesold murder and asked whether they think it was intentional, they usually come to the same conclusion as did the people at the time. He has shown that in most periods, the rates of homicide do correlate with the rates of other violent crimes. He notes that any historical advance in forensics or in the reach of the criminal justice system is bound to
underestimate
the decline in homicide, because a greater proportion of killers are caught, prosecuted, and convicted today than they were centuries ago. As for lifesaving medical care, doctors before the 20th century were quacks who killed as many patients as they saved; yet most of the decline took place between 1300 and 1900.
8
In any case, the sampling noise that gives social scientists such a headache when they are estimating a change of a quarter or a half is not as much of a problem when they are dealing with a change of tenfold or fiftyfold.
underestimate
the decline in homicide, because a greater proportion of killers are caught, prosecuted, and convicted today than they were centuries ago. As for lifesaving medical care, doctors before the 20th century were quacks who killed as many patients as they saved; yet most of the decline took place between 1300 and 1900.
8
In any case, the sampling noise that gives social scientists such a headache when they are estimating a change of a quarter or a half is not as much of a problem when they are dealing with a change of tenfold or fiftyfold.
Were the English unusual among Europeans in gradually refraining from murder? Eisner looked at other Western European countries for which criminologists had compiled homicide data. Figure 3–3 shows that the results were similar. Scandinavians needed a couple of additional centuries before they thought the better of killing each other, and Italians didn’t get serious about it until the 19th century. But by the 20th century the annual homicide rate of every Western European country had fallen into a narrow band centered on 1 per 100,000.
FIGURE 3–3.
Homicide rates in five Western European regions, 1300–2000
Homicide rates in five Western European regions, 1300–2000
Source:
Data from Eisner, 2003, table 1.
Data from Eisner, 2003, table 1.
To put the European decline in perspective, let’s compare it to the rates for nonstate societies that we encountered in chapter 2. In figure 3–4 I have extended the vertical axis up to 1,000 on the log scale to accommodate the additional order of magnitude required by the nonstate societies. Even in the late Middle Ages, Western Europe was far less violent than the unpacified nonstate societies and the Inuit, and it was comparable to the thinly settled foragers such as the Semai and the !Kung. And from the 14th century on, the European homicide rate sank steadily, with a tiny bounce in the last third of the 20th century.
While Europe was becoming less murderous overall, certain patterns in homicide remained constant.
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Men were responsible for about 92 percent of the killings (other than infanticide), and they were most likely to kill when they were in their twenties. Until the 1960s uptick, cities were generally safer than the countryside. But other patterns changed. In the earlier centuries the upper and lower social classes engaged in homicide at comparable rates. But as the homicide rate fell, it dropped far more precipitously among the upper classes than among the lower ones, an important social change to which we will return.
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9
Men were responsible for about 92 percent of the killings (other than infanticide), and they were most likely to kill when they were in their twenties. Until the 1960s uptick, cities were generally safer than the countryside. But other patterns changed. In the earlier centuries the upper and lower social classes engaged in homicide at comparable rates. But as the homicide rate fell, it dropped far more precipitously among the upper classes than among the lower ones, an important social change to which we will return.
10
Another historical change was that homicides in which one man kills another man who is unrelated to him declined far more rapidly than did the killing of children, parents, spouses, and siblings. This is a common pattern in homicide statistics, sometimes called Verkko’s Law: rates of male-on-male violence fluctuate more across different times and places than rates of domestic violence involving women or kin.
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Martin Daly and Margo Wilson’s explanation is that family members get on each other’s nerves at similar rates in all times and places because of deeply rooted conflicts of interest that are inherent to the patterns of genetic overlap among kin. Macho violence among male acquaintances, in contrast, is fueled by contests of dominance that are more sensitive to circumstances. How violent a man must be to keep his rank in the pecking order in a given milieu depends on his assessment of how violent the
other
men are, leading to vicious or virtuous circles that can spiral up or down precipitously. I’ll explore the psychology of kinship in more detail in chapter 7, and of dominance in chapter 8.
11
Martin Daly and Margo Wilson’s explanation is that family members get on each other’s nerves at similar rates in all times and places because of deeply rooted conflicts of interest that are inherent to the patterns of genetic overlap among kin. Macho violence among male acquaintances, in contrast, is fueled by contests of dominance that are more sensitive to circumstances. How violent a man must be to keep his rank in the pecking order in a given milieu depends on his assessment of how violent the
other
men are, leading to vicious or virtuous circles that can spiral up or down precipitously. I’ll explore the psychology of kinship in more detail in chapter 7, and of dominance in chapter 8.
FIGURE 3–4.
Homicide rates in Western Europe, 1300–2000, and in nonstate societies
Homicide rates in Western Europe, 1300–2000, and in nonstate societies
Sources:
Nonstate (geometric mean of 26 societies, not including Semai, Inuit, and !Kung): see figure 2–3. Europe: Eisner, 2003, table 1; geometric mean of five regions; missing data interpolated.
EXPLAINING THE EUROPEAN HOMICIDE DECLINENonstate (geometric mean of 26 societies, not including Semai, Inuit, and !Kung): see figure 2–3. Europe: Eisner, 2003, table 1; geometric mean of five regions; missing data interpolated.
Now let’s consider the implications of the centuries-long decline in homicide in Europe. Do you think that city living, with its anonymity, crowding, immigrants, and jumble of cultures and classes, is a breeding ground for violence? What about the wrenching social changes brought on by capitalism and the Industrial Revolution? Is it your conviction that small-town life, centered on church, tradition, and fear of God, is our best bulwark against murder and mayhem? Well, think again. As Europe became more urban, cosmopolitan, commercial, industrialized, and secular, it got safer and safer. And that brings us back to the ideas of Norbert Elias, the only theory left standing.
Elias developed the theory of the Civilizing Process not by poring over numbers, which weren’t available in his day, but by examining the texture of everyday life in medieval Europe. He examined, for instance, a series of drawings from the 15th-century German manuscript
The Medieval Housebook
, a depiction of daily life as seen through the eyes of a knight.
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The Medieval Housebook
, a depiction of daily life as seen through the eyes of a knight.
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In the detail shown in figure 3–5, a peasant disembowels a horse as a pig sniffs his exposed buttocks. In a nearby cave a man and a woman sit in the stocks. Above them a man is being led to the gallows, where a corpse is already hanging, and next to it is a man who has been broken on the wheel, his shattered body pecked by a crow. The wheel and gibbet are not the focal point of the drawing, but a part of the landscape, like the trees and hills.
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