15 - Men Fighting Men: Europe from a Global Perspective

Summary

This chapter deals with male-on-male homicide and serious interpersonal violence in Europe, 1500–1800. Although it uses a global perspective, the evidence for the non-Western world in this period is very limited. In much of Europe homicide rates declined markedly and since male-on-male fighting accounts for the great majority of these rates, it means that this type of violence declined as well. In the south, however, in particular in Italy, homicide rates did not begin to fall until the end of the seventeenth century. Everywhere high homicide rates went hand in hand with widespread value being laid upon the traditional concept of honour which obliged a man to uphold his reputation by violence. In Europe, again less so in the south, notions of honour gradually changed, while homicide became more fully criminalised. The traditional concept of male honour held sway in many regions of the non-Western world, in 1800 no less than in 1500. From this we may hypothesise that violence was endemic in these regions throughout the early modern period. A final feature of non-Western interpersonal violence, in contrast to Europe, was its being affected by ethnic differences and slavery.