Homicide in Early Modern England 1549-1800 : The Need for a Quantitative Synthesis

Long-Term Historical Trends in Violent Crime

“…But there is too little evidence to address this question even tentatively. Recently, however, Roth (2001) offered a fascinating observation on trends between 1550 and 1800. Comparing time series for England, Scandinavia, and France, he found evidence of a similar trend of sharply increasing homicide rates between the 1580s and the 1610s, followed by a continuous drop thereafter.…”

“…Furthermore, Roth (2001) has recently presented data on European-American adult homicides in Connecticut, Massachusetts, Maine, and New Hampshire from 1630 to 1800. His work is particularly notable because it uses sophisticated capture-recapture methods in order more accurately to estimate homicide rates for European colonists.…”

“…First, we can improve our understanding of the accuracy and comparability of historical estimates of homicide rates. Monkkonen (2001) and Roth (2001) have proposed promising strategies, and it remains to be seen how far capture-recapture methods, better population estimates, or more broadly based information on the effects of improved medical technology can improve estimates of homicide rates. Second, as our knowledge of overall levels of lethal violence increases, it may become more important to examine developments in subtypes such as family homicide, infanticide, or robberyrelated killings.…”

“…Thus, at least for those captivated by transhistorical numbers, there remains little doubt about the empirical cogency of the broad picture Gurr painted. Supported by a growing flow of empirical findings, therefore, many have now started to ask new and more detailed questions (see, e.g., Karonen 2001;Monkkonen 2001;Roth 2001;Eisner 2002b). How can the quality of the data be ascertained?…”

What causes Large-Scale Variation in Homicide Rates?

“…When analysing macro-level variation in homicide, most comparative historians of crime are less interested in comparisons between societies at a given point in time than in explanations of the long alternations between ups and downs in homicide rates over time within one society. For example, their research might typically entail the search for explanations of why levels of homicide in England dropped massively from the early decades of the 17 th century until the mid-18th century (Roth, 2001), or why homicide tended to increase in most Western societies between the late 1950s and the early 1980s (Eisner, 2008;Spierenburg, 2008).…”