Toward a Global History of Homicide and Organized Murder

Homicide in Eighteenth-Century Scotland: Numbers and Theories

“…The level rose to 16% in the seventeenth century, reaching 30% in the eighteenth and over 40% in the nineteenth century. 81 In the case of Scotland the data show only weak signs of a shift from stranger to intimate or family homicides. In the period 1700-49 34.5% of killings were of strangers, while in 1750-99 it was 34.3%.…”

“…Spierenburg estimates that for western Europe 'female perpetrators-of homicide, assault and robbery combined-lay between 5 and 12 per cent', thus, as far as he is concerned, women's participation in these areas of crime would appear to be impervious to change. 70 Weiner goes further stating that 'every study made has found that throughout the centuries (and, indeed, down to the present) men have consistently made up the great majority of those prosecuted for non-infanticidal homicide . .…”

“…72 Spierenburg argues that the 'better off' were gradually pacified and it was the 'less well off' that continued to subscribe to 'traditional notions of honour and stood ready to attack those who insulted or hindered them'. 73 However, these views are open to question. Hammer's study of fourteenth-century Oxford found that 'virtually all victims and assailants .…”

“…Indeed, Spierenburg has gone as far as to state that '[n]ext to the decline in overall [homicide] rates, this is the second most important long-term trend in homicide.' 77 He argues that throughout the period 1651-1750 in Amsterdam 'impulsive violence was overwhelmingly dominant' with 'three-fifths of killings' resulting from 'conflicts arising in taverns or streets without any discernible previous history'. The following half century saw this type of homicide decline to between one third and a half, and the killing of strangers gave way to the killing of intimates.…”

Homogenizing nationalists, budding fascists, and truculent exceptionalists: the end of world order in the Indo-Pacific

“…However, statistical evidence indicating disproportionate enforcement of Chinese population control policies on Uyghur women suggests minimally a campaign to destroy the Uyghur people ‘in part,’ which would qualify as genocide under the Genocide Convention (Smith Finley 2020 ; Associated Press 2020 ) assuming a juridical assessment that ‘a substantial part’ of the Uyghur people had been targeted for destruction (Mettraux 2019 , p. 52). Whether a case that technically qualifies as genocide under the Convention is sociologically the same thing as genocide is a remarkably convoluted question as many studies of genocide define the concept in terms of mass killing/murder (e.g., Levene 2000 , p. 314; Lie 2004 , p. 227; Sémelin 2007 ; Spierenburg 2014 ). The question is further muddied by the political tendency to use the genocide label ‘as a sword raised against one’s deadly enemy’ (Sémelin 2007 , p. 313).…”