| Our point is
that the past was neither peaceful and harmonious nor a time
when life was necessarily "nasty, brutish, and short."
The relatively low levels of violence in late nineteenth-century
American cities, however, should cause modern scholars to reassess
popular explanations for violence in late twentieth-century
society. The history of Athens shows as well just how rapidly
changing conditions can influence violence—for good or
ill. Similarly, some of our modern ideas about the social conditions
that reduce violence also need to be reevaluated in light of
recent historical scholarship. Medieval England, for example,
blended many of the crucial elements modern observers associate
with nonviolence. This was a rural society in which the population
was stable, family ties were strong, and religious belief framed
daily life and bound individuals to one another and to communal
institutions. Families and neighbors sustained each other during
hard times and shared the bounty during flush times. Likewise,
this society had scant diversity; nearly everyone had common
ethnic and racial roots, and the church's teaching instilled
a common ethical and moral order. These English farmers, as
a matter of course, venerated their elders and deferred to their
religious leaders. This was also a world with few deadly weapons;
medieval farmers, for instance, did not possess firearms. Yet,
for all of this rural harmony and for all of the powerful social,
religious, and communal bonds that linked these people to one
another, medieval England proved to be one of the most violent
societies in recorded history.(5) As striking as the prevalence
of violence in this world was the casualness of violence. One
fourteenth-century English farmer, for instance, spied a neighbor
walking across his field. He set his dog to chase the trespasser
away. An hour later, the wayward wanderer returned and stabbed
his neighbor through the eye. Similarly, a fourteenth-century
candlestick maker refused to hand over his product until a customer
showed him the money; enraged that the vendor questioned his
word, the purchaser "struck him in the front part of the
head so that his brains flowed forth and he died forthwith."
(6) Reflecting the same quick and casual resort to violence,
a matron "of good name" suspected that her husband
had been unfaithful. So, she identified the suspected adulteress
to her kinsmen, who then seized the woman, held her to the ground,
and sliced off her nose. (7) Clearly, violence was not necessarily
considered deviant in this world; although modern social psychologists
often posit that poorly socialized individuals are particularly
prone to violent behavior, in medieval Europe the opposite was
more often true; medieval men and women often viewed violent
behavior as appropriate and as a crucial source of social stability.
Research on both city and countryside in the past, therefore,
challenges common beliefs about violence. The mean streets
of modern New York, for example, are a great deal safer than
were the pastoral fields of thirteenth-century York. Similarly,
for nearly all of the last seven hundred years, the countryside
has been far deadlier than the city, and for most of the twentieth
century New York was safer than the overall nation. (8) Likewise,
the scenic hills of nineteenth-century Corsica and the picturesque
mountains of Greece were more violent than the crowded streets
of London, Paris, or Berlin—by factors of at least twenty.
(9) Such evidence suggests, again, that generalizations about
the relationship between violence and density or heterogeneity
or poverty or religious intensity or family life need to be
questioned. (10)
Although historical research challenges timeless explanations,
historical perspectives on violence do not provide easy "lessons."
Instead, this scholarship points to the complexity of the
wellsprings of violent behavior. Understanding why nineteenth-century
Japan had extraordinary low levels of most kinds of violent
behavior but extraordinarily high levels of infanticide is
revealing about the social and cultural roots of aggression,
but it does not suggest simple policy solutions. Historical
research especially calls into question universalist models.
Even important work on the biochemical roots of aggression
needs to consider the historical variability of violent behavior.
Whereas levels of testosterone or neurotransmitters may help
to explain why some individuals are more prone to aggressive
behavior than others, such research does not explain why some
eras have had higher rates of violence than others or why
violent tendencies may wax and wane over time among the same
group of people—such as the young men of Athens, discussed
earlier. Biochemical research is unlikely to explain why the
homicide rate in early twentieth-century Memphis, for example,
was fourteen times higher than that of Philadelphia, twenty-five
times higher than that of Berlin, and fifty-nine times higher
than the homicide rate of London or why South Carolina had
more homicides in 1878 than the combined totals of Maine,
New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut,
Michigan, and Minnesota. (11)
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