Civilisation of Violence? A Critical Reanalysis of the Premodern Sources

自中世纪以来，暴力急剧减少的观点已经成为国际历史学家公认的说法，通常用诺伯特·埃利亚斯（Norbert Elias）提出的文明进程理论来解释。瑞士犯罪学家曼纽尔·艾斯纳（Manuel Eisner）对数十项独立的地区研究进行了二次分析，得出了暴力减少的结论。主要的衡量工具是凶杀率，即某一年中每100 000名居民中暴力死亡的人数。虽然许多学者，尤其是德国学者，对这种方法持怀疑态度，但他们的批评似乎被边缘化了。如果有讨论的话，它更多地集中在对生成的数字的理论解释上，而不是对数字本身的验证。该项目将对用于绘制历史暴力事件图表的经验基础进行关键的基于来源的修订。Eisner的数据将被评估并进入一个分析方案，以便修改其可靠性。它应该能够（至少部分地）合理肯定地证明，在过去的几个世纪里，暴力行为一直在长期下降。未来在历史和其他社会科学领域的辩论将能够将自己置于与这一新基线的关系中。

The idea that violence has dramatically declined since medieval times has become a well established narrative among international historians, often interpreted in terms of theory of the civilising process developed by Norbert Elias. This decline of violence thesis is empirically based upon the graphs produced by Swiss criminologist Manuel Eisner who undertook a secondary analysis of dozens of independent regional studies. The main measurement instrument is the homicide rate, the number of violent deaths in a given year per 100.000 inhabitants. While many scholars, especially German ones, have been sceptical of this methodology, their criticisms seems to be marginalized. If there was a discussion, it has focused more on the theoretical interpretation of generated numbers than on the verification of the numbers themselves. This project will provide a critical source-based revision of the empirical basis used to graph incidents of historical violence. Eisner's data will be assessed and entered into a scheme of analysis, so that its reliability can be revised. It should be able to (at least partially) proof the claim, with reasonable certainty, that there has been a long-term decline of violence over the course of centuries. Future debates in history and other social sciences will be able to situate themselves in relation to this new baseline.