A history of force: exploring the worldwide movement against habits of coercion, bloodshed, and mayhem.

• Author: Shaffer, Butler
• Position: Book Review

A History of Force: Exploring the Worldwide Movement Against Habits of Coercion, Bloodshed, and Mayhem

By James L. Payne Sandpoint, Id.: Lytton Publishing, 2004. Pp. vii, 296. $23.95 paperback.

We have just emerged from a century that produced some 200 million deaths from wars and genocidal practices. The United States, Israel, India, Pakistan, and various Arab states seem committed at present to what historian Charles Beard called a state of "perpetual war for perpetual peace." Various "terrorist" groups are taking their disputes to the streets, attacking and killing scores of innocent people. America now leads the industrialized nations in the percentage of its citizens in prison, and the federal government expands its powers to hold suspected "terrorist" supporters, without trials, for extended periods of time. Taxation continues to metastasize itself throughout the world.

In the face of such events, it may be difficult to accept the thesis that force and violence are on the decline. Such, however, is the proposition put forth by political scientist James Payne, whose stated purpose is to undertake what has been largely ignored heretofore by academia: a history of force.

The author carefully defines force as "deliberate physical action against the persons or possessions of another" (p. 20, emphasis in original), thus distinguishing these acts of violence--a term he treats synonymously with force--from such voluntary behavior as marketplace transactions or offensive speech (p. 21).

He suggests that although deadly and vicious violence still prevails in human society, our impressions about the extent of such behavior derive from an overemphasis of the problem by the media, government agencies, and other sources. A greater amount of information about present levels of violence and a lesser awareness of the extent of violence practiced in the past have combined to distort our understanding of the subject (pp. 12-16).

Payne acknowledges that the use of force has fluctuated historically, but he insists that the overall trend is toward a diminution in coercive behavior, whether practiced by institutions or by individuals. "We live in a much more peaceful world than has ever existed," he informs us, and "the evidence for a decline in the use of force is massive" (p. 7). He presents many statistical comparisons to show that current war and genocide deaths throughout the world are a small fraction of what they were even in the early twentieth...