Violence in the twentieth century: a closer look.

• Author: Payne, James L.
• Position: Reflections

Among the many social changes wrought by modern communications, perhaps none is so striking as our newfound ability to learn about and react to violence. In an earlier age, cities, countries, and even civilizations could be swallowed up in bloodshed without other parts of the world even knowing about it. Today, tragedies in the farthest corner of the globe are comprehensively reported and widely discussed.

The system of attention and concern begins with the news media, which instantly bring us details of worldwide strife, but it doesn't end there. The world now has a vast network of scholars, academic centers, and think tanks specializing in war, genocide, and repression. In addition, many government agencies and international bodies keep records on terrorism, refugees, and military forces. Information on violence is made available to everyone through an extensive publishing system that generates vast quantifies of books, reports, and Web pages. The Library of Congress catalog, for example, already contains fifty-one entries on the Rwanda genocide, an episode that occurred just six years ago in an obscure corner of the world. Another illustration of the intensity of modern record keeping is a recent book on the "troubles" of Northern Ireland that lists the names and circumstances of death of all 3,637 victims of the political infighting since 1970 (McKittrick et al. 1999).

Violence also figures in the policy agenda to an extent that would amaze our ancestors. The quest for world peace--seen in the nineteenth century as the utopian project of idealists and cranks--has become, with the advent of the United Nations and dozens of other international bodies, a major industry. Diplomats and politicians crisscross the globe attempting to settle conflicts. Another way that violence commands policy attention today is in reaction to past atrocities. Governments today have become deeply involved in reacting to episodes of violence that took place many decades ago. They ponder the possibility of punishing perpetrators, providing apologies, establishing reparations, and remembering victims. The reaction to the Nazi Holocaust set the pattern, which has now been followed for dozens of other atrocities, from repression in Chile and Argentina to the American relocation of persons of Japanese ancestry during World War II. (As an Armenian American whose maternal grandparents were slain by the Turks, I followed with interest the recent congressional effort to call Turkey to account for the genocide against Armenians some eighty-five years ago.)

Yet for all the data and concern--or perhaps one should say because of it--we are now singularly unable to put violence in perspective, unable to grasp the overall trend. It is a classic case of not being able to sec the forest for the trees. Fixated on the specific horrors about which we are thoroughly informed, if not overinformed, we have adopted a pessimistic, and to a certain extent hysterical, stance. The world, we say, is being consumed by an increasing and increasingly dangerous wave of violence. The facts, easily seen if we step back a little, point in the opposite direction, however. They reveal a broad and highly encouraging decline in world violence.

A Perverse Superlative

A useful way to explore the gap between fear and fact is to examine the often heard assertion that the twentieth century was "the most violent in history." Taken on the emotional level, as an expression of sentiment, the declaration cannot be faulted. It is the speaker's way of saying "there was a great deal of shocking and deplorable violence in the twentieth century." Of course there was; any sane, moral person would agree. The statement makes a factual claim, however, and as such it has worked its way into modern culture as if it described a historical truth. As a factual proposition, though, it is strikingly flawed.

In the first place, this claim assumes facts not in evidence. For some forty centuries of history spanning tens of thousands of tribes, kingdoms, and empires around the world, virtually all of the information about violence over all this time and in all these places has been lost or was never recorded. Therefore, the claim that the twentieth century was the "most violent in history" is impossible to document.

A second problem with the claim is that it reflects a rather alarming ignorance of the existing historical evidence. Although not strictly testable, it might have some plausibility if the available data indicated that violence was much lower in earlier times, that prior to the twentieth century mankind conducted itself in an enlightened, nonviolent way. There is...