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Killing Kings - Elite Violence in Evolutionary Perspective: Europe, 600-1800
| One of the main hypotheses deriving from Elias’s theory of the civilizing process is that the process of state building resulted in a pacification of the elites. However, very little is currently known about long-term trends in elite homicide. To fill this gap, the paper will present findings from a study that collected data on the occurrence of regicide in 35 political entities across Europe between 600 and 1800 AD. The search resulted in 167 cases of certain or suspected killing of a monarch outside the battlefield. Information was coded on a variety of contextual variables such as duration of the reign, background of the killers, situational ground and modus operandi. The presentation will focus on presenting descriptive data regarding long-term trends in the frequency of regicide and discuss their implications for theorizing the relationship between state-building and elite violence.
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