This chapter focuses on homicide and serious interpersonal violence in modern Europe, placing its character and incidence within a global context.
The word interpersonal serves to distinguish my subject from other types of violence such as warfare or ethnic conflict, which are dealt with in different sections of this volume.
For a large part, this chapter continues the focus on male-on-male violence present in my contribution to volume III. However, since the section as a whole deals with women, mainly with reference to sexual violence and infanticide, I will occasionally step outside the bounds of masculinity to pay attention to female perpetrators and victims, as in the crime passionnel for example. More is known about the global context as we approach the present. Yet, much research remains to be done for the nonWestern world and, to the extent that it has been done, overlap with the chapters on colonial violence should be avoided. Thus, I will primarily discuss quantitative and qualitative changes in European homicide, touching on non-Western regions whenever this is appropriate from a comparative perspective.The conceptual pair of marginalisation and resurgence forms a guideline for my discussion. These contrasting themes can be understood in a double sense. In European history they constituted two phases following upon each other. After 1800, as homicide had ceased to be a day-to-day affair in urban and rural communities, the remaining acts of murder assumed the character of sinister or sensational exceptions. However, from about 1970 on, homicide was on the rise again, for reasons over which criminologists disagree. On the other hand, this recent rise was relatively modest. As a consequence, the conceptual pair of marginalisation and resurgence also makes sense synchro- nically. Viewed that way, it refers to the contrast between Europe, where lethal violence still is largely confined to a few unpacified sectors of society, and the non-Western or postcolonial world, in many parts of which lethal interpersonal violence is endemic.