Literacy and the civilization of violence in 19th-century France

This research focuses on the impact of literacy on major crimes of violence, homicide, and suicide in France, between 1852 and 1914. A time-series analysis shows that declining rates of serious crimes of violence and passion-inspired homicide were associated with increasing literacy. On the other side, literacy and rates of cold-blooded murder were unrelated, and literacy was a positive predictor of suicide. In view of this, and the fact that the negative relationship between homicide and suicide depends on it, literacy, or broader cultural change, such as urbanity, or the education system itself may have been the causal agent in transforming expressions of passion from an explosion of violence against others to an implosion of violence against the self. Overall, literacy cannot be seen to have repressed violence per se. In fact between 1852 and 1914, the increase in rates of suicide in France was almost eight times greater than the decline in homicide, suggesting that literacy transformed rather than depressed death by violence.An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 50th annual meetings of the American Society of Criminology in San Francisco, November 1991.