Social-economic change and its impact on violence: Homicide history of Qing China

Abstract

This paper constructs a quantitative history of the homicide rate in Qing China and investigates its social and economic drivers. Estimates based on historical archives indicate that this annual rate ranged between 0.35 and 1.47 per 100,000 inhabitants during the 1661–1898 period, a low level unmatched by Western Europe until the late 19th century. China's homicide rate rose steadily from 1661 to 1821 but declined gradually thereafter until the turn of the century. Although extreme, homicide represents a random sampling of the entire distribution of interpersonal violence; hence the homicide rate serves as a proxy for overall violence, and its rise implies a decline in personal security. We use national and cross-provincial panel data to show that population density, state capacity, local self-governance, interregional grain market integration, and grain price level (which captures crop failure and other survival distress) are all statistically significant drivers of the homicide rate in 18th- and 19th-century China.