ABSTRACT
This chapter explains the historical context of violent behaviour in society without considering that most extreme example of organized violence, warfare. If social history is to a large extent concerned with the development of of government and law, political history is very much concerned with war. There is an accepted difference between violence emitted between individuals and small groups, such as gang fights, and wars, and this difference is as much to do with the scale and, certainly, in modern times, the all-pervasiveness of it, as it is to with national economic or ideological issues. As an example of the cause of human suffering, death and injury, warfare throughout history must be prime. Individual violence is determined by the state of war. Indeed, it may be argued that as warfare has developed through history, the technology of armaments has decreased the level of individual violence.
