We present new evidence for elite violence using regicide, the killing of kings, and investigate the role of the state in European violence between the 6th and 19th centuries. First, regicide is critically assessed as a proxy for interpersonal elite violence. Second, we propose ‘territorial state capacity’ as a measure of states being able to keep or even expand their territories. We find a negative correlation between the changes in territorial state capacity and the changes in elite violence. This could be interpreted in two ways, either that growing territorial state capacity enabled human society to reduce violence, or that a higher regicide rate resulted in lower territorial state capacity. Another possibility would be a bidirectional mechanism that resulted in a co-evolution of the two variables.

我们提供了使用弑君、杀害国王的精英暴力的新证据，并调查了国家在 6 世纪和 19 世纪之间的欧洲暴力中的作用。首先，弑君被批判地评估为人际精英暴力的代表。其次，我们建议将“领土国家能力”作为衡量国家保持甚至扩大领土能力的指标。我们发现领土国家能力的变化与精英暴力的变化之间存在负相关。这可以从两个方面来解释，要么不断增长的领土国家能力使人类社会能够减少暴力，要么更高的弑君率导致领土国家能力降低。另一种可能性是导致两个变量共同演化的双向机制。