Human Sacrifice - Peter Leeson

The theory developed in Section 2 assumes that government doesn’t exist to protect
communities’property rights. If it did, there would be no reason to destroy wealth, and thus
no reason for human sacri…ce, since communities could enjoy property protection vis-à-vis
one another without this costly practice. My theory therefore delivers one …nal testable
prediction— one undiscussed in Section 2: Kond communities should have ceased to sacri…ce
humans when government became available to them to protect their property rights.
The initial attempts of the British to “civilize”the Konds took two forms: threatening the
Konds with violent punishments if they refused to abandon human sacri…ce, and attempting
to reason with the Konds by “educating”them about the barbarity of the practice and the
scienti…c baselessness of their belief in the necessity of satisfying an earth goddess with the
blood of purchased persons to ensure prosperity and prevent calamity.
Neither strategy proved e¤ective. The British made periodic forays into Kond country
during the immolation season and, when Kond communities refused to deliver up the meriahs
they were bent on sacri…cing, used violence against the Konds. But the communities kept
immolating. Attempting to reason with the Konds proved scarcely more helpful. To appease
their British visitors, some Konds surrendered a portion of the meriahs they intended to
sacri…ce. But once the British returned to the plains, they immolated the ones they held
back.
Frustrated with their failure to stop Kond sacri…ce, the British eventually tried another
tack. Captain Macpherson, one of the o¢ cers in charge of the British agency for the suppression
of human sacri…ce in the hill tracts of Orissa, thought that o¤ering a trade to the
Konds might prove more e¤ective. What, he asked, was the greatest unmet need of the
Konds? What could the British o¤er them that they valued so highly they might be willing
to give up human sacri…ce in return?
Inter-community property protection. As Macpherson put it: “Now it appears distinctly
that the great social defect for these clusters of tribes . . . is the want of a supreme controlling
authority,–of a power able to arbitrate betwixt di¤erent tribes, and betwixt tribes and the
zemindaries; and this want, I think, we may, by direct and indirect means, to a certain
extent, supply”(C.R. 1847: 18). “The Khonds,”it occurred to him, “most anxiously desire
of us justice— not betwixt man and man, which their own institutions can a¤ord, but betwixt
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