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ousness of the present one. In his pioneering work,Twentieth Century Book of the Dead, Scottish sociologistGil Elliot estimated that more than 110, 000, 000people were killed by their fellow human beingsbetween 1900 and 1972. "To set such a figure againstthe scale of violence in previous times, " he stated,"involves the difficulties of comparing like periods andallowing for population increase. However, everyattempt to do so shows the twentieth century to beincomparably the more violent period. "4 Such findingsled Elliot to conclude that "the scale of man-made deathis the central moral as well as material fact of ourtime. "'Efforts to compare the magnitude of "man-madedeath" in the twentieth century with that in priorcenturies confront serious methodological obstacles.Among them is the fact that the number of people — particularlycivilians — killed in wars, massacres, and otherforms of collective violence have seldom been recordedwith precision. Also, many deaths caused by warfareresult from delayed or indirect effects of the conflict,such as destruction of crops, economic collapse, anddisruption of medical care. And, as acknowledged byElliot in the preceding paragraph, evaluation of theassertion that the twentieth century is the most violentrequires that population trends be taken into consideration.This, in turn, requires not only estimates ofcasualties of violence but also estimates of the populationfor the place and time in which the violenceoccurred. Thus, comparisons of the scale of twentiethcentury violence with violence in previous centuriesare necessarily imprecise. The reader should bear'thiscaveat in mind as the followirig studies are reviewed.Sociologist Pitirim Sorokin was one of the firstmodern scholars to trace quantitative trends in collectiveviolence over the centuries. 'After a lengthy discussionof the numerous methodological difficulties entailedin such a study, he used historical materials to estimatethe casualties, that is, both deaths and injuries, ofEuropean wars from the eleventh century through 1925.He also used population estimates to calculate thenumber of war casualties per 1, 000 in the populationfor each century in each of the ten European nationsunder study. He found that the estimated war casualtiesper 1, 000 population during the first twenty-five yearsof the twentieth century, fifty-four casualties, wereconsiderably higher than in any other entire century.For example, the war casualties per 1, 000 of 'thepopulation for the twelfth, eighteenth, and nineteenthcenturies ' were two, thirty-three, and fifteen respectively.On the basis of such trends, Sorokin concluded that"the curse or privilege to be the most devastatingor most bloody war century belongs to the twentieth;in one quarter century it imposed upon the populationsa 'blood tribute' far greater than that imposedby any of the whole centuries combined. " [emphasisin original]' In a later book, in which he extended thescope of his comparative study farther back andforward in time, he confirmed his earlier results,finding the twentieth century to be "the bloodiest andmost belligerent of all the twenty-fivecenturies underconsideration."'The recent work of William Eckhardt supportsSorokin's conclusions. Eckhardt has continued theeffort to quantify the human costs of collective violence." In a recent study, he compared the number ofwars and the number of war-related deaths from 3000B. C. "through the first half of the twentieth century.For estimates of the global population, the number ofwars, and the number of people killed in wars duringeach century, he reviewed a wide range of sources,including world population histories and militaryhistories. While acknowledging the limitations of suchdata, particularly in earlier centuries, Eckhardt arguesthat rough estimates are nonetheless possible. Hisfindings for recent centuries are summarized in table1.It is evident that the number of people killed inwars, per each 1, 000 of the population, has increasedsteadily over the past centuries, culminating in anunprecedented number during the first half of thetwentieth.Summarizing his research, Eckhardt states that"war-related deaths have been increasing over the pastfifty centuries. When death estimates were divided bypopulation estimates, this measure was significantlycorrelated with centuries, so that population growthalone could not explain the increase in war deaths overthese fifty centuries. In other words, war-relateddeaths were increasing significantly faster thanpopulation growth. " [emphasis added)'4 In an earlierstudy, Eckhardt eliminated the death tolls of WorldWars I and II from the estimate of war-deaths duringthe twentieth century and still found that the rate ofwar-deaths has been increasing faster than the rate ofpopulation growth."These studies, and others," focused their quantitativehistorical comparisons on warfare, but they do notconsider genocide as another, ostensibly different, formof governmental violence. Unfortunately, the field ofgenocide studies has not yet produced its counterpartto Sorokin or Eckhardt. Indeed, as is discussed below,genocide scholars are still engaged in debate over thevery definition of "genocide. " Nonetheless, it isnoteworthy that some researchers have suggested that,during the twentieth century at least, the death toll fromwarfare, as high as it has been, may be significantlylower than the death toll from genocide and genocidalkilling. Political scientist R. J. Rummel, for example,11SGENOCIDE