This book has explored the phenomenon of extremely violent societies in which, in simple terms, the occurrence and the thrust of physical violence depend on a broad and diverse range of support. This participatory character is based on a variety of motives and agendas of people from multiple backgrounds. This variety causes the violence to spread in different directions, against different groups, in varying intensities and forms. Written by a historian, my account serves to establish historical patterns, not a watertight model. The extremely violent societies approach does not lend itself to monocausal or all-encompassing explanations or miracle remedies. This chapter presents some core findings, based on common or widespread occurrences across decades and continents, yet without claiming that they account for all mass violence in history. And of course, if one uses the extremely violent societies approach, other points of emphasis than those applied here are quite possible.

Extremely violent societies are societies in a temporary state of crisis. Rather than searching for simple causal relationships – either a crisis caused by mass violence, or violence caused by crisis – I suggest that the process character of both social crisis and mass violence should be acknowledged. These processes mutually influence each other. Such a crisis – observed by many genocide scholars but described in rather general terms – is characterized by conflicts between elites and processes of accumulation of capital and power.