| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 108.4

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 108.4 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Canada and the United States

David Peterson Del Mar. Beaten Down: A History of Interpersonal Violence in the West. Seattle: University of Washington Press. 2002. Pp. x, 300. $40.00.
Twenty-five years ago, a book like this would have appeared with social history's full complement of charts and graphs. David Peterson Del Mar would have used primitive punch cards but sophisticated statistical analysis to discern hidden patterns in the violence of the not-so-pacific Northwest. He would have selected model counties or towns in his chosen region and tried to show how economic development and demographic change shaped violent behavior in Oregon, Washington, and British Columbia. His readers in graduate seminars would have debated his variables, criticized his categories, faulted his numbers, and marveled at his facility with regression analysis. In the end, they would have said these statistics, fascinating as they are, tell us nothing about culture and power.	1
Culture and power are just what Peterson Del Mar is after. He wants to understand the connections between interpersonal violence—the violence of the home, the workplace, the streets, the classroom, the barroom—and the power structures of the social world. Throughout the book, he argues that "the context and meaning of a violent act cannot be understood without exploring the relations of power" (p. 174). Residents of Oregon, Washington, and British Columbia experienced power as children subjected to adults, women subjected to men, workers subjected to bosses, and Native Americans, African Americans, and immigrants from Europe and Asia subjected to white Americans and Canadians. Little surprise that violence ran most easily along channels of age, gender, class, ethnicity, and race and that those deemed most marginal were the most frequent victims of white men's violence. But the author reminds us that victims of violence were not all passive, and some found means to resist oppression.	. . .

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