AHC: Dueling survives to Present Day
- Thread starter Tsao
- Start date
The Civil War helped kill dueling in the South. After all the deaths in the war, nobody wanted to kill someone over insulting someone's hat.
A shorter Civil War might not burn out the dueling culture so thoroughly, while dueling might survive in a successful Confederacy due to the aristocratic culture and die out faster in the Union due to its association with the South.
On a macro-level, one could make it so retaliating for an attack on one's reputation could be as justified as retaliating for an attack on one person--beating up someone who insulted you being self-defense.
However, that wouldn't cover a formal duel where people agree to meet later and shoot at each other.
Perhaps "mutual consent" is a defense against homicide? Someone could turn a challenge to a duel down, in theory.
A shorter Civil War might not burn out the dueling culture so thoroughly, while dueling might survive in a successful Confederacy due to the aristocratic culture and die out faster in the Union due to its association with the South.
On a macro-level, one could make it so retaliating for an attack on one's reputation could be as justified as retaliating for an attack on one person--beating up someone who insulted you being self-defense.
However, that wouldn't cover a formal duel where people agree to meet later and shoot at each other.
Perhaps "mutual consent" is a defense against homicide? Someone could turn a challenge to a duel down, in theory.
Here goes nothing:
Dueling in the form we know it as persists as OTL until around the end of the 19th century, when it starts to fall out of favor due to the high mortality rate of improved pistols. However, the culture of gentlemanly honor that underpins the duel doesn't disappear and in fact enhances itself during the Victorian Era. The Victorian equivalent of the Code Duello, in response to the concerns which led to the art's decline earlier, takes on a new emphasis: that one's honor is diminished if his opponent is slain. Thus, duels with swords, to first blood rather than death, become more common. Throughout the 20th century fencing becomes more popular as a parallel to the art of the duel, leading to more exposure to the "old way" of settling scores.
That's all I've got, getting it to penetrate the common levels of society in the mid-20th century is going to be one hell of a stretch.
Dueling in the form we know it as persists as OTL until around the end of the 19th century, when it starts to fall out of favor due to the high mortality rate of improved pistols. However, the culture of gentlemanly honor that underpins the duel doesn't disappear and in fact enhances itself during the Victorian Era. The Victorian equivalent of the Code Duello, in response to the concerns which led to the art's decline earlier, takes on a new emphasis: that one's honor is diminished if his opponent is slain. Thus, duels with swords, to first blood rather than death, become more common. Throughout the 20th century fencing becomes more popular as a parallel to the art of the duel, leading to more exposure to the "old way" of settling scores.
That's all I've got, getting it to penetrate the common levels of society in the mid-20th century is going to be one hell of a stretch.
Flocculencio
Donor
The major issue here is that duels are fine so long as you don't actually need to engage in manual work. Note that ceremonial duelling held on the longest in university settings in Germany simply because you can still study with a flesh wound. While a man from the upper or even the middle classes can afford to sustain a possibly physically incapacitating injury, this is not true for the working classes. Even a temporary inability to perform physical labour due to a duel injury would put a working class man in jeopardy.
Star Warrior
Banned
Have a resurgence in 'joke' dueling for some weird or 'insignificant' insult to one's honor with nerf guns or paintball. That makes it future history though.
Hmmm. I do find the idea of fencing duels as a good idea.
Hmmm. I do find the idea of fencing duels as a good idea.
That was what i was thinking. SCA fencing is done with dummy swords on an honor system-if you feel a hit, you say so and respond accordingly-, which seems to cut down on the expense of electronic response systems and doesn't require physical injury beyond maybe a light bruise or two.. That seems like a plausible solution here.
Star Warrior
Banned
So we can move LARPing up to 1914 then. Have H.G. Wells come up with the idea 'for all the fun of dueling without the death involved' 
Star Warrior
Banned
yeah; hence why I then though of moving that to before or during 1914 (H.G. Wells does it basically; he made a bunch of tabletop wargames so it is not too out for him/)
Certainly! This would almost require magic, after all, and wizards' duels are a staple of fantasy literature.
More seriously, to make dueling continue to be accepted in Western society, we would need to make broader Western society resemble that of the countries where dueling held on the longest. This would be South America, specifically countries like Uruguay (which only outlawed it in 1992) and Peru (where it has not been outlawed and is still even semi-accepted, though AFAIK none have been publically waged in some time).
It's been supposed (ex. here) that the vast majority of duels waged in South America were between disputing politicians of opposing parties or between politicians and press figures. By fighting a duel, a political figure generally hoped to both build a name for themselves and to force the other party to accept them as honorable & worthy of respect; if you fought a duel, you were above the rabble and above suspicion, and your authority was thus legitimized.
I think that if you were to create such an environment in either the US or UK - where dueling was the most frowned upon, and thus where a cultural reversal would have the most effect - for an extended period of time you could keep dueling accepted until modern times. It would seem easier to do this in the US, because as mentioned dueling was generally accepted in the South pre-ACW. No civil war or a trivial one (Union wins the first few battles and no Emancipation Proclamation is considered) would probably keep the Southern social systems in place a while longer.
I'm wondering, though, if a much longer civil war and harsher peace might actually be the way to go here; if the South is ruled more dictatorially from Washington, and overt resistance like the KKK more violently stamped out, former Confederates might cling to dueling as a means of perpetuating a separate identity, as a means of righting perceived injustices outside of a courtroom (which would be of questionable legitimacy), and as a way of striking back against the occupying Yankees. I would think that in this scenario you'd have more people that were actively interested in maintaining the institution of dueling in the face of opposition, and thus better chances of dueling surviving in significant parts of the West until the modern day.
Part of the problem with dueling after a certain point is that it takes two to tangle. If one injured party calls for a duel, and another rejects it as a ridiculously old fashioned custom, only the former being socially supported is going to see that mean anything.
And dueling being associated with the diehard resisters is going to see it be rejected by those who want to move on already.
And dueling being associated with the diehard resisters is going to see it be rejected by those who want to move on already.
Flocculencio
Donor
It's actually the same reason why sports like rugby union and american football were somewhat more blue blooded and associated with posh schools and universities before the early 20th century- working class sports tended to be soccer and baseball (in the UK and US) respectively. Workers can't afford bone crunching injuries.