Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Evolution and Human Behavior journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/ens Reputation as a common source of cooperation and violent conflict: The case of the noble feud in early modern Germany Hillay Zmora ⁎ Ben-Gurion University, Be'er-Sheva 8410501, Israel ARTICLE INFO Keywords: Feuding Violence Reputation Honor Cooperation Costly signaling ABSTRACT Feuding was a near-universal phenomenon, and a classic topic of anthropology and sociology. This article fo- cuses on feuding among nobles in early modern Germany. The German noble feud assumed characteristics that differentiated it from vendetta. It developed into a distinct institution in terms of its legal status, methods and social conditions. It presents a puzzle: most feuds punctuated ongoing relationships between people who were closely related and socially and economically interdependent. Nobles tended to feud against the very people from whose goodwill they had much to gain and from whose enmity much to lose. Examining it from an evo- lutionary perspective suggests an answer to a problem that traditional historical approaches have not convin- cingly explained. The article argues that the same dense web of ties that facilitated cooperation between nobles generated violent conflicts between them. Reputation played a crucial role in this environment. Feuds are best seen as mechanisms of costly signaling one's underlying qualities and commitment to aristocratic values. 1. Introduction This article examines feuds conducted by nobles in late medieval and early modern Germany. For reasons touched on below, the noble feud has come to occupy an important place in German historical scholarship since the early twentieth century. While a variety of ex- planations - social, political, economic - has been put forward, the noble feud has never been interpreted in the light of evolutionary theory. I will argue that costly signaling theory provides a robust framework for examining the feuding behavior of the nobles; and that this approach explains the puzzling observation that the repeated interaction between nobles, rather than enhancing cooperation, frequently resulted in vio- lent conflict. A nearly universal social phenomenon, feuding is a standard topic in anthropology and sociology. An eminent sociologist has pointed out that “the feud is a textbook example of convergent evolution where different cultures and societies in which it is found have just-so stories which are unique in some respects to themselves but at the same time point to similar selective pressures at work. The feud ‘taps a primitive reservoir’ of kin-based solidarity and masculine aggression” (Runciman, 2009: 84–85). It has further been observed that feuds presuppose spe- cific conditions. One of the most typical of these conditions is the ab- sence of a central authority capable of enforcing a monopoly of the means of coercion (Black-Michaud, 1975; Gluckman, 1955; Miller, 1990). It is in this regard important to note that the feuds under con- sideration here were not vendettas or blood-feuds in the traditional sense. Late medieval and early modern Germany, for all its political fragmentation and the weakness of imperial government, was not a stateless society. The regional princes were powerful rulers, and they were busy consolidating their statelets. German society had multiple political centers which mattered a great deal. Attempts were con- tinually made to curb feuding, at both the imperial and the regional level. Indeed, there was generally a movement to criminalize the feud (Andermann, 1991; Reinle, 2003). It culminated in the unconditional ban on feuding that was proclaimed in the landmark Imperial Diet of 1495. Until then (and also for some time thereafter), however, these attempts were only partially successful. Legislation in the medieval period repeatedly made concessions to the custom of feuding, so that it was restricted and regulated, not abrogated. The net result was a for- malization and “juridification” of the feud. The integration of the feud into the legal system was indeed a historically peculiar feature of the late medieval Empire (Reinle, 2013; Reinle, 2014). The German feuds were expected to conform to specific rules. The first, which was based on a medieval law from 1235, required that hostilities be preceded by an attempt to settle differences peacefully. If this preliminary attempt failed, a formal “challenge” was to be deliv- ered well before opening hostilities. The methods of feuding, too, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2020.02.006 Received 12 February 2019; Received in revised form 24 January 2020; Accepted 26 February 2020 ⁎ Corresponding author at: Department of History, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, Ben-Gurion University, Be'er-Sheva 8410501, Israel. E-mail address: hzmora@bgu.ac.il. Evolution and Human Behavior 41 (2020) 218–225 1090-5138/ © 2020 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. T