Why Europe has never been united (not even in the afterworld): The fall and rise of cremation in cities (1876–1939)

ABSTRACT

An intriguing paradox emerges in the history of disposal of the dead in Europe: the countries (Italy, Germany, England, and Scotland) where, in the last quarter of the 19th century, cremation was introduced first, were the last ones to see the diffusion of cremation as a mass phenomenon. The contrary was true where—for instance, in Switzerland and in Denmark—the start of cremation was initially delayed. Here the growth was very fast. To explain this puzzling enigma, I propose to abandon the usual nation-level approach and take cities as appropriate units of analysis. So, a database on presence or absence of crematoria and on trends in “annual cremation by death ratios” in the European cities with more than 5,000 inhabitants before 1939 was completed for an analysis of patterns of the early emergence of cremation and change of cremation rate at a local level.

Acknowledgments

I am indebted to G. Ballarino, J. Citrin, B. Di Palma, P. Finzi, C. Junquiera, P. Jupp, T. Laqueur, M. Marzano, A. Rathaus, M. Rotar, C. Vargas, C. Vezzoni, the staff and librarians of the Department of Political and Social Sciences at Unibo, the staff of the IGS at the University of California at Berkeley, the staff of the A. Fabretti Foundation, Turin, the staff of the Socrem Milan, and the anonymous reviewers.