Elias maintained that Caxton's comment that ‘things that were permitted are now forbidden’ could stand as the ‘motto’ for the civilizing process that was to come (see Chapter 5, p. 201). The European path of social and development shaped diverse and interrelated spheres of social interaction including the standards that governed bodily functions, changes in table manners and (of particular importance for the present discussion) shifts in emotional responses to cruelty and violence. Elias was less consistent on the subject of whether things that were once permitted in the relations between states are now forbidden. His reflections of world politics raised, but did not answer, important questions about whether, or how far, the modern global system is different from its predecessors. One of the aims of this chapter is to consider how the process-sociological analysis of violence and civilization contributes to a comparative analysis of the Western states-systems that attempts to answer the question of how far distinctive understandings of what is permissible and forbidden have developed in contemporary international society.