It's just not historically true that "northern European culture has been relatively free of the thar mentality." We weren't magically spared these traits. In fact few hundred years ago duels were the mainstay of the official justice system in England. These duels were, literally, trials. I wish I knew more about how we got away from all that.
I think that prosperity through the pursuit of opportunity leads to such changes.
The author derides the continent of Africa, yet ignores enormous economic and public health improvement among most countries there in the last 30 years. Attitudes and “honor” culture have changed as well; nowadays commerce and transactions are the norm in cities, rather than violence based.
The article was originally written 16 years ago and last updated 6 years ago. How much of the improvement in the last 30 years has been over that time? How much of the improvement in the last 30 years has filtered its way into the popular perception of Africa? Or into how Africa looks from a statistical perspective? I am not surprised that the article gives a picture of Africa that is 20-30 years out of date.
At that time, various countries in Africa were struggling and at a nadir: Sierra Leone, Guinea, Burundi; others flourished: Kenya, Ghana, Tanzania, Zambia. Many others didn’t change materially: Egypt, Tunisia, South Africa.
It is as meaningful to lump all African countries together as it is to group all countries in Asia. There are more commonalities between North Africa and the Middle East than similarities with southern and central Africa.
Given the geographic overlap, protestantism should spring to mind easily as a candidate (even if it can only be a cause if its effect take centuries to have meaningful impact). The differentiation between shame and guilt cultures used in the article resonates quite a bit with the perceived differences between catholic and protestant societies.
Some old traditions like this are so bizarre, I can't even imagine why they were created in the first place. Dowry is also like this -- I always forget which side pays which, because the idea of someone paying for a marriage is so strange.
The family of the bride has to pay dowry, because she becomes part of the man's family after marriage and they have to feed her. Or so goes the logic, I guess. (Or maybe because women are so much less worth then men that you have to add a dowry to make the marriage a fair trade.)
However, many Nordic and Germanic tribes had working alternatives (mainly banishment or exile and compensation) that greatly limited the violence.
Compensation could be fairly sophisticated. "man value" was the total monetary value of a man. Murderers family had to compensate 100% of the man value for the family of the victim. For the impairment the compensation sums were fractions of the man value.
I can suggest Francis Fukuyama's "Origins of Political Order" for a decent survey of that. Couple it with Steven Pinker's "Better Angels of Our Nature" for a holistic look at violence in human societies in general
Take Fukuyama several grains of salt: he also gave us the thesis that liberal democracy constituted a final resolution of the problem of government, and that history as we understand it has ended.
