Police, Public Order, and the Risorgimento in Bologna. (Volumes I and II) (Crime, Italy, Criminality).

Based on archival research, this study analyses the forms, functions, and efficiency of the papal police in Bologna after the Restoration, and considers their relationship to the major political events of the Risorgimento in the Papal States. As inherited from the French, the police offered the Pope a new instrument of administration and repression with which to consolidate his absolute power. Yet the monopolization of the forces of coercion that made the police an effective political tool also centralized responsibility for law and order within the realm. Having disarmed Bologna's elites, it was incumbent on the papal regime to protect their lives and property or lose legitimacy. The study emphasizes the conflicts created by the sacrifice of local elites' police priorities, such as crime prevention and social control, to the central state's dem and for religious and political conformity. It further suggests that Bologna's economic problems hampered the efforts of the police to maintain order, and uses criminal statistics to document two "crime waves" that helped create a crisis of confidence in the regime. Combined with the spread of Mazzinian conspiracy and radical propag and a, these high rates of crime exacerbated elite fears of anarchy, contributing to their disaffection with the police and inevitably the regime itself. The obvious inability of the police to cope with crime eventually forced the government to arm Bologna's upper classes in vigilante style "citizen patrols" in 1827 and 1846, but the action only reinforced local political independence, leading to rebellion and revolution. Viewed as vexatious, corrupt, and incapable, the police, as the direct representatives of Rome, could not solve the contradictions of power and responsibility bequeathed by Napoleon to the papacy. Their failure helped undermine the Pope's legitimacy and cleared the way for a Piedmontese solution to the province's problems.PhDEuropean historyUniversity of Michiganhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/160149/1/8422253.pd