Crime, Disorder and the Risorgimento: The Politics of Policing in Bologna by Steven C. Hughes

Abstract

BOOK REVIEWS123 unmoved by reminders ofFrench atrocities against religion. The priests unlike die bishops had to take account of popular attitudes. The surviving evidence is scanty, but it seems clear that whUe some were as loyal as any bishop, not a few priests joined in the popular (and largely clandestine) mobUization and diat these included some active propagators ofdie revolutionary cause. Caught between civil and religious audiority on die one hand and the frequentiy menacing demands of radicalized parishioners on the odier hand, the priests were in an unenviable situation. One of many valuable features of this book is a survey of die seventy or so priests (four percent of die total) impUcated in die rebellion which eventually erupted (and was suppressed) in die summer of 1798. This very fine book is written for the initiated, insofar as it presumes fam üiarity with die Irish history of the period. There is extensive use of bodi civil and ecclesiastical archives. R. V. Comerford Saint Patrick's College, Maynooth Late Modern European Crime, Disorder and the Risorgimento: The Politics ofPolicing in Bologna. By Steven C. Hughes. [Cambridge Studies in Italian History and Culture.] (New York: Cambridge University Press. 1994. Pp. xvi, 286. $54.95) There is always die danger diat a monograph diat evolved from a Ph.D. dissertation dealing widi a narrow theme in a small geographical area wUl confront the reader widi an impenetrable tiiicket of detaU, only tangentiaUy relevant to anything of importance. Happily for students of the Risorgimento that is far from true in the case of Steven Hughes's impressive study of crime and disorder in Bologna from die late eighteenth century untU the unification of Italy. At no point does die wealth of archival material he mined, or his close examination of die style and fluctuating intensity of Bolognese crime and disorder, obscure the core dieses he presents. While by no means embracing a Marxist interpretation, he joins those who emphasize the importance of social rather than ideological factors in affecting the outcome of the Italian national movement. Furthermore, he convincingly demonstrates howhis work not only supports but adds new dimensions to John Davis's much broader study, Conflict and Control: Law and Order in Nineteenth Century Italy (1988). During the ancien régime papal absolutism was dieoretical rather than real; die Bolognese elites, like those elsewhere in the papal domains, enjoyed and jealously guarded their autonomy, which included sharing responsibility for die maintenance ofpublic order. The French conquest brought a bureaucratic, 124BOOK REVIEWS centralized system which Consalvi, anxious to promote papal power, pragmatically preserved wherever feasible. Hughes stresses that die papacy's assumption of a monopoly of police power, except in Rome itself, carried with it a monopoly of responsibUity. The faUure of die central government to provide the order and security deemed essential by the elites destabilized it. Dismayed by the ineffective and arbitrary papal police, angry at their diminished role in a centralized system controUed by Rome, and fearful of die criminality and sporadic radicalism ofthe lower classes, especiaUy after 1848, die elites came to embrace a cautious, liberal reformism which gradually led them to look to Piedmont for safety. The author makes a contribution to our understanding of the 1831 and 1848 revolutions in Bologna by showing that fear of anarchy was "a prime mover" in sparking an interlocking series ofevents that led from die formation of citizen patrols to a reluctant seizure of power by the elite. Indeed, the establishment of a Civic Guard in Bologna in 1847 triggered an Austrian reaction which had national repercussions. Although die study reveals corruption , brutality, and poUtical repression, it is fair and balanced throughout, eschewing the depiction ofunrelenting Roman tyranny diat liberals frequently present. In fact, one often sympadiizes with die struggle of a succession of papal authorities who sincerely tried widi inadequate resources to reform the system. The shifting variety ofsecurity organizations between 1815 and I860, along with the fact that die police and the armed "public force" in Bologna had different but, it seems, overlapping responsibilities, can occasionally create difficulties, but the work is finely written and the chapter-ending conclusions are models of clarity. This monograph demonstrates the need for simUar...