Collective Political Violence in Napoleonic Italy: A Historical and Sociological Study of Popular Uprisings in Piedmont, 1797–1801

This article examines popular uprisings in Piedmont during the French occupation between 1797 and 1801, analysing how the lower social strata challenged the state’s monopoly on violence. It offers a new interpretative framework for understanding well-known revolts in Acqui, Asti, Mondovi, and other Piedmontese towns. Political developments in late eighteenth-century Piedmont unfolded under abnormal conditions marked by economic crisis and social dislocation. The collective violence of the rural and urban poor emerged as a means of restoring perceived social justice and resolving localised socio-political conflicts. During the uprisings, participants often assumed the right to exercise coercive power, creating temporary and authoritarian local centres of authority that rivalled the state. Patterns of collective violence spread rapidly and independently of rebel tactics, and targeted both French occupiers and local political activists — particularly Jacobins. The intensity of popular violence peaked between 1799 and 1801, reflecting the cumulative pressures of social and religious grievances. By 1800–1801, the scope of violence had broadened to include not only political intermediaries but also agents of the Turin administration itself. These episodes reveal the emergence, in Piedmont, of a new form of anti-state protest — one that preceded the full integration of the region into the imperial hierarchy of the Napoleonic state. The study combines historical and sociological approaches to illuminate how collective violence shaped the local experience of revolution and occupation in northern Italy.

Piedmont, Napoleonic Italy, French occupation, collective violence, popular uprisings, Jacobins, French Revolution, Napoleon I Bonaparte