What determines violent reaction during state formation processes? To address this question, we exploit the uprisings that occurred when southern Italy was annexed to Piedmont during Italian unification in the 1860s. We assemble a novel dataset on episodes of brigandage, a form of violent rebellion against the unitary government, and on pre-unification social and economic characteristics of southern Italian municipalities. We find that the intensity of brigandage is ceteris paribus lower in and close to settlements of Piedmontese origin. We argue that geographical distance from these communities is a proxy for cultural distance from the Piedmontese rulers. Thus, our results suggest that, in the context of state formation, cultural proximity to the new ruler reduces social unrest by local communities. After ruling out alternative mechanisms consistent with the economic literature, we provide suggestive evidence of cultural persistence and diffusion in our context, and discuss two possible culture-based drivers of our results: social identification with the Piedmontese rulers, and a clash between local values and some specific content of the new institutions.

是什么决定了状态形成过程中的剧烈反应？为了解决这个问题，我们利用了 1860 年代意大利统一期间意大利南部被并入皮埃蒙特时发生的起义。我们收集了一个关于强盗事件的新数据集，一种针对单一政府的暴力叛乱形式，以及意大利南部城市统一前的社会和经济特征。我们发现，在其他条件不变的情况下，强盗的强度是在皮埃蒙特起源的定居点较低和靠近。我们认为，与这些社区的地理距离代表了与皮埃蒙特统治者的文化距离。因此，我们的研究结果表明，在国家形成的背景下，与新统治者的文化接近度减少了当地社区的社会动荡。在排除了与经济文献一致的替代机制后，我们提供了在我们的背景下文化持久性和传播的暗示性证据，并讨论了我们结果的两个可能的基于文化的驱动因素：对皮埃蒙特统治者的社会认同，以及地方价值观和文化之间的冲突。新机构的一些具体内容。