«Tentare ogni mezzo onde riunirli». Polizia e conflitti familiari a Bologna nel XIX secolo

My dissertation analyzes the action pursued by the police in Bologna during the years of Restoration in solving critical family situations through the use of a conciliatory attitude that allowed for the avoidance of court intervention even in the presence of criminal behavior. The Police took a non-repressive approach towards adultery, illegitimate pregnancies, rape and other family disorders provided they didn’t implicate a public scandal and, when they were called upon to settle disputes between spouses, police officers always tried to maintain matrimonial stability as well as social peace. The sources of my research were the numerous documents produced by the Direzione provinciale di polizia between 1814 and 1859 that testify to the police's large involvement in cases of matrimonial conflict: a rich and vivid source of material that provides the opportunity to study how the different parties acted and interacted in a changing society such as Bologna in the period following the restoration of papal power. The main aim has been to investigate the origins of police choices and attitudes in the field of private life and to develop a better understanding of policing in previous centuries where the origins of most of the observed phenomena can be found. I devoted particular attention to non-judiciary practices of peacemaking to compare them with the official way of dealing with family disorder and to obtain a reliable frame of Nineteenth century police action.