early rural industry: for centuries the inhabitants of Persiceto had cultivated hemp, not only for local production (together with cloth machining) for the weekly market, but also hemp which came from other places (such as Cento and Crevalcore) that was included in the trade. The surplus production of cloth was mostly exported to Venice. French Revolutionary Wars Persiceto was occupied by Revolutionary French troops in 1796, and the parishes of Persiceto and of Sant'Agata Bolognese were divided among into four cantons. The town of San Giovanni in Persiceto was briefly part of the Department of the Alta Padusa, with Cento as chief town (1797). Later it became the seat of the District of the Samoggia. Between 1798 and 1799 the community life was upset by plunderings, turmoils and seizures. In 1799, after the retreat of the French and of their allies of the Cisalpine republic, Persiceto was invaded by Russians and Austrians, who quickly restored the . However, in 1800 the District of Samoggia was restored. With the establishment of the Italian Republic (1802) San Giovanni in Persiceto was again under the Deputy Prefecture established in Cento. In the first years of the Ottocento and at the establishment of the Kingdom of Italy (March 1805) calm came back into the territory of the Persiceto, but this was again overturned in 1814 by the fall of Napoleon until the Papal government was restored in July 1815. Between 1796 and 1815, although the structures of the boards of direction and their denominations were changed, in Persiceto mostly the same families did the same civil service: they were clearly fit for adaptation. Within the same years the feudal privileges and the tithe were abolished, the pieces of land belonging to the Church were forfeited and the landed property was accumulated. The rice culture, with its following crisis of the sharecropping system, was expanded and so did even the agricultural day-labourers. With the restoration of the Papal rule remarkable works for the improvement of the "Castle" were started and in 1838 Pope Gregory XVI bestowed the title of city on San Giovanni. In 1857 Pius IX visited the town. Persiceto after unification Persiceto provided some volunteers in the wars of Independence even before the region was annexed to the Kingdom of Sardinia in 1860; but when the hated grist-tax was reintroduced by the national government, in San Giovanni in Persiceto, an insurrection of peasants