I examine empirically the role of historical political centralization on the likelihood
of modern civil conflict in Sub-Saharan Africa. I combine a wide variety of historical
sources to construct an original measure of long-run exposure to statehood at the local
level. I then exploit variation in this new measure along with geo-referenced conflict data
to document a robust negative statistical relationship between local long-run exposure
to statehood and contemporary conflict. I argue that locations with long histories of
statehood are better equipped with mechanisms to establish and preserve order. I
provide two pieces of evidence consistent with this hypothesis. First, locations with
relatively long historical exposure to statehood are less prone to experience conflict
when hit by a negative shock to the agricultural sector. Second, exploiting contemporary
individual-level survey data for 18 Sub-Saharan countries, I show that within-country
long historical experience with statehood is linked to people’s positive attitudes toward
state institutions and traditional leaders.