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Why does political violence recur over time in certain geographic areas and not others? Previous studies have linked past violence and later political behaviour, but why and how specific types of political violence have long-term effects while others do not remains unclear. We argue that violence from revolts woven into the national narrative connects local places to enduring national myths that can be drawn upon to facilitate armed local mobilisation during later national uprisings. Using the case of Syria, we develop a new dataset of violent resistance to French colonial rule in the 1920s and the Islamist insurgency of 1976–1982. We find that areas with anti-colonial violence have a statistically significant relationship with the geography of organised violent resistance during the initial phase of the 2011–2012 Syrian conflict, while Islamist insurgent violence showed no comparable effect. Our results suggest a new mechanism connecting local places, national mythmaking, and violent mobilisation.
