Abstract
Law and order were to become central issues in the rapidly widening public debate that took place during the 1870s and 1880s on Italy’s social and political development since Unification, but it had always been particularly closely associated with what came to be known as the ‘Southern Problem’. Indeed, the tendency to reduce events in the South to the vocabulary of crime and public order had been evident from the time of Unification, when not only the peasant ‘brigands’ but indeed all suspected opponents of the new state in the South were denigrated as criminals. Republicans and democrats were freely described as camorristi and agents of organised crime, while rival political factions within the South were no less ready to use the same language against their own opponents. Liborio Romano was one of the best known, but by no means the only victim of this form of indictment by criminal association.1
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Notes
Although published later A. Niceforo L’Italia Barabara Contemporanea (Palermo, 1898) offers eloquent examples.
G. Mortillaro Nuovo Dizionario Siciliano-Italiano quoted in G. Fiume Bande Armate (1984) p. 39.
See P. Alatri Lotte Politiche in Sicilia Sotto il Governo della Destra 1866–74 (Turin, 1954);
G. C. Marino L’Opposizione Mafiosa 1870–1882 (1964);
G. Procacci Le Elezioni del 1874 e l’Opposizione Meridionale (Milan, 1956);
D. Mack Smith Modern Sicily (1968) Part 13.
The two studies were republished as L. Franchetti and S. Sonnino La Sicilia nel 1876 ed. E. Cavalieri (Florence, 2 vols, 1925).
See esp. G. Fiume Bande Armate (1984) and Ch. 3 above.
Tommasi Crudeli, quoted in P. Villari Scritti sulla Questione Sociale (Florence, 1902) p. 440.
The most recent studies are: A. Blok The Mafia of a Sicilian Village 1860–1960 (Oxford, 1974);
H. Hess Mafia (London, 1973);
J. and P. Schneider Culture and Political Economy in Western Sicily (New York, 1976).
The most perceptive modern studies of the Southern Italian latifundist economy are those of M. Rossi Doria (e.g. ‘Struttura e Problemi dell’Agricoltura Meridionale’ in M. Rossi Doria Riforma Agraria e Azione Meridionalista (Bologna, 1948)). Amongst the most detailed contemporary descriptions see: S. Sonnino ‘I Contadini in Sicilia’ in Franchetti and Sonnino Vol. 2. In English see: A. Blok (1974) pp. 64–79; J. and P. Schneider (1976) pp. 58–71; D. Mack Smith ‘The Latifundia in Modern Sicilian History’ in Proceedings of the British Academy (1965) pp. 87–93.
Giunta per l’Inchiesta Agraria (Rome, 1882) Vol. IX, p. xxvii; on Calabria compare the general description in P. Arlacchi Mafia, Peasants and Great Estates (Cambridge, 1983) pp. 123ff with the detailed and critical analysis in
M. Petrusewicz ‘Les Sources de l’Accumulation Primitive dans l’Agriculture Calabraise au XIXè siècle’ ER (1979) pp. 17–33.
On Spain see e.g. G. Brenan The Spanish Labyrinth (1971 edn) Ch. 6 and
A. Marvaud La Question Sociale en Espagne (Paris, 1910).
The range of mafia activities are described most fully in the essays by Franchetti and Sonnino, but see also G. Alongi La Maffia nei Suoi Fatti e Nelle Sue Manifestazioni: Studi sulle Classi Pericolose della Sicilia (Turin, 1886) esp. pp. 111–22.
E.g. G. Alongi (1886) pp. 135–48; S. F. Romano Storia della Mafia (Milan, 1963) pp. 115–84;
M. Pantaleone Mafia and Politics (London, 1966) pp. 31–7.
See esp. P. Villari ‘Sicilia e il Socialismo’ (1902) in Scritti sulla Questione Meridionale (Florence, 1902) p. 67.
See esp. G. Giarrizzo ‘La Sicilia nella Crisi Agraria’ in I Fasci Siciliani (Bari, 1975) Vol. 1, pp. 7–63.
See esp. G. Manacorda Crisi Economica e Lotte Politiche in Italia 1892–1896 (Turin, 1968);
G. Manacorda ‘I Fasci e la Classe Dirigente Liberale’ in I Fasci Siciliani (1975) Vol. 1, pp. 67–101;
F. Renda I Fasci Siciliani 1892–4 (Turin, 1977) pp. 232–43.
The description of the Fasci in E. J. Hobsbawm Primitive Rebels (1956) is largely superseded by these more recent Italian studies.
See esp. G. Manacorda ‘Crispi e la Legge Agraria per la Sicilia’ in ASSO 1972, pp. 9–95; F. Renda (1977) pp. 232–43;
G. Barone ‘Ristrutturazione e Crisi del Blocco Agrario’ in G. Barone (ed.) Potere e Società in Sicilia nella Crisi dello Stato Liberale (Catania, 1977) pp. 14–22.
Jessie White Mario La Miseria di Napoli (Firenze, 1877) p. 48.
See P. Macry ‘Borghesia, Città e Stato: Appunti e Impressioni su Napoli 1860–80’ QS Aug. 1984 pp. 340–72.
M. Marmo Il Proletariato Industriale a Napoli nell’Età Liberale 1880–1914 (Naples, 1978) pp. 96–104.
G. Salvemini ‘Un Comune dell’Italia Meridionale: Molfetta’ in Opere IV (1963) p. 21.
See F. Coletti ‘Classi Sociali e Delinquenza in Italia 1891–1900: La Delinquenza in Sardegna’ Giornale degli Economisti (1911), pp. 611–28.
G. Sotgiu Lotte Sociali e Politiche nella Sardegna Contemporanea (Cagliari, 1974) p. 87.
Ibid., p. 143; see also S. Wilson ‘Conflict and its Causes in Corsica 1800–35’ SH Jan. 1981, pp. 33–69.
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© 1988 John A. Davis
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Davis, J.A. (1988). Crime and the Southern Question: Mafiosi and Camorristi. In: Conflict and Control: Law and Order in Nineteenth-Century Italy. Palgrave, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-19277-9_12
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