thumb|250px|[[Carmine Crocco's lieutenant Agostino Sacchitiello and members of his band from Bisaccia, Campania photographed in 1862]]

Banditry is a type of organized crime committed by outlaws typically involving the threat or use of violence. A person who engages in banditry is known as a bandit and primarily commits crimes such as extortion, robbery, kidnapping, and murder, either as an individual or in groups. Banditry is a vague concept of criminality and in modern usage can be synonymous with gangsterism, brigandage, marauding, terrorism, piracy, and thievery.

Definitions

The term bandit (introduced to English via Italian around 1776) originates with the early Germanic legal practice of outlawing criminals, termed *bamnan (English ban). The legal term in the Holy Roman Empire was Acht or Reichsacht, translated as "Imperial ban". In modern Italian, the equivalent word "bandito" literally means banned or a banned person.

The New English Dictionary on Historical Principles (NED) defined "bandit" in 1885 as "one who is proscribed or outlawed; hence, a lawless desperate marauder, a brigand: usually applied to members of the organized gangs which infest the mountainous districts of Italy, Sicily, Spain, Greece, Iran, and Turkey".

In modern usage the word has become a synonym for "thief", hence the term "one-armed bandit" for gambling machines that can leave the gambler with no money.

Types

Social bandit

"Social banditry" is a term invented by the historian Eric Hobsbawm in his 1959 book Primitive Rebels, a study of popular forms of resistance that also incorporate behaviour characterized as illegal. He further expanded the field in the 1969 study Bandits. Social banditry is a widespread phenomenon that has occurred in many societies throughout recorded history, and forms of social banditry still exist, as evidenced by piracy and organized crime syndicates.

Piracy

Cattle raiding

History

200px|thumb|Members of the [[Dalton Gang on display following the Battle of Coffeyville in 1892 – left to right: Bill Power, Bob Dalton, Grat Dalton, and Dick Broadwell]]

Europe

Medieval period

Tradition depicts medieval German robber barons as bandits.

Pope Sixtus V had about 5,000 bandits executed in the five years before his death in 1590, but there were reputedly 27,000 more at liberty throughout Central Italy.

Brigandry in Italy

Banditry or brigandry, while existing in Italy since pre-historic times, became particularly widespread in Southern Italy following the Unification of Italy in the 1860s. Brigands such as Carmine Crocco, Michelina Di Cesare, Ninco Nanco, and Nicola Napolitano were active during this period and eventually developed followings as folk heroes. Brigandage in Southern Italy continued sporadically following the 1870s, with brigands such as Giuseppe Musolino and Francesco Paolo Varsallona forming bandit gangs at the turn of the 20th century. Salvatore Giuliano and Gaspare Pisciotta formed a brigand group in Sicily in the 1940s to 1950 and similarly became known as folk heroes. Sardinia has a long history of banditry, with the bandit and kidnapping group anonima sarda being the most recent manifestation of this phenomenon.

Nazi-occupied Europe

In Nazi-occupied Europe from 1939 to 1945, the German doctrine of ("bandit fighting") portrayed opponents of the Greater Germanic Reich as "bandits" — dangerous criminals who did not deserve any consideration as human beings. German authorities suppressed partisan opposition with maximum force and, usually, with the mass slavery of civilians from partisan-controlled areas.

China

Ming China

Banditry (Dao, qiangdao) in Ming China (1368–1644) was defined by the Ming government as robbery by force" punishable by death". But throughout the dynasty, people had entered into the occupation of banditry for various reasons and the occupation of banditry was fluid and temporary.

Causes and opportunities

Ming China was largely an agricultural society and contemporary observers remarked that famine and subsequent hardship often gave rise to banditry. In his 1991 book Disorder under Heaven: Collective Violence in the Ming Dynasty, James W. Tong uses data from provincial and prefectural gazetteers of the Ming and the Qing Dynasties to analyze patterns of violence during the Ming Dynasty.

The Capital Region also housed a huge number of soldiers with Ming's system of hereditary military and a major portion of bandits were actually soldiers stationed in the region. Robinson points out that "dire economic straits" forced soldiers to use illegal means to make a living. Another example would be Deng Maoqi, a bandit in Fujian who perpetrated robbery on roads and in villages in the late 1440s. His gang of bandits eventually grew into a rebel army and Deng conducted attacks on the government in Fujian.

List

Americas

  • Banditry in Chile
  • Cangaço, banditry in Northeast Region, Brazil
  • Jagunço

Asia

  • Dacoity, Hindi term for banditry
  • Honghuzi
  • Nian
  • Shanlin
  • Thuggee

Europe

  • Abrek, Anti-Cossack/Russian guerilla raiders in the North Caucasus, especially Chechnya
  • Bagaudae, bandits around the Pyrenees in the Roman Empire
  • Betyárs, bandits in Kingdom of Hungary
  • Border reivers
  • Brigandage in the Two Sicilies, bandits in South Italy (1861-65)
  • Hajduks, bandits in the Balkans
  • Kirdzhalis
  • Klepht, anti-Ottoman insurgents in Greece and Cyprus
  • Rapparee, Irish guerrillas during the 1690s Williamite war
  • Robber baron
  • Sardinian banditry
  • Uskoks, Croatian Habsburg soldiers during the Ottoman wars in Europe

Oceania

  • Bushranger, bandits in Australia (1790s–1900s)
  • Fence—Helping bandits to sell stolen goods
  • Guerrilla warfare
  • Irregular military—How bandits were sometimes treated in chaotic times
  • Henchman
  • Highwayman

References