Mafia emergence

In Salvatore Lupo’s The History of the Mafia he kicks off criticising other historians who devote too much effort digging through etymological records of the term and who manage to find ‘origins’ as far back as say the 13th century. Lupo declares it is the revolutions during the 19th century that are of most importance when talking about mafia. He observes that the eastern part of the island of Sicily did not develop the mafia, it is mainly on the western side of the island that the mafia really took off.

The abolition of the feudal system came with the concept of camorra – a sort of proto-mafia. This is prior to the unification of Italy. During this dismantling of the ancien regimes there began a ‘democratization of violence’. He doesn’t attribute this to property law, as it seems to be exclusively western-Sicily that had the problems of mafia.

A number of reforms were carried out under the Bourbons: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Bourbon and so the Napoleonic period began in Sicily. An strange dynamic developed between thieves/bandits, the new police forces and the general citizens, ‘the companies at arms’ seems to have emerged with a prior understanding and rapport with thieves, whereby thefts would involve a negotiation process where some goods were returned, but thieves kept some of the loot and ‘captains’ would be awarded a ‘prize’ for arbitration. 

Lupo makes the point that during these turbulent and violent times, there was a shifting of the wealth in the society. It didn’t matter who took what side, republican, anti-Bourbon, it was those who were most effective and loyal to the liberal aristocracy that became the most respected mafiosi.

The protection of property was secured through patronage of thieves, which started off a form of clientelism. This was mainly to protect livestock, rather than land.

There is a three level system: 
[list=1]
[*]The ones who committed the crimes
[*]The ones who negotiate
[*]The organisers who stayed on their own lands, receiving animals on their lands and deciding who deserves to be killed.
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Rather than viewing the mafia as a holdover from Feudalism, there is more and more evidence of the mafia being a weapon of an ‘aborted’ bourgeoisie, which utilised intimidation upwards and downwards the social hierarchy.