bandit

Definitions

The word bandit, a word which was in English use around the 1590s, derives from Italian bandito (plural banditi). The word banditry was first used in 1861. The usually refers to an individual who was outlawed by the state and engaged in theft.

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.

History

Europe

Tradition depicts medieval German robber barons as bandits.

In France and other parts of western Europe, large bands of armed men became an important form of banditry during periods of prolonged warfare. During the Hundred Years' War, groups of routiers—mercenaries and soldiers who supported themselves through warfare and plunder—operated across large areas of France. After the Treaty of Brétigny in 1360, unemployed soldiers formed or joined bands that continued to raid and pillage the countryside, including the notorious Tard-Venus. Some of these companies were highly organised and could number hundreds or thousands of armed men.

In the Balkans under Ottoman rule, armed groups known as hajduks were active from at least the 15th century. They generally operated in small bands from mountainous areas and preyed on officials, merchants and travellers. Later Balkan traditions often portrayed them as popular heroes and fighters against Ottoman rule, although their activities also included ordinary banditry.

In Italy in the late 16th century, the bandit Marco Sciarra assembled several smaller groups into a large and well-organised armed force operating between the Papal States and the Kingdom of Naples. He styled himself the Re della Campagna ("King of the Campagna") and was able to resist government forces for several years. His activities illustrate how bandit groups could acquire military organisation and political influence in early modern Europe.

During the five years before his death in 1590, about 5,000 bandits were executed under Pope Sixtus V, while an estimated 27,000 others were reportedly still at large in Central Italy.

In the Anglo-Scottish borderlands, the Border Reivers carried out organised raids, livestock theft and other forms of cross-border banditry throughout the 16th century.

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.

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.

By the late Ming dynasty, banditry had developed into large-scale armed rebellions. From the late 1620s, droughts and famines contributed to the growth of mobile rebel groups in northern and central China, commonly described by the Ming government as roving bandits (liúkòu). Some groups grew into large armies and established control over extensive territories. Among their most prominent leaders were Li Zicheng and Zhang Xianzhong, whose forces contributed to the collapse of Ming rule. Li Zicheng captured Beijing in 1644, following which the last Ming emperor committed suicide, while Zhang Xianzhong established the short-lived Xi dynasty in Sichuan.

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. Tong analyzes that the peasants had to make a "rational choice" between surviving harsh conditions and surviving through illegal activities of banditry. He identifies multiple important factors in peasants' calculation of whether to become bandits or not, such as the government's ability to punish bandits. Tong concludes that his "rational choice model predicts that there would be more rebellions and banditry where the likelihood of surviving hardship is minimal but the likelihood of surviving as an outlaw is maximal." As a result, Tong finds that banditry, like other types of collective violence, had a spatial and temporal pattern. Banditry was especially pervasive in the southern provinces (most notably Guangdong and Fujian) and the second half of the dynasty (1506-1644).

However, the Northern China and the middle Ming period (1450–1525) had their fair share of banditry. Mounted banditry was the major and pervasive type of banditry plaguing roads around the capital Beijing and its surrounding areas, administrated and named as the Capital Region. Xiangmazei (whistling arrow bandits) was a category of mounted bandits named after their practice of firing whistling arrows to alert their victims. Whistling arrow bandits had troubled the Capital Region throughout the first three decades of the sixteenth century. They had posed such serious threat that special police attention was given to them and failure to arrest them on time incurred severer punishment (further information on Ming justice system can be found in History of criminal justice).

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)

Green Cadres

Hajduks, bandits in the Balkans

Kirdzhalis

Klepht, anti-Ottoman insurgents in Greece and Cyprus

Opryshky

Rapparee, Irish guerrillas during the 1690s Williamite war

Robber baron

Sardinian banditry

Uskoks, Croatian Habsburg soldiers during the Ottoman wars in Europe

Africa

Nigerian banditry

Shifta

Oceania

Bushranger, bandits in Australia (1790s–1900s)