Rebels and Mafiosi: Death in a Sicilian Landscape [Hardcover]

James Fentress (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 13, 2000

For centuries, Sicilian "men of honor" have fought the controls of government. Between 1820 and 1860, rebellions shook the island as these men joined with Sicily's intellectuals in the struggle for independence from the Bourbon Kingdom of Naples. This lively account--the first to locate the emergence and evolution of the mafia in historical perspective--describes how those rebellions led to the birth of the modern mafia and traces the increasing influence of organized crime on the island.

The alliance between two classes of Sicilians, James Fentress shows, made possible both the revolution and the mafia. Militancy in the ranks of the revolution taught men of honor how to organize politically. Communities then resisted the demands of central government by devising alternative controls through a network of local groups--the mafia cosche.

Fentress tells his operatic story of honor and crime from the viewpoint of the Sicilians, and in particular of the great city of Palermo--from Garibaldi's historic arrival in 1860 to the spectacular mafia trials around the turn of the century. Drawing on police archives, trial records, contemporary journalism, and government reports, he describes how enduring political power plus a (richly deserved) reputation for violence helped the mafia secure covert relationships with groups that publicly denounced them. These contacts still protect today's mafiosi from Rome's efforts to eradicate the organization. The history of the mafia is indeed, Fentress shows, the history of Sicily.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Thorough if somewhat dry, this scholarly history traces the rise of the Mafia in its ancestral homeland. Freelance writer Fentress locates the roots of the Mafia in the 19th-century rebellions that occurred when the Sicily attempted to break free from Naples's control. He shows that the local officials relied on "an extensive network of spies and informers" to exert control over an unruly population. Nor did this situation change after Italy unified in the 1860s. With the help of police archives, trial records and contemporary accounts, the pace picks up in the book's livelier second half. Fentress describes how these spies and informers, along with some of the revolutionaries who fought Italy's national liberation movement, later became the soldiers of the Mafia. "Revolution creates its own rules," the author writes, and in the 19th century, a no-man's land developed in Sicily, full of relations that were "somewhere between the illegal and the illicit." In a poor society with a tradition for violence, the Mafia was able to prosper despite sporadic attempts to eradicate it. Indeed, the government's crackdowns only reinforced the already popular notion that the Mafia is all-powerful. After refuting the idea that the Mafia has always been intertwined with the "Sicilian soul," Fentress persuasively argues that without effective governance and improved economic conditions, the island is unlikely to rid itself of what he calls the "soldiers of the permanent revolution." B&w photos. (Apr.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Nineteenth-century Sicily was defined by two successive concepts: revolution and Mafia. Social historian Fentress (Social Memory) shows how the former led to the creation of the latter. He describes in detail several inconclusive attempts at revolution, mostly in the name of Sicilian independence from Naples. He then traces how, once the fervor died down, the rebel cells drifted instead into crime. They quickly came to specialize in the traditional protection rackets associated with the Mafia. The word Mafia itself was unknown before the 1860s, but both word and concept were omnipresent by 1900. Fentress tells his story well, particularly in his vivid portraits of the Palermo revolutionaries, who raised the tricolor over and over again for decades. How these zealous men who fought for liberty ended up squabbling over turf and murdering their neighbors in family feuds is a sad yet interesting tale. Recommended for academic libraries. [Fentress's Blood and Honor: From the Mafia's Sicilian Roots to Its Domination of American Crime was recently published by Birch Lane Press.--Ed.]--Robert Persing, Univ. of Pennsylvania Lib., Philadelphi.
---Robert Persing, Univ. of Pennsylvania Lib., Philadelphia
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 297 pages
• Publisher: Cornell Univ Pr (April 13, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0801435390
• ISBN-13: 978-0801435393
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,235,011 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars mafia and revolution, June 27, 2000

By 

ike_larusso - See all my reviews

This review is from: Rebels and Mafiosi: Death in a Sicilian Landscape (Hardcover)

I enjoyed this book very much. I originally picked it up because I am interested in the mafia and wanted to find out more about its origins. The book is very useful for this, and describes how the mafia started in Sicily's struggle for freedom. It is very well-written, I read it in a couple of days, and has a lot of interesting stories. I especially liked the description of Garibaldi in Sicily and the stories about how some of the Sicilians who fought on Garibaldi's side later became capimafia. Thew author is also interested in the relation of violence and crime to revolution. I wasn't looking for this when I started the book, but I think it is an interesting subject. If you look at a lot of recent revolutions, it's clear that the question of what is revolution and what is crime comes down to the question of which side you're on. If you like it, it's revolution; if you don't like it, it's crime.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great book, September 18, 2002

By 

Ema (Chicago) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Rebels and Mafiosi: Death in a Sicilian Landscape (Hardcover)

I had to read this for for class, and it was by far the best historical account I've read. It keeps you interested in the big picture the entire time, while not leaving out the details. I know everything about the origins of the mafia now that I could need to know. I'd reccomend this to anyone studying Italian history, the mafia, or rebelions in general.