bandit

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.

History

Europe

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.

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.

In Nazi-occupied Europe from 1939 to 1945, the German doctrine of Bandenbekämpfung ("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

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.

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).

Ming historian David M. Robinson identifies some prominent causes of banditry in the Capital Region. The Region was agriculturally disadvantaged due to constant flood, and thus the peasants often lived in poverty. Furthermore, the Region's economy provided plentiful opportunities for highway robbery. In addition to the highly developed economy of Beijing, the Region also contained numerous commercial cities; these cities not only attracted merchants but also bandits. Robinson also points out that many eunuchs in Beijing resorted to banditry. As Shih-Shan Henry Tsai explained, self-castration was just another way to escape impoverishment; and when a group of eunuchs failed to find employment in the palace, they often turned to mob violence.

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)