No CrossRef data available.
Article contents
The Imaginary of a Sect: Literature, Politics, and the Nineteenth-Century Origins of the Camorra
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 January 2017
Abstract
This article reconsiders the so-called “dangerous classes” by focusing on the historical origins of the Neapolitan camorra, one of the world’s major criminal organizations. In the Bourbon Kingdom of Naples, the term camorristi referred to marginalized individuals and extortionists who operated in prisons, gambling halls, and brothels. During the turbulent period of Italian unification, such figures were increasingly seen as belonging to a legendary, omnipotent, and influential sect: the camorra, an organized secret society with its own hierarchy, customs, and jargon. This image eventually permeated Italian society. This article examines the reasons behind this evolution by focusing on the (mainly literary) texts and (essentially political) dynamics behind it, which reveal a process of criminalization and folklorization. Such a discursive transformation had a major impact on the Italian collective imagination, one that persists today.
- Type
- Political Cultures in Italy, from the Sixteenth to the Nineteenth Century
- Information
- Annales. Histoire, Sciences Sociales - English Edition , Volume 68 , Issue 3 , September 2013 , pp. 511 - 543
- Copyright
- Copyright © Les Éditions de l’EHESS 2013
References
1. Saviano, Roberto , Gomorrah, trans. Virginia Jewiss (London: Macmillan, 2007).Google Scholar
2. See in particular works by Asbury, Herbert about New York, The Gangs of New York: An Informal History of the Underworld (New York: Knopf, 1928 Google Scholar), Francisco, San , The Barbary Coast: An Informal History of the San Francisco Underworld (London: Jarrolds, 1934 Google Scholar), New Orleans, The French Quarter: An Informal History of the New Orleans Underworld (London: Jarrolds, 1937), and Chicago, Underworld of Chicago: An Informal History of the Chicago Underworld (London: Robert Hale, 1941). See also the volumes by Whyte, William F. , Street Corner Society: The Social Structure of an Italian Slum (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1943 Google Scholar) and Landesco, John , Organized Crime in Chicago: Part III of the Illinois Crime Survey (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1929 Google Scholar; repr. 1968).
3. This refers particularly to interpretations suggested by the sociologist of culture, Alexander, Jeffrey C. , in The Dark Side of Modernity (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2013 Google Scholar). See also Alexander, Jeffrey C. , Giesen, Bernhard and Mast, Jason L. , eds., Social Performance: Symbolic Action, Cultural Pragmatics, and Ritual (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006 CrossRefGoogle Scholar).
4. See the following works by Kalifa, Dominique : “Archéologie de l’Apachisme. Les représentations des Peaux-Rouges dans la France du XIXe siècle,” Le Temps de l’histoire. Revue d’histoire de l’enfance “irrégulière” 4 (2002): 9–37 Google Scholar; L’encre et le sang. Récits de crimes et société à la Belle Époque (Paris: Fayard, 1995); Les crimes de Paris. Lieux et non-lieux du crime à Paris au XIXe siècle (Paris: bilipo, 2000); Crime et culture au XIXe siècle (Paris: Perrin, 2005).
5. Messac, Régis , La “detective novel” et l’influence de la pensée scientifique (Paris: Honoré Champion, 1929), 238 and 400.Google Scholar
6. Chevalier, Louis , Labouring Classes and Dangerous Classes in Paris during the First Half of the Nineteenth Century, trans. Frank Jellinek (London: Routledge, 1973).Google Scholar
7. Antoine Frégier, Honoré , Des classes dangereuses de la population dans les grandes villes et des moyens de les rendre meilleures, 2 vols. (Paris: J.-B. Baillière, 1840).Google Scholar
8. Tilmans, Karin , Vree, Frank Van and Winter, Jay , eds., Performing the Past: Memory, History, and Identity in Modern Europe (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2010).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
9. Marmo, Marcella , Il coltello e il mercato. La camorra prima e dopo l’unità d’Italia (Naples: L’Ancora del Mediterraneo, 2011 Google Scholar); Dickie, John , Blood Brotherhoods: The Rise of Italian Mafias (London: Sceptre, 2011 Google Scholar); Barbagallo, Francesco , Storia della camorra (Rome: Laterza, 2010 Google Scholar). This recent tendency to see the nineteenth-century camorra as an organized sect contrasts with traditional historiographers’ far more skeptical positions. For example, see studies by Alfonso Scirocco, Il Mezzogiorno nell’Italia unita, 1861-1865 (Naples: SEN, 1979), 88, and Giuseppe Galasso, Intervista sulla storia di Napoli (Rome: Laterza, 1978), 201.
10. Serao, Matilde , Il ventre di Napoli (Milan: Treves, 1884 Google Scholar).
11. Saint-Victor, Jacques de , Un pouvoir invisible. Les mafias et la société démocratique, XIXe-XXIe siècle (Paris: Gallimard, 2012 Google Scholar); Mangiameli, Rosario , La mafia tra stereotipo e storia (Caltanissetta: S. Sciascia, 2000 Google Scholar); Pezzino, Paolo , Le mafie (Florence: Giunti, 1999 Google Scholar); Lupo, Salvatore , History of the Mafia, trans. Antony Shugaar (New York: Columbia University Press, 2009 Google Scholar); Matard-Bonucci, Marie-Anne , Histoire de la mafia (Brussels: Éd. Complexe, 1994 Google Scholar); Pezzino, Paolo , Una certa reciprocità di favori. Mafia e modernizzazione violenta nella Sicilia postunitaria (Milan: Franco Angeli, 1990 Google Scholar).
12. Marmo, Il coltello, 9-13.
13. In this case, this approach shares certain elements with the discourse analysis of Marco Jacquemet, Credibility in Court: Communicative Practices in the Camorra Trials (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996).
14. On this point, see Montuori, Francesco , Lessico e camorra. Storia della parola, proposte etimologiche e termini del gergo ottocentesco (Naples: Fridericiana editrice universitaria, 2008)Google Scholar.
15. Reference is made here to the most reliable historiography, particularly to the references cited in notes 9, 11 and 14. There exists a less well-informed bibliography, as vast as it is inconsistent, that the author has not considered because of its mythopoetic perspectives on the origins of the camorra (from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries).
16. Benigno, Francesco , “Trasformazioni discorsive e identità sociali. Il caso dei ‘lazzari’,” Storica 11, no. 31 (2005): 7–44 Google Scholar. More generally, see Mozzillo, Atanasio , ed., La dorata menzogna. Società popolare a Napoli tra Settecento e Ottocento (Naples: ESI, 1975 Google Scholar), and Calaresu, Melissa , “From the Street to Stereotype: Urban Space, Travel and the Picturesque in Late Eighteenth-Century Naples,” Italian Studies 62, no. 2 (2007): 189–203.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
17. For an interpretation of the lazzari in the context of the Masaniello revolt, see Benigno, Francesco , Specchi della rivoluzione: Conflitto e identità politica nell’Europa moderna (Rome: Donzelli, 1999 Google Scholar).
18. On 1799 and the so-called insurgenze, see Rao, Anna Maria , ed., Folle controrivoluzionarie. Le insorgenze popolari nell’Italia giacobina e napoleonica (Rome: Carocci, 1999 Google Scholar); Francesco, Antonino de , 1799. Una storia d’Italia (Milan: Guerini, 2004 Google Scholar).
19. Petit-Radel, Philippe , Voyage historique, chorographique et philosophique dans les principales villes de l’Italie, en 1811 et 1812 (Paris: Chanson, 1815), 3: 118–24.Google Scholar
20. Regarding foreign visitors in Italy and more particularly Naples, see Elisabeth, and Chevalier, Raymond, Iter Italicum. Les voyageurs français à la découverte de l’Italie ancienne (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1984 Google Scholar); Mozillo, Anatasio , La frontiera del Grand Tour. Viaggi e viaggiatori nel Mezzogiorno borbonico (Naples: Liguori, 1992 Google Scholar); Bertrand, Gilles , Le Grand Tour revisité. Pour une archéologie du tourisme: le voyage des Français en Italie (milieu XVIIIe siècle-début XIVe siècle) (Rome: ècole française de Rome, 2008).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
21. Mozzillo, Atanasio , “Aspetti della società popolare a Napoli tra il XVIII e il XIX secolo,” in Mozzillo, La dorata menzogna, 3–85 Google Scholar, here 18.
22. Valeriani, Gaetano , “Porta Capuana,” in Mariano Lombardi, Napoli in miniatura, ed. Nazzaro, Carlo (Naples: Arturo Berisio, 1847; repr. 1965), 481–98, here 485.Google Scholar
23. Ibid., 496.
24. Settembrini, Luigi , Opuscoli politici editi ed inediti, 1847-1851, ed. Themelly, Mario (Rome: Ed. dell’Ateneo, 1969, here 48–49.Google Scholar)
25. Monaco, Attilio , I galeotti napoletani dopo il Quarantotto (Rome: Treves-Treccani-Tumminelli, 1932), 1: 20.Google Scholar
26. Gladstone, William E. , Two Letters to the Earl of Aberdeen on the State Prosecutions of the Neapolitan Government, 4th ed. (London: John Murray, 1851).Google Scholar
27. Ibid., 9. These letters were written in the context of the Bourbons’ reaction following the constitutional parenthesis of 1848-1849. After a first trial for the events of May 15 led to charges against thirty-nine patriots, a second trial resulted from an attempt on the life of Ferdinand II, made in front of the royal palace and an applauding crowd celebrating the reconquest of Sicily by the Bourbons thanks to General Filangieri. This trial, called degli Unitari, implicated forty-two individuals and targeted the secret society Unione d’Italia. Like Gladstone, the English ambassador William Temple attended the proceedings. It was specifically with the intention of denouncing this staged trial that Gladstone wrote and published his letters once he returned to England. The goal of publishing the letters, probably with the blessing of the prime minister, Lord Palmerston, was to push for an amnesty for the events of 1848-1849 and, in essence, to undermine the credibility of the Bourbon government. On the rapid deterioration of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies in terms of international relations, see Rienzo, Eugenio Di , Il regno delle Due Sicilie e le potenze europee, 1830-1861 (Soveria Mannelli: Rubbettino, 2012).Google Scholar
28. Brombert, Victor , The Romantic Prison: The French Tradition (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978).Google Scholar
29. Gladstone, Two Letters, 15-16.
30. After 1851, citations regarding the presence of the camorra in the prisons became a sort of topos. See, for example: Hippolyte Castille, Le marquis del Carretto ex-ministre du Roi de Naples (Paris: Sartorius, 1856), 35-37; Vacca, Giuseppe , Le mie prigioni, 1840-1950. Ricordi e impressioni (Naples: E. Consolo, 1911 Google Scholar), with an introduction by Salvatore Di Giacomo, in particular the chapter on “Le associazioni carcerarie,” 16-20. See also: Anghera, Francesco , Fuga dalle prigioni di Napoli (Naples: Raffaele Prete, 1852 Google Scholar; repr. 1867), 19; Palermo, Nicola , Raffinamento della tirannide borbonica, ossia i carcerati in Montefusco (Reggio: Adamo d’Andrea, 1863 Google Scholar); Castromediano, Sigismondo , Carceri e galere politiche. Memorie (Lecce: Tip. Salentina, 1895-1896), 1: 44 Google Scholar, 52, 182 and 229-44.
31. Antonio, Filippo , Gli ultimi rivolgimenti italiani. Memorie storiche (Florence: Le Monnier, 1852), 1: 267.Google Scholar
32. There exists a vast literature proposing different etymological interpretations. See Montuori, Lessico e camorra.
33. Scialoja, Antonio , I bilanci del regno di Napoli e degli stati Sardi, con note e confronti (Turin: Guigoni, 1857), 109 Google Scholar.
34. Moscati, Ruggero , La fine del Regno di Napoli, documenti borbonici del 1859-60 (Florence: Le Monnier, 1960), 88–89 Google Scholar, notes from July 1 and 3, 1860.
35. Camp, Maxime du , “Expédition des Deux-Siciles. Souvenirs et impressions personnelles,” Revue des Deux Mondes 36, no. 31 (1861): 40–87 Google Scholar; Louise Colet, Naples sous Garibaldi, souvenirs de la guerre de l’indépendance (Paris: E. Dentu, 1861).
36. This was well explained by Alexandre Dumas père, who had cooperated with the Garibaldi expedition and who was the director of the Naples Indipendente, a newspaper with democratic leanings. See in particular the editorial from October 31, 1860 entitled “I tre ministeri.”
37. Scirocco, Alfonso , Governo e paese nel Mezzogiorno nella crisi dell’unificazione, 1860-1861 (Milan: A. Giuffrè, 1963 Google Scholar).
38. On Liborio Romano, see Perrone, Nico , L’inventore del trasformismo. Liborio Romano, strumento di Cavour per la conquista di Napoli (Soveria Mannelli: Rubbettino, 2009 Google Scholar); Giancarlo Vallone, Dalla setta al governo, Liborio Romano (Naples: Jovene, 2005).
39. For more on this subject, see Eva Cecchinato’s reconstruction, Camicie rosse. I garibaldini dall’Unità alla Grande Guerra (Rome: Laterza, 2007).
40. On Sicily, see the analysis offered by Riall, Lucy in, Sicily and the Unification of Italy: Liberal Policy and Local Power, 1859-1866 (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1998 CrossRefGoogle Scholar).
41. The bibliography on the brigantaggio is vast. In addition to the classic work by Molfese, Franco , Storia del brigantaggio dopo l’Unità (Milan: Feltrinelli, 1964 Google Scholar), see the recent synthesis by Lupo, Salvatore , L’unificazione italiana. Mezzogiorno, rivoluzione, guerra civile (Rome: Donzelli, 2011 Google Scholar), which inscribes this phenomenon within the broader political context of the transition phase. See also Pierre-Yves Manchon, “Guerre civile et formation de l’État dans le Midi d’Italie des lendemains de l’Unité (1860-1865). Histoire et usages du ‘Grand Brigandage’ en Basilicate,” (PhD. diss., Université Paris 1-Panthéon-Sorbonne/University of Naples, 2011).
42. On Spaventa, see: Scalfati, Massimo , Silvio Spaventa e l’età del Risorgimento (Naples: Giannini, 2001 Google Scholar); Saverio Ricci and Cesare Scarano, eds., “Silvio Spaventa politico e statista dell’Italia unita nei documenti della biblioteca civica A. Mai. Mostra bibliografica e documentaria,” special issue, Bergomum 85, no. 2-3 (1990); Croce, Elena , Silvio Spaventa (Milan: Adelphi, 1969 Google Scholar); Farolfi, Giovanni , Silvio Spaventa (1822-1893) e la destra storica (Bologna: Tamari, 1966 Google Scholar); Romano, Paolo (pseudonym of Paolo Alatri), Silvio Spaventa, biografia politica (Bari: Laterza, 1942 Google Scholar).
43. Sivio, Giacinto de , Storia delle Due Sicilie dal 1847 al 1861 (Rome: Salviucci, 1867), 5: 103.Google Scholar
44. Busta (hereafter “b.”) 43, no. 4004, Archivio Gamba, Biblioteca Angelo Mai di Bergamo.
45. For an overall perspective on the rise and development of the national guards in the Italian peninsula, see Francia, Enrico , Le baionette intelligenti. La guardia nazionale nell’Italia liberale, 1848-1876 (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1999 Google Scholar).
46. See for example letters sent by Carlo Mileti from Naples on April 25 and 26, 1861, b. 23.6 and 26.24, Archivio Bertani, Museo del Risorgimento di Milano. See also b. 202, fasc. 4, Alta Polizia, Archivio di Stato di Napoli (hereafter “ASN”).
47. Recently published by Marcella Marmo, these reports can currently be consulted in Il coltello, 35-47.
48. See the daily newspaper Opinione, 145, May 27, 1861; 147, May 29, 1861; 152, June 4, 1861.
49. For example, b. 50, Gabinetto Questura, ASN (September 6, 1877).
50. Fasc. 202, Alta polizia, ASN.
51. See the police report from April 22, 1861 concerning Lubrano, b. 675, Questura, Archivio generale, 1st series 1860-1876, ASN.
52. Isaia Sales emphasized this aspect in La camorra, le camorre (Rome: Editori riuniti, 1988; repr. 1993).
53. Salillas, Rafael , Hampa, antropologia picaresca (Madrid: Victoriano Suárez, 1898 Google Scholar); Baroja, Julio Caro , Realidad y fantasía en el mundo criminal (Madrid: CSIC, 1986 Google Scholar).
54. Féreal [Mme de Suberwick], Victor de , Mystères de l’Inquisition et d’autres sociétés secrètes d’Espagne (Paris: Boizard, 1846 Google Scholar). The text was translated into Italian in 1860.
55. Pierre Zaccone, Histoire des sociétés secrètes politiques et religieuses, 5 vols. (Paris: Morel, 1847-1849).
56. De Féreal, Mystères de l’Inquisition, 585.
57. Jacquemet, Credibility in Court, 22-24.
58. On the relationship between Italian and French culture, see the studies by Françoise Waquet, particularly Le modèle français et l’Italie savante. Conscience de soi et perception de l’autre dans la République des lettres (Rome: École française de Rome, 1989). For the end of the nineteenth century, see Mangoni, Luisa , Una crisi di fine secolo. La cultura italiana e la Francia fra Otto e Novecento (Turin: Einaudi, 1985 Google Scholar).
59. Dumas, Alexandre , La camorra et autres récits de brigandage, ed. Schopp, Claude (Paris: Librairie Vuibert, 2011 Google Scholar).
60. Camp, Maxime du , “Naples et la société napolitaine sous le Roi Victor-Emmanuel,” Revue des Deux Mondes 32, no. 41 (1862): 5–38 Google Scholar.
61. Monnier, Marc , La camorra. Notizie storiche raccolte e documentate (Florence: G. Barbièra, 1863 Google Scholar).
62. Natura e origine della misteriosa setta della Camorra divisa nelle sue diverse sezioni e paranze, ed. Francesco Benigno (Rome: Editori riuniti, 2012).
63. Monnier, Marc , L’Italie est-elle la terre des morts? (Paris: Hachette, 1860 Google Scholar). On Monnier, see Baridon, Silvio , Notizia sul carteggio inedito tra Antonio Ranieri e Marc Monnier (Turin: L’Impronta, 1939 Google Scholar).
64. Monnier, , Notizie storiche documentate sul brigantaggio nelle province napoletane dal tempo di Fra’ Diavolo sino ai giorni nostri. Aggiuntovi l’intero giornale di Borjes finora inedito (Florence: G. Barbièra, 1862 Google Scholar).
65. Monnier, La camorra, 4.
66. Monnier, , Garibaldi. Histoire de la conquête des Deux-Siciles (Paris: Michel Lévy Frères, 1861 Google Scholar).
67. Natura e origine, 3.
68. Mastriani’s use of Natura e origine was demonstrated by Sabbatino, Pasquale , in Le città indistricabili. Nel ventre di Napoli da Villari a De Filippo (Naples: ESI, 2008 Google Scholar), which published the pages devoted to the so-called “code of the camorra,” quoted by Mastriani, 62-65.
69. For a general perspective, see Davis, John A. , Conflict and Control: Law and Order in Nineteenth-Century Italy (Atlantic Highlands: Humanities Press International, 1988 CrossRefGoogle Scholar).
70. Mereu, Italo , “Cenni storici sulle misure di prevenzione nell’Italia ‘liberale’ (1852-1894),” in La costruzione sociale della devianza, ed. Ciacci, Margherita and Gualandi, Vittoria (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1977), 290–307.Google Scholar
71. Marmo, Marcella and Casarino, Olimpia, “‘Le invincibili loro relazioni’. Identificazione e controllo della camorra napoletana nelle fonti di età postunitaria,” Studi storici 2 (1988): 385–419 Google Scholar, here 385.
72. Ibid.
73. Hughes, Steven C. , Crime, Disorder, and the Risorgimento: The Politics of Policing in Bologna (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994 CrossRefGoogle Scholar); Romagne, Direzione della gazzetta delle , Requisitoria e difesa nella causa di associazione di malfattori e di altri crimini discussa dinnanzi la Corte d’Assise di Bologna (Bologna: Fava and Garagnani, 1864 Google Scholar).
74. Sciascia, Leonardo , I pugnalatori (Turin: Einaudi, 1976 Google Scholar).
75. See the biographical description of Bolis in Guido Melis, ed., L’amministrazione centrale dall’unità alla Repubblica. Le strutture e i dirigenti (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1992), 75-77.
76. Pezzino, Paolo , La congiura dei pugnalatori. Un caso politico-giudiziario alle origini della mafia (Venice: Marsilio, 1992 Google Scholar).
77. Bono, Carlo Tito Dal , “Il camorrista e la camorra,” in Usi e costumi di Napoli e contorni descritti e dipinti, ed. Bourcard, Francesco de (Naples: Gaetano Nobile, 1858; repr. 1866), 2: 215–36 Google Scholar, here 218.
78. Bono, Dal , “Il cantastorie,” in Bourcard, Usi e costumi, 1: 49–56 Google Scholar, here 53.
79. Bono, Tito dal , “Il camorrista,” 228 Google Scholar.
80. On the new orientation of studies of the Mezzogiorno, see the journal Meridiana. Rivista di storia e di scienze sociali, as well as Robert Lumley and Jonathan Morris, The New History of the Italian South: The Mezzogiorno Revisited (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 1997). On stereotypical views of the Mezzogiorno, see: Francesco, Antonio de , La palla al piede. Breve storia del pregiudizio antimeridionale (Milan: Feltrinelli, 2012 Google Scholar); Patriarca, Silvana , Italian Vices: Nation and Character from the Risorgimento to the Republic (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010 Google Scholar); Moe, Nelson , The View from Vesuvius: Italian Culture and the Southern Question (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002 Google Scholar); Dickie, John , Darkest Italy: The Nation and the Stereotypes of the Mezzogiorno, 1860-1900 (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1999 Google Scholar).
81. See Migliorini, Luigi Mascilli , “Povertà e criminalità a Napoli dopo l’Unificazione. Il questionario sulla camorra del 1875,” Archivio Storico per le Province Napoletane, 3rd ser., 90 (1980): 567–615 Google Scholar; on the 1874 inquest, see Camorra, quesiti e risposte, b.1159, Questura, Diversi, ASN.
82. Forni, Eugenio , Dei criteri d’investigazione nei segreti dei reati. Racconti e considerazioni (Naples: Morano, 1877 Google Scholar).
83. Bolis, Giovanni , La polizia e le classi pericolose della società. Studii (Bologna: Nicola Zanichelli, 1871 Google Scholar).
84. Forni, Dei criteri, 58.
85. Bolis, La polizia, 685.
86. Ibid., 737.
87. Ibid., 676.
88. Nicotera’s intervention took place following police questioning of Felice Cavallotti concerning Benoît Malon’s expulsion from Italy. On this episode, see the entry “Andrea Costa” by Andreina de Clementi in Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani (1984), 30: 133.
89. Lombroso, Cesare , Criminal Man According to the Classification of Cesare Lombroso (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1911 Google Scholar). On criminal anthropology, see Montaldo, Silvano , ed., Cesare Lombroso. Gli scienziati e la nuova Italia (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2010 Google Scholar); Castelnuovo, Delia Frigessi , Cesare Lombroso (Turin: Einaudi, 2003 Google Scholar); Gibson, Mary , Born to Crime: Cesare Lombroso and the Origins of Biological Criminology (Westport: Praeger, 2002 Google Scholar). 90. Jacquemet, Credibility in Court, 31.
Linked content
This is a translation of: L’imaginaire de la secte