General accounts of banditry have alluded to its connection with ‘vengeance and family honour’, but this has rarely occupied a central place in their description and analysis. The Corsican example suggests, by contrast, that although banditry had other aspects, its essential significance cannot be appreciated unless it is situated in a society where blood vengeance was operative and the defence of family interest and honour by violence a common imperative. The Corsican example also lends weight to the view elaborated by a number of writers in criticism of Hobsbawm, that, where banditry had a political dimension, it was less as a protest against the rich and the powerful in pursuit of liberty and justice and more as a component of intensified competition among local élites in the circumstances of incorporation into a modern state. In Corsica, too, when banditry did become distanced from the system of blood vengeance and honour, this may be seen as a sign of serious social crisis.

This is not the place to deal with the history of banditry in modern Corsica in detail, but some rough chronological outline is required. The struggle against the Genoese in the mid-eighteenth century had, to some extent, fostered banditry, and it continued to be an important phenomenon during the Paoli administration (1755–69), as evidenced by the draconian decrees issued against it. Banditry was again prominent in the resistance to the imposition of French rule after 1768, and during the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic periods, when external intervention exacerbated ‘internal dissensions’ and conscription filled the maquis with draft-evaders and deserters.