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The ‘noble bandit’ and the bandits of the nobles: brigandage and local community in nineteenth-century Andalusia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

Henk Driessen
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Extract

Since Hobsbawm published his Primitive Rebels (1959) and Bandits (1969), the study of organized banditry is slowly moving out of the dusky fringe of history and social science. In the 1970s some interesting regional and biographical studies have come to light. Apart from the encouraging example set by Hobsbawm, this has largely been the result of the increasing rapprochement between history and social science. Ordinary, rural and marginal people are being set on the stage of history. However, detailed comparative local and regional studies are still needed to test Hobsbawm's frame of analysis. Moreover, as he himself admitted, the evidence on which Bandits relies—poems and ballads—is rather ‘tricky’ and needs to be supplemented with other sources.

Type
Overt and Covert Politics: clients, factieux, brigands
Information
European Journal of Sociology / Archives Européennes de Sociologie , Volume 24 , Issue 1 , May 1983 , pp. 96 - 114
Copyright
Copyright © Archives Européenes de Sociology 1983

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References

(1) Blok, A., Mafia and peasant rebellion as contrasting factors in Sicilian latifundism, Archives européennes de sociologie, X (1969), 95–116CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Id. The peasant and the brigand: social banditry reconsidered, Comparative Studies in Society and History, XIV (1972), 494–506; Id. The Bokkerijders Bands 1726–1776. Preliminary notes on brigandage in the Southern Netherlands, Papers on European and Mediterranean Societies, II (Amsterdam 1975); Cobb, R., La Bande d'Orgères, in Reactions to the French Revolution (London 1972)Google Scholar; Id. La Route du Nord: the Bande Juive, in Paris and its Provinces, 1792–1802 (London 1975); Küther, C., Räuber und Gauner in Deutschland. Das organisierte Bandenwesen im 18. und frühen 19. Jahrhundert (Göttingen 1976)Google Scholar; Moss, D., Bandits and boundaries in Sardinia, Man (1979) 3, 477–97Google Scholar; Lewin, L., The oligarchical limitations of social banditry in Brazil: the case of the ‘good’ thief Antonío Silvino, Past & Present, (1979) No. 82, 116–47Google Scholar; O'Malley, P., Social bandits, modern capitalism and the traditional peasantry: a critique of Hobsage bawm, Journal of Peasant Studies, II (1978/1979), 489–502Google Scholar; Macfarlane, A., The Justice and the Mare's Ale. Law and disorder in seventeenth-century England (Oxford 1981)Google Scholar.

(2) Writes Hobsbawm, in a revised edition of Bandits (New York 1981)Google Scholar: ‘No doubt it is difficult in these matters to distinguish between myth and fact, especially in a world in which one turns so readily into the other’.

(3) Although he recognizes that there is no justification for romanticizing Andalusian bandits, Pitt-Rivers maintains that the bandit is ‘theoretically, at any rate, romantic and honorable figure, he is outside the law but he is not immoral’. Cf. Pitt-Rivers, J., The People of the Sierra 2 (Chicago 1971), p. 183Google Scholar.

(4) de Zugasti, J., El Bandolerismo. Estudio social y memorias históricas, ten Vols. (Madrid 1876–1880), passimGoogle Scholar; Baroja, J. Caro, Ensayo sobre la literatura de Cordel (Madrid 1969), pp. 381, 385Google Scholar; Brenan, G., The Spanish Labyrinth: an account of the social and political background of the civil war (Cambridge 1971), p. 8Google Scholar; Ruiz, E. Martinez, Creación de la Guardia Civil (Madrid 1976), pp. 294, 303Google Scholar; Casey, J., The Kingdom of Valencia in the Seventeenth Century (Cambridge 1979), 212–15CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

(5) Blok, , The Bokkerijders Bands, p. 1Google Scholar.

(6) Actas Capitulares, Archivo Municipal de Santaella (A.M.S.); for further details on communication see Driessen, H., Agrotown and Urban Ethos in Andalusia (Nijmegen, Ph. D. dissertation, 1981), 136–41Google Scholar.

(7) Fuero de Nuevas Poblaciones de Andalucía, Noviss. Recop. B., Libra VII, titulo XXII, Ley III–IV, 32, A.M.S.

(8) In the mid-nineteenth century this militia consisted of 135 men, cf. Libro Capitular, 1854, A.M.S.

(9) Actas Capitulares, 1888, A.M.S.

(10) Driessen, , Agro-town and Urban Ethos, p. 100Google Scholar.

(11) Ford, R., Gatherings from Spain (London 1906), p. 66Google Scholar. This interchangeability of guard with bandit has also been noted in Baroja, Caro, Ensayo, pp. 373–75Google Scholar and Hobsbawm, , Bandits, 90Google Scholar.

(12) When Charles III promulgated a decree in 1769 prohibiting the carrying of arms in the countryside duting the close of the hunting season (the king being a fanatical hunter), shepherds, cultivators and travellers were exempted, an implicit admission that rural areas were insecure and could not be efficiently policed by the state; see also Ford, , Gatherings, p. 216Google Scholar.

(13) Libro de Bautizmos, II, folio 50, Archivo Parroquial de Santaella.

(14) The life story of El Vivillo is told in Girbal, F. Hernandez, Bandidos Celebres Españoles en la Historia y en la Leyenda (Madrid 1976, Vol. II)Google Scholar, and in Casero, G., Caciques y Ladrones (Madrid 1979)Google Scholar. Details in both versions often contradict each other.

(15) According to de Quirós, C. B. & Ardila, L., El bandolerismo andaluz (Madrid 1973)Google Scholar, Pacheco was the last ‘romantic’ bandit. Unfortunately, they do not provide evidence for this assertion.

(16) Baroja, Caro, Ensayo, p. 390Google Scholar.

(17) Blok, , The Peasant and the Brigand, p. 500Google Scholar.

(18) Quirós, & Ardila, , El bandolerismo, pp. 145–46Google Scholar; Hobsbawm, , Bandits, p. 13Google Scholar; Ruiz, E. Martinez, Creación de la Guardia Civil (Madrid 1976), pp. 290–92Google Scholar.

(19) Ruiz, Martínez, Creación, p. 293Google Scholar

(20) Unless indicated otherwise, the evidence in this paragraph has been derived from the council minutes of Santaella (Actas Capitulares, A.M.S.).

(21) Between 1812 and 1815 eleven bandits were executed publicly in the province of Sevilla, cf. Quirós, & Ardila, , El bandolerismo, pp. 89–90Google Scholar. However, banditry increased in subsequent years.

(22) Baroja, Caro, Ensayo, pp. 372 ffGoogle Scholar.

(23) Ibid. p. 272.

(24) Ruiz, Martínez, Creación, p. 66Google Scholar.

(25) Ibid. p. 95.

(26) Girbal, Hernandez, Bandidos Celebres, I, p. 171Google Scholar. El Bizco was also an important electoral agent for the regional caciques.

(27) See Wolf, E. R., Peasant Wars of the Twentieth Century (New York 1973), pp. 280–84Google Scholar, for a general analysis of the impact of capitalism on the peasantry.

(28) Libra Capitular, 1867, A.M.S.

(29) Ibid. 1883.

(30) Zugasti, , El Bandolerismo, II, pp. 237–70Google Scholar.

(31) Alfaro, L. Maraver, Historia de Córdoba (Cordoba 1863), 2 Vols., pp. 32–33Google Scholar.

(32) Elaborated from the statistical survey, Romero, M. Carbonero y, Guia de Córdoba y su Provincia para 1891 y 1892 (Córdoba 1891)Google Scholar.

(33) Maura, J. Romero, El caciquismo: tentativa de conceptualización, Revista de Occidente, CXXVII (1973), p. 30Google Scholar.

(34) Casero, , Caciques y Ladrones, pp. 25–26Google Scholar.

(35) Ibid. pp. 43–56, 166–69.

(36) Actas Capitulates, 1907, A.M.S.

(37) Data on Estepa has been derived from Gregory, D. D., La Odisea Andaluza. Una emigración hacia Europa (Madrid 1978)Google Scholar, and Casbro, Caciques y Ladrones.

(38) Parallels with seventeenth-century Valencia are striking; writes Casey, , The Kingdom of Valencia, p. 207Google Scholar: ‘the lawless breed were in the pay of the most conservative and reactionary forces in the kingdom, who were using the violence against one another, or in order to consolidate their position of power in the local community’.

(39) The Registros de Salida de Documentos y Comunicaciones (A.M.S.), which contain the official correspondence between the mayor and the commander of the Civil Guard, give an impression of the local level of crime.

(40) Hobsbawm, , Bandits, pp. 22, 91Google Scholar; Blok, A., The Mafia of a Sicilian Village 1860–1960: a study in violent peasant entrepreneurs (New York 1975), p. 22Google Scholar.

(41) Aya, R., The Missed Revolution: the fate of rural rebels in Sicily and Southern Spain 1840–1950, Papers on European and Mediterranean Societies, III (Amsterdam 1975) p.71Google Scholar

(42) Hobsbawm, , Bandits, p. 95Google Scholar.