By the mid-nineteenth century the countryside of Europe's periphery became a theatrical topos where the vicarious fantasies and terrors of an emergent national literate bourgeoisie could be collectivized and enacted in literature. During the Ming Dynasty, military and civil jurisdictions were separated. One official reported that soldiers travelling by the Grand Canal from adjacent garrisons to the capital committed robbery and murder against civilian travelers and merchants; on the land, these soldiers had fallen into mounted banditry as well. In a number of places, however, bandits belonged to the peasantry through their presence in widely circulated chapbooks, which popularized and contemporized bandits. 10 Notorious Medieval Gangsters - Listverse The state's policies toward landlordism, peasant cultivators, and pastoralists may also be a significant variable because they may favor one over the other, with radical implications for illegal practices. "A Word at War: The Italian Army and Brigandage, 18601870." Banditry tended to appear less frequently in areas with large masses of rural proletarians, such as Puglia in southern Italy. At other times banditry represented an economic alternative in a world of opportunity narrowly restricted by the elite. In Crete, for example, extensive livestock theft was legitimated orally by reference to highly selective, nationalist accounts of the "freedom-loving" Klephts of old mentioned in in schoolbooks. From the perspective of the modern nation-state, bandits (or brigands, a term more popular in the nineteenth century) are criminals who resist the civilizing power of the state through violence, brutality, extortion, theft, and protection rackets. Although there are examples of lone bandits, bandits tended to form into fluid bands, sometimes of up to twenty persons. Calculated arbitrariness in imposing one's will and extravagant generosity are two aspects of the same phenomenon. According to Hobsbawm, the characteristic feature of social bandits is that "they are peasant outlaws who the lord and state regard as criminals, but who remain within peasant society, and are considered by the people as heroes, as champions, avengers, fighters for justice, perhaps even leaders of liberation, and in any case as men to be admired, helped and supported" (p. 17). Some standard illustrations of bats often used in language include: 'In the dark, keep an eye out for a cauldron of bats hanging inside a cave.'. These charismatic leaders were not only skilled in fighting and riding but also possessed material and social capital. [13] Xiangmazei (whistling arrow bandits) was a category of mounted bandits named after their practice of firing whistling arrows to alert their victims. What is a group of bandits called? - Answers Comeche, Juan Antonio Martnez, ed. By 1930, the total bandit population was estimated to be 20 million. To compound matters, official government sources often purposely blur the distinction between bandit and revolutionary. In the latter, banditry appears to have been more resilient, especially where a combination of external factors militated against turning pastoralists into peasants. DROVER: Term commonly used in the 1870s and 80s for a working cowboy engaged in trailing longhorns to market or a new range. [40], "Bandit" redirects here. Because privateering was generally a more lucrative occupation than military service, it tended to divert manpower and resources away from regular navies. They used their prepotency and violence to protect their kins' interests and thus ensure the support of family against betrayal to the state. Alternatively, the offenders are betrayed by other families, also resulting in their deaths. Granite Island: A Portrait of Corsica. Rome, 1986. He further expanded the field in the 1969 study Bandits. A central way to express violence and damage one's opponent's interests was through the mutilation of both individuals and animals. Runaway slaves or maroons sometimes became highwaymen, stealing from travelers to survive. D for Donkeys A group of donkeys is called a drove. Some estimates suggest that there are 1.4 billion insects for every single human on the planet. Banditry could be a tactic of rural elites as well as the rural poor; outlaw networks often cut across class lines. Rosalie Schwartz, Lawless Liberators: Political Banditry and Cuban Independence (1989). The term corsair is tied to the Mediterranean Sea, where, from roughly the late 14th century to the early 19th century, the Ottoman Empire dueled with the Christian states of Europe for maritime supremacy. They write new content and verify and edit content received from contributors. Neither solely a prepolitical form of protest nor a means of suppressing peasant unrest, it may have performed these functions among others. Passive complicity consisted of a series of unconnected individual acceptances of the status quo and served to conceal illegal violent acts. 2023 LoveToKnow Media. ." [25], Once they forcefully acquired goods and commodities, bandits had to sell them. In Sicily and Greece violent entrepreneurs from pastoral backgrounds managed to create new niches for themselves in the nation-state, especially when the new regime attempted to penetrate the countryside. 4 Adam The Leper. At other times, outlaw pirates would operate with the tacit encouragement of a government but without the written legal authorization given to privateers. The serrano (mountain region) uprisings during the Mexican Revolution offer another good example of political banditry cutting across class barriers. [30] Other than escaping to difficult terrains, powerful bandits used their connections with high-standing figures in the capital to negotiate safety. Banditry tended to emerge in remote, difficult-to-control mountainous areas containing large numbers of semimobile and state-resistant pastoralists. And "La Carambada," a female bandit who dressed in male clothing, robbed travelers in Quertaro, Mexico, during the mid-nineteenth century. "Banditry Privateers sometimes went beyond their commissions, attacking vessels that didnt belong to the targeted country. A member of the slighted family, usually a young man, responds with violence, thereby breaking state law, and flees. Encyclopaedia Britannica's editors oversee subject areas in which they have extensive knowledge, whether from years of experience gained by working on that content or via study for an advanced degree. Indeed, when used by state authorities, the pejorative "bandits" labels forms of violent resistance they cannot control except by equally brutal repression. In Corsica, for example, many bandits were obliged to rely on the support of family and kin and thus soon found themselves further enmeshed in family feuds. In early twentieth-century southern Bolivia, the peasants used banditry, mass mobilization, or litigation, depending on the strength of their corporate identity and cohesiveness. About, Edmond. [13] Whistling arrow bandits had troubled the Capital Region throughout the first three decades of the sixteenth century. . see also one-armed bandit banditry / bndtri/ noun [noncount] They were charged with banditry and smuggling. Davis, John, A. Richard W. Slatta, ed., Bandidos: The Varieties of Latin American Banditry (1987). Political banditry often required outside support to be successful. "Genuine" banditry always seems to have existed in the past, never in the present. Where there was no (state) law, Rousseau discerned justice; where the people were oppressed, Rousseau anticipated freedom; where the ancien rgime recognized anarchic, bloodthirsty bandits, he discerned exemplary citizens capable of discipline. Cambridge, U.K., 1977. Florence, 1977. A cauldron of bats is simply the term most commonly used for a group of bats. Despite the popular image, polygyny among bandits was the exception and not the rule. Some bandits actually had a settled life and were even married. What does the name Bandit mean? The use of privateers allowed states to project maritime power beyond the capabilities of their regular navies, but there were trade-offs. Christon I. Archer, "Banditry and Revolution in New Spain, 17901821," in Biblioteca Americana 1, no. 3 (September 2004): 759-779. This box-office success, which was later reissued under the completely inappropriate title Sword of Blood, is part of the ongoing popularization and romanticization of the premodern underworld. Local responses were mixed but increasingly hostile to such collective negative stereotypes. Bandits were often romanticized after the fact by way of rhetoric and texts that circulated with a life of their own, giving the bandits a permanence and potency that transcended their localized domain and transitory nature. Collective Nouns for Mammals Noted for their fur (or hair) and ability to produce milk to feed their young, mammals come in all shapes and sizes. Fears of banditry of this sort surfaced in 1789, during the French Revolution, and helped trigger rural risings. In Archivio Storico per la Calabria e la Lucania 42, Rome, 1975. Retrieved April 27, 2023 from Encyclopedia.com: https://www.encyclopedia.com/history/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/banditry. Modern research has tried to debunk this myth, but largely to no avail. Sciascia, Leonardo. Gonzlo G. Snchez and Donny Meertens, Bandoleros, gamonales y campesinos: El caso de la Violencia en Colombia (1983). The group called on the state government and security agencies to evacuate migrant herdsmen "to where they came from, as was done with Almajiris", to stop the attacks. Bracewell, Catherine Wendy. Caution must be exercised in reducing discernible sociological facts, such as the observation that a bandit successfully managed to evade capture for a long period, to single empiricist causes, such as powerful protection. Banditry | Encyclopedia.com In many societies, such as in southern Spain, Sicily, Greece, and the Balkans, banditry had a predominantly agro-pastoral base. Banditry in places like southern Italy and Sicily became the subject of numerous inquiries as well as massive army intervention. Solares Robles, Laura. Any time people have used the sea for military and commercial purposes, there presumably has been some form of piracy. Within the Cite this article tool, pick a style to see how all available information looks when formatted according to that style. From the perspective of the modern nation-state, bandits (or brigands, a term more popular in the nineteenth century) are criminals who resist the civilizing power of the state through violence, brutality, extortion, theft, and protection rackets. [17], The Capital Region also housed a huge number of soldiers with Ming's system of hereditary military and a major portion of bandits were actually soldiers stationed in the region. BANDIT | English meaning - Cambridge Dictionary In their typical form, most stories about bandits can be reduced to the following pattern: The triggering incident is a slight to personal or family honor by another family or individual of equal or superior status. The closer one gets to it, the more such positive features appear to recede. Either they became symbols of betrayal by more powerful vested interests, or the violence of their executions, and the disassembly of their bodies as public spectacle, demonstrated the irrepressible power of the state over the individual. LOCATION: central and western part of the Balkan Peninsula (Southeastern Europe) , Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Croatia, Kosovo, "Fascism" was the ideology of the movement that, under the leadership of Benito Mussolini, seized power in Italy in 1922 and held power until the All, The independent (and sovereign) political community. Brigantaggio politico had already emerged as a central feature of Corsican independence strategies against Genoa under Giacinto Paoli and Gian-Pietro Gaffori in the mid-eighteenth century. Violence is targeted specifically against persons and properties (usually animals) of persons, and displayed through stories. Myth and folklore color some famous bandits so completely that accurate historical depiction is difficult. The band was known as the. The state attempts to capture the offenders and, if it is successful, executes them. In addition to a desire for economic gain, personal and familial conflict drove some men to banditry. What Is a Group of Rabbits or Bunnies Called? - AZ Animals She married at the age 11 to a man three times her age, but was abandoned by her husband and her family after the marriage broke down. Turpin's popular image entails many legends. Banditry is a vague concept of criminality and in modern usage can be synonymous for gangsterism, brigandage, marauding, terrorism, piracy and thievery. //]]>. 27 Apr. The U.S. press and government officials of the 1920s termed Augusto Sandino's Nicaraguan forces "bandits" to discredit them. and, usually, with the mass slavery of civilians from partisan-controlled areas.[5]. Banditry is therefore a phenomenon that is not only often refractory to the investigations of the outside observer but also concealed from the participants themselves. He started his criminal career in 1602 and even features in Cervantes's Don Quixote (1605, 1615). Paris, 1861. Such profiteers formed whatever alliances they deemed useful. The word "thug" traces its roots to the Hindi and Urdu word thag, which means thief or swindler, and which itself is derived from the Sanskrit verb sthagati (to conceal).. role in Jewish history In Judaism: New parties and sects The Sicarii (Assassins), so-called because of the daggers ( sica) they carried, arose about 54 ce, according to Josephus, as a group of bandits who kidnapped or murdered those who had found a modus vivendi with the Romans. Encyclopedia of Latin American History and Culture. J "Banditry London, 1972. Hobsbawm distinguished bandits from gangs drawn from the professional underworld and from communities for whom raiding was a normal way of life (such as the Bedouins). 27 Apr. Kther, Carsten. This desecration of the body also defiled the bandit or perpetrator. Throughout the Mediterranean, at least as far back as the eighteenth century, banditry has often been incorporated in nationalist and regional rhetoric. Two pioneer historians who emphasized the social aspects of banditry were Franco Molfese and Eric Hobsbawm. Likewise, stories about bandits should not be treated as primary raw data on the bandits themselves or as simple expressions of hidden peasant aspirations, but rather as the result of a process of elaborated discourse (including textual discourse and reinterpretation) about power relations within society. Church of La Negrita, Our Lady of Angels, Cartago, Costa Rica. He set himself up outside the community and thus as the ultimate sacrificial victim. In Serbian, Croatian, and Bosnian collective imaginary, Encyclopedia of Latin American History and Culture. The Redbrands mostly consisted of humans, male and female, although a handful of halflings and bugbears were also in the bandit group. Discourse on and about bandits in society indicates a great deal about that society and its power relations. The following analysis focuses on this important category, where among other things causation has been carefully studied. Outlaws and Highwaymen: The Cult of the Robber in England from the Middle Ages to the Nineteenth Century. So a murder of crows is one of the coolest (or at least memorable) animal group names. In the early seventeenth century the most famous Spanish bandit was Perot Rocaguinarda. Inchiesta in Sicilia. I want to receive exclusive email updates from YourDictionary. For this reason he was highly esteemed by the poor of Naples. Lampio (Virgolino Ferreira da Silva) and Antnio Silvino in Brazil, Po Romero in Bolivia, and Manuel Garca in Cuba became symbols of popular resistance to oppression. Originating with the Greek peirats, meaning brigand, it can be applied to a wide range of nautical misbehavior, including coastal raiding and intercepting ships on high seas. https://www.encyclopedia.com/international/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/banditry, "Banditry Driessen, Henk. 33 views, 1 likes, 0 loves, 1 comments, 0 shares, Facebook Watch Videos from St Thomas the Apostle Hanwell: Parish Mass on the Fourth Sunday after Easter. Robber bands, however, as well as vagabonds and gypsies traveling in groups of varying sizes, were both more incalculable and more dangerous. Revenge in kind is threatened by the family who made the initial slight. Exploring food, architecture in Costa Rica - Trinidad and Tobago Newsday The other French bandit-hero of the eighteenth century, Robert Mandrin (17241755) Bandits and Bureaucrats: The Ottoman Route to State Centralization. Princeton, N.J., 1985. Unlike mythical bandits, however, actual gangs acted more often on the basis of self-interest and opportunism than in the defense of peasant-class interests. [38], Similarly, small groups of local bandits could also end up joining larger groups of rebels. More than most other social phenomena, the characterization of banditry depends upon how it is approached. [7] 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. Franchetti and Sonnino also noted a widespread admiration for bandits among the literati, who romanticized them, and paradoxically among landowners, the most likely to suffer from bandit depredations. Thus it was not so much through their lives that bandits generated the sometimes powerful myth of nobility as through their deaths. Blok asserted that analysis must encompass the wider society within which bandits operated. Like the contemporary "Bandit Queen" in India, Guiliano became the subject of novels and films. Local commanders and constables were responsible for apprehending bandits, but the emperors often dispatched special censors to cope with rampant banditry. The four bandits were Yeung Hok-ling, Sun Yat-sen, Chan Siu-bak and Yau Lit. As with mammals, birds come in all forms, leading to a delightfully poetic sampling of collective nouns, from convocations to murders. Thief The name Bandit is primarily a gender-neutral name of American origin that means Thief. The slighted family causes the death of the original offender. Regl, Joan. a group of bandits | English examples in context | Ludwig As a category of social behavior, banditry employs specific displays of violence to generate terror for personal ends. Souna Yuuki is a young boy who survives a massacre after his family is killed by a group of bandits called the Hydras, who burn a mark of their emblem into his hand and leaves him to die. Peasant stories about bandits exhibit what Erick D. Langer has termed "a selective memory." Who are the 'bandits' terrorising Nigeria's 'Wild Wild West'? This term is also used when informally referring to a young rabbit. . From the perspective of the "bandit" himself, the situation may look different. Exploring food, architecture in Costa Rica. Hobsbawm, Eric. They personalize the mafioso's or bandit's power and prepotency, generate respect, and emphasize his inalienable symbolic capital. 2023 . A bandit typically belongs to a gang of bandits who commit crimes in remote, lawless, or out-of-the-way places. The victim was therefore defined taxonomically. Thus activities by bandits that had political implications (such as violence that kept the peasants cowed and docile) were often perceived as personal at the grass roots and hence of only limited concern, except to the participants. In central and eastern Europe and in the Balkans, it was found in the countryside, in specific conditions (such as following wars and massive dislocations) and in specific periods, especially in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, when the modern nation-state was emerging. "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. [23], Bandits technique involved the martial skills to use various weapons, ranging from bows and arrows to swords. Terms of venery is the more official phrase for what we know as collective nouns, nouns of assembly, or names for groups of animals. Because they were embedded in local communities, bandits benefited from a grassroots solidarity against outsiders and state authority. Rather than being champions of the poor, bandits often terrorized and oppressed them. Banditry, Chivalry, and Terror in German Fiction, 17901830. In both cases, conflict and banditry broke down along partisan or regional, not class, lines. These . The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age ofPhilip II. Bande armate, banditi, banditismo e repressione di giustizia negli stati europei di antico regime. Sixty years later Ronald Reagan publicly referred to members of the Sandinista government as "thugs." Over time, the buccaneers attracted a multinational mix of adventurers and scoundrels, and they migrated to Tortuga, an island off the coast of Hispaniola, in 1630. It was a form of crime that rose out of political and social crisis, especially in areas over which the government could exercise only very little control, above all mountainous regions and often frontier zones. As the genesis of banditry was personal, so too was its prosecution. The women who shared the roving life of bandits normally did not step outside the generally accepted gender role. C for Cobras A group of cobras is called a quiver. See also Crime and Punishment ; Vagrants and Beggars . Ming China was largely an agricultural society and contemporary observers remarked that famine and subsequent hardship often gave rise to banditry. If you see some of them in a group, they might be referred to as a gang or a pack. Some outlaws gained reputations as social bandits and were celebrated in folklore and music. [28], The career of banditry often led leaders to assemble more bandits and army deserters and organize predatory gangs into active rebel groups. Unlike pre-political social bandits or self-serving guerrilla bandits, political bandits had a consciousness of and loyalty to a larger political movement. On the other hand it suggests that ordinary peasants or pastoralists, the source of national folklore and the social stratum from whom bandits were traditionally recruited, possessed the right ethnic sentiments in rejecting foreign authority, exploitation, and other abuses. Snowden, Frank M. Violence and Great Estates in the South of Italy: Apulia, 19001922. Terror and violence often had a personal element. Female gang leaders were out of the question in early modern times, although some of the women associated with organized robbery, such as the famous German archthief named Alte Lisel, could well have commanded a band themselves. The songs about the hardships of bandit life in Corsica, Greece, and elsewhere lament that becoming a bandit was far from glorious. A Reuters report said that authorities in the area have attributed the most recent case of mass kidnapping to an armed group of bandits. But betrayal to agents of the state was always a grave danger, unless the individual was protected by powerful interests. The mythology and rhetoric that surround banditry must be interpreted carefully. El bandolerisme catal. Sometimes you look at a group of animals, and youre not really sure what to refer to them as collectively. [15] Robinson also points out that many eunuchs in Beijing resorted to banditry. dit ban-dt plural bandits Synonyms of bandit 1 plural also banditti ban-di-t : an outlaw who lives by plunder especially : a member of a band of marauders 2 : robber 3 : an enemy plane banditry ban-d-tr noun Example Sentences was, as Hobsbawm has shown, a somewhat less suitable candidate for idealization. Zilberg, Elana. Britannica Dictionary definition of BANDIT [count] : a criminal who attacks and steals from travelers and who is often a member of a group of criminals They were two of the most famous bandits [= outlaws, robbers] of the 19th century. Dickie, John. Banditry can be defined simply as the act of taking property from another by using force or the threat of force. //