The Sicilian mafia is a subject of endless fascination, but few
serious books have been written about it. In this provocative work,
Christopher Duggan argues that the idea of the mafia is a fiction,
born of political calculation and genuine misunderstanding of the
behaviour of Sicilians. The first part of the book looks at the
development of the idea of the mafia from the 1860s, when the term
first appeared, to the Second World War. Although all serious
observers realised that there was no organised criminal society in
Sicily, Duggan explains why the idea was perpetuated. When the
island became part of unified Italy in 1860, hostility to the new
state was claimed by officials to be criminally inspired, and they
spoke for the first time of 'the Mafia'. The distinctive values of
the Sicilians, such as their belief in private justice and
unwillingness to cooperate with the police, reinforced the idea of
a secret criminal society. From then on, many of Sicily's political
and social problems were attributed to this mythical
organisation.In the second part of the book, to illustrate the
general observations made in the first, Duggan provides a detailed
study of the repressive campaign conducted by the fascist
government against the mafia in the 1920s. Making use of private
papers, police files, and trial proceedings, he concludes that the
mafia was primarily an idea exploited for political ends, and that
its use only strengthened many Sicilians' deep mistrust of the
state. This lively book is a penetrating account of the origins of
the mafia myth and the first study of the impact of fascism on
Sicily. It will be of great interest to historians of modern Italy,
to anthropologists, and to criminologists, as well as to those who
are actively engaged in the fight against organised crime.
Christopher Duggan was a Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford, and
Lecturer in Italian History and Director of the Centre for the
Advanced Study of Italian Society at Reading University. He is
co-author, with Denis Mack Smith and Moses Finley, of 'A History of
Sicily' (1986).
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