Maybe this had something to do with it. Though a constitutional monarchy, the Piedmont government was a militarist state modelled somewhat on Prussia in which the army was directly under the control of the king (not parliament). After unification he used it on his own citizens, mercilessly putting down peasant and worker revolts and permanently alienating them in the process, historians think. (He also used it on a series of futile and doomed North African adventures, just as we are doing in Iraq.)

Wikipedia describes it:

“A long extensive guerrilla campaign against the unionists (1861-1871) took place throughout southern Italy, and in Sicily, inducing the Italian governments to a ferocious military repression. Ruled under martial law for many years Sicily (and southern Italy) was ravaged by the Italian army that summarily executed thousands of people, made tens of thousands prisoners, destroyed villages, and deported people. The Sicilian economy collapsed, leading to an unprecedented wave of emigration. In 1894 labour agitation through the radical Fasci Siciliani led again to the imposition of martial law.”

And so on. It’s not a nice story. Yes, under the Romans—they had latifundia—huge plantations run by absentee landlords and slave labor. The Spanish. The Church. But many of the problems today appear to have surprisingly recent causes that are somehow obscured by the romance of criminalty.

There is a great movie—Salvatore Giuliano by Francesco Rossi—for those that don’t already know about it.

There is not that big a difference. The IRA and the Ulstermen are both to a non-trivial extent organized crime rackets. The same is true for a significant number of US ethnic nationalist groups(Black Panthers, American Freemen).

The highly cultivated Frederick (d.circ 1250) (and his circle) who wrote in Sicilian is/are considered the first poet/s to write in the Italian vernacular. Except for some regular sound changes, Sicilian resembles Italian more than Calabrian or other dialects (such as Sardinian or even Neapolitan) do.

All Sicilians remember that their greatest period of prosperity was under the Arabs and ended with the reign of Frederick.

I always heard that the MAFIA dates from the time of the Sicilian Vespers, the great revolt against the Angevins, whom the Pope intalled to replace Frederick (accused of heresy and irreligion) and that it somehow stood for Morte ai Francesi (death to the French).

However, I can believe this view has been superseded and that that present Mafia and the word really date from a nineteenth century novel. In any case, it is clear that organized crime in Sicily, Naples, and Calabria has undergone many changes, particularly in the last 20 years, becoming logarhythmicallly more murderous, international, and even mainstream.

What I don’t understand – and perhaps other readers here do – is why the forces in opposition to the state did not develop into a self-conscious nationalist movement, and instead took the form of a criminal enterprise.

However, many more conventional historians trace the mafia to the secret societies that organized to liberate Sicily from the French, in the thirteenth century. The “Kingdom of the two Sicilies” that predates the Risorgimento was considered to be the most backward country in Europe, and many Italians think that incorporating it was a serious mistake.

Has anyone noticed that alot of the Italian-American mythos is a celebration of southern Italian, and often specifically Sicilian culture? By most evidence this area has been one of the more dysfunctional in the world. You would thihk Italian-Americans would want to downplay their connection to the region.

Nevada is an independent libertarian nation. Personal nuclear weapons are legal (see also Marc Stigler’s ‘Dad’s Nuke’ and the Algys Budrys novel ‘Some will Not Die’). Kidnapping is a legal and large industry, etc.

I always wonder what is supposed to be attractive about such places, as opposed to say, the modern UK or Scandinavian countries.

http://books.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,,1920825,00.html

Probably it has something to do with the long periods Sicily spent under foreign rule. Once the Norman kingdom was displaced it was Spanish rule, I think, for pretty much 700 years.

http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/k/c-m-kornbluth/syndic.htm

The US government is replaced by a mafia-based government system, and then fights to restore itself.

The novel is surprisingly sympathetic to ‘family based’ government.

CMK was one of the great social commentator science fiction writers (see ‘Not this August’ for the definitive US-after-Soviet-invasion novel, and ‘The Space Merchants’ for the world is run by advertising agencies (50 years after publication, much of that world has come to pass, it reads less like satire, and more like prophecy)).

His tragic early death (he was a veteran of the Battle of the Bulge, and had fatally strained his heart fighting in the snows and so died at 35 of a heart attack) robbed science fiction of one of its great authors.

http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/k/c-m-kornbluth/