Rebels & Mafiosi

From the Publisher

"The Sicilian Mafia is the original and unsurpassed model of what politics and organized crime can do together, and Rebels and Mafiosi is. . . a lively primer in the historical origins of that dreadful marriage and its appalling children."-Peter Robb, New York Times Book Review, 1/7/01

"Fentress persuasively argues that without effective governance and improved economic conditions, the island is unlikely to rid itself of what he call the 'soldiers of the permanent revolution.'"-Publishers Weekly. March 27, 2000.

"Reconstructing its formative period, the author links the appearance of the 'dangerous' classes during the 19th century revolutions against Bourbon control to the evolution of mafia clientele covertly allied to policitically influential classes. . . Vividly written and insightful about Sicilian social and political history of the 19th century. Up-to-date bibliography and adequate illustrations. Recommended for university and public collections at all levels."-Choice, Vol. 38, No. 4, December 2000

"Fentress tells his story well, particularly in his vivid portraits of the Palermo revolutionaries, who raised the tricolor over and over again for decades. How these zealous men who fought for liberty ended up squabbling over turf and murdering their neighbors in family feuds is a sad yet interesting tale. Recommended."-Library Journal. March 1, 2000.

"Recently, professional historians. . . have undertaken scholarly investigations of the many and varied 'social' organizations around the world. Not surprisingly, the 'social' movement that seems to have provoked the most interest is the Sicilian mafia. . . Fentress has added to the growing number of works on the historical development of the mafia in Sicily. . . The book does provide an interesting look at the development of certain mafia organizations in nineteenth-century Sicily."-Charles L. Bertrand, Concordia University. American Historical Review, June 2001

"A chief value of Fentress's work is that it transforms into a variable what is often viewed as a constant: the emergence of mafia groups as illicit, criminal enterprises. . . Fentress makes us appreciate why many unions in the United States have been bastions of organized crime, and why some Sicilian antimafia groups after 1918 and 1945 had difficulties in not becoming mirror images of what they sought to destroy."-Filippo Sabetti, McGill University

"Rebels and Mafiosi is an important contribution to Sicilian history. James Fentress's narrative verve and meticulous analysis of individual episodes add greatly to our understanding of the mafia in the nineteenth century."-Christopher Duggan, University of Reading, author of A Concise History of Italy and Fascism and the Mafia

"James Fentress give a fascinating and important account of the origins of the Sicilian Mafia. He shows how the Mafia is not an ancient set of customs and traditions peculiar to the Sicilian way of life, but the product of nineteenth-century Sicily, a time of failed rebellions and failed reforms."-Alexander Stille, author of Excellent Cadavers: The Mafia and the Death of the First Italian Republic

Library Journal

Nineteenth-century Sicily was defined by two successive concepts: revolution and Mafia. Social historian Fentress (Social Memory) shows how the former led to the creation of the latter. He describes in detail several inconclusive attempts at revolution, mostly in the name of Sicilian independence from Naples. He then traces how, once the fervor died down, the rebel cells drifted instead into crime. They quickly came to specialize in the traditional protection rackets associated with the Mafia. The word Mafia itself was unknown before the 1860s, but both word and concept were omnipresent by 1900. Fentress tells his story well, particularly in his vivid portraits of the Palermo revolutionaries, who raised the tricolor over and over again for decades. How these zealous men who fought for liberty ended up squabbling over turf and murdering their neighbors in family feuds is a sad yet interesting tale. Recommended for academic libraries. [Fentress's Blood and Honor: From the Mafia's Sicilian Roots to Its Domination of American Crime was recently published by Birch Lane Press.--Ed.]--Robert Persing, Univ. of Pennsylvania Lib., Philadelphia Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.\

Booknews

Fentress, a former political philosophy professor at Brunel U. in London, England and current resident of Italy, describes the historical emergence and evolution of the Mafia, from the early- to mid-19th century Sicilian alliances between "men of honor" and intellectuals in the struggle for independence from the Bourbon Kingdom of Naples to the longstanding covert relationships that are protecting today's mafiosi. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Kirkus Reviews

A thoroughly researched history of the origins of the Mafia in Sicily. Journalist and translator Fentress (Eco's The Search for the Perfect Language, 1995) reveals that the first printed occurrences of the word "mafia" date from the 1860s in the Palermo region. Derived from Palermitan slang for "flashy," it soon grew to mean the "kingdom within a kingdom," the "network of submerged power," the criminal underworld. Fentress's thesis is that "the story of the mafia cannot be understood except against the background of the revolution," so he proceeds in his extremely detailed text to examine the uprisings in Sicily in 1820, 1848, 1860, and 1866—the latter "transforming itself into the mafia." After an initial chapter dealing with pre-Mafia Sicily (beginning with the transfer of the island from Spain to Naples in 1743) and with a failed uprising in 1820, Fentress deals with each major revolutionary period in a separate chapter. The 1848 revolt succeeded briefly, only to be put down six months later by the Neapolitans. The 1860 revolution featured the derring-do of Garibaldi, and this chapter therefore contains some of Fentress's most engaging narrative. In June 1860, after a "stunning military victory" by Garibaldi's vastly outnumbered followers, the Neapolitans capitulated and Garibaldi assumed his stature as a Sicilian hero—if not a deity. Slipping into the interstice separating order from chaos was the criminal class known by all in the 1860s as the Mafia. (Fentress dismisses as "nonsense" the numerous folk stories about the Mafia's medieval origins.) In an interestingsectionpointing out the parallels between criminals and politicians, Fentress observes that their talents "are broadly similar." He also notes that the Mafia's rise to power can be attributed partially to the Sicilian trust of "brigands and criminals . . . [rather] than the authorities." Fentress ends his history with the chilling observation that the "mafia are the soldiers of the permanent revolution" (i.e., of the continuing "refusal to recognize . . . the legitimacy of authority"). Sometimes exciting, sometimes tedious, always supported by a sturdy foundation of fact and tireless archival research. (3 maps, 18 plates)