Feuding, Conflict and Banditry in Nineteenth-Century Corsica

by Stephen Wilson

• ISBN13: 9780521522649
• ISBN10: 0521522641
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2003-10-30
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

Corsica is associated in many people’s minds with vendetta and banditry, but these phenomena have not been studied systematically. Using accounts by visitors and officials and particularly judicial records, this book provides such a study for the nineteenth century. Accounts of specific feuds lasting over many generations are given, including that which inspired Mérimée’s Colomba, and the whole phenomenon is set in its proper context of competition for scarce material resources and power in a traditional agro-pastoral society. Attitudes to death and the dead are examined, and reveal a divergence between local practice and belief and official Christianity, and the persistence of the notion that the spirit of the slain requires to be placated with blood. A general theme is the impact upon an isolated traditional society, and its system of sanctions, of incorporation into a modern state with courts and police.

Table of Contents

List of illustrations

Acknowledgements

1. Corsica in the nineteenth century

2. The history and incidence of feuds

3. Conflict and its causes: conflicts of material interest

4. Conflict and its causes: conflicts of honour

5. Conflict and its causes: intrafamilial conflict

6. Conflict and its causes: inter-community conflict

7. Obligation and organization in the feud

8. Immunity and disruption

9. Concilation and peacemaking

10. Feuding and the courts

11. Patronage and political conflict

12. Banditry

13. Death and the dead

14. Conclusion

Appendices

List of abbreviations

Notes

Sources and bibliography

Index.