Banditry
A person who engages in banditry is known as a bandit and primarily commits crimes such as extortion, robbery, kidnapping, and murder, either as an individual or in groups.
Banditry is a vague concept of criminality and in modern usage can be synonymous with gangsterism, brigandage, marauding, terrorism, piracy, and thievery.
The New English Dictionary on Historical Principles (NED) defined "bandit" in 1885 as "one who is proscribed or outlawed; hence, a lawless desperate marauder, a brigand: usually applied to members of the organized gangs which infest the mountainous districts of Italy, Sicily, Spain, Greece, Iran, and Turkey".
In modern usage the word has become a synonym for "thief", hence the term "one-armed bandit" for gambling machines that can leave the gambler with no money.
[1] "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.
Brigands such as Carmine Crocco, Michelina Di Cesare, Ninco Nanco, and Nicola Napolitano were active during this period and eventually developed followings as folk heroes.
Brigandage in Southern Italy continued sporadically following the 1870s, with brigands such as Giuseppe Musolino and Francesco Paolo Varsallona forming bandit gangs at the turn of the 20th century.
Sardinia has a long history of banditry, with the bandit and kidnapping group anonima sarda being the most recent manifestation of this phenomenon.
German authorities suppressed partisan opposition with maximum force[4] and, usually, with the mass slavery of civilians from partisan-controlled areas.
Ming China was largely an agricultural society and contemporary observers remarked that famine and subsequent hardship often gave rise to banditry.
[6]: 535 As Shih-Shan Henry Tsai explained, self-castration was just another way to escape impoverishment; and when a group of eunuchs failed to find employment in the palace, they often turned to mob violence.
[6]: 538–539 Robinson further points out that "[a] widespread network to dispose of the stolen livestock linked" towns in the Capital Region to nearby provinces.
Veritable Records of the Ming Dynasty relates that the great bandit Zhang Mao lived in a big mansion in his hometown Wenan.
Local commanders and constables were responsible for apprehending bandits, but the emperors often dispatched special censors to cope with rampant banditry.
[9]: 107–108 Ning Gao was one of the censors of 1509, and he employed gruesome means such as display of severed heads and body parts to kill off existing bandits and to intimidate potential ones.
Through a well-planned raid, Ning Gao, a client of another powerful eunuch Liu Jin, successfully wounded and captured Zhang Mao, who was then transported to Beijing and executed.
[9]: 112–113 The career of banditry often led leaders to assemble more bandits and army deserters and organize predatory gangs into active rebel groups.
