Sardinian banditry

Sardinian banditry describes an outlaw behavior typical of the Mediterranean island of Sardinia, dating back to the Roman Empire.

[1] During the first half of the nineteenth century, banditry was connected with clashes between clans which were interspersed with truces endorsed by civil and religious authorities.

The seven Carabinieri failed to halt the raid but killed a bandit, whose body was removed and found (stripped and beheaded, to prevent identification) several days later.

Police prefects in the fascist regime stressed that the economic and social conditions of the inland areas were at the root of crime in rural Sardinia.

Contacts between local bandits and left-wing militants and organizations active in communist terrorism such as the Red Brigades and Nuclei Armati Proletari were aided by the detention of left-wing extremists in maximum-security prisons on the island, similar to how Sicilian Mafia members imprisoned in northern Italy began colluding with—and influencing—northern Italian criminal groups near their prisons (giving rise to the Mala del Brenta).

Publisher Giangiacomo Feltrinelli attempted to contact Sardinian pro-independence organizations with the intention of forming a communist government modelled on Fidel Castro's in Cuba.

[9] The 19th-century Closures Edict (editto delle chiudende) enclosed uncultivated pasture to promote agriculture and introduced private property.

During the early 1960s, the piano di rinascita ("Rebirth Plan") was implemented; it included the construction of factories to modernize an agricultural-pastoral economy into an industrial society.

From the seventeenth to the first half of the nineteenth century, Gallura was heavily affected by crime; after changing from nomadic to sedentary pastoralism, banditry nearly disappeared.

The neo-Marxist Antonio Gramsci said that he was fascinated as a boy by Giovanni Tolu, the bandit of Florinas who was made famous by writer Enrico Costa.