How did the Sicilian criminal authorities appear?

The criminal authorities of Sicily in the XIX century were sure that everything can be achieved with a kind word, if you hold a gun in your hands. Wicked irony reflects the essence of the ugly phenomenon that originated on the island after the long, leading the inhabitants of the island to the poverty of robberies and robberies from their neighbors. True, organized groups only became after Napoleon's conquest of Italy, when the feudal nobility left the island and transferred their estates to the manager, whose main task was to collect taxes from the peasants and beat the debts.

In order for the management of the estates to be effective, the ministers organized their small punitive detachments that did not shun blackmail. Peculiarly organized associations created and peasant families, trying to protect themselves from the stray gangsters, which swarmed at the time Sicily, located in the heart of the trade routes of the Mediterranean. The situation was the same as in the nineties in our country, when Moscow's criminal authorities demanded payment for not being robbed, and for returning the stolen goods to you.

The situation was so difficult that the governors of Napoleon did not even try to interfere in it, and therefore lost their influence, losing the power of just one thousand Garibaldi's companions. Nor did it bring relief to the inhabitants of the island and the unification of Italy, since the new authorities were interested in the development of industry concentrated in the northern part of the country, and the agrarian south survived on its own. The large and medium-sized landowners of Sicily found it difficult to preserve property in such conditions, so local criminal authorities became their best assistants, although not always desired or chosen by their own will.
Such defenders quickly satiated with the payment established by the contract and began to demand a share in the property, gradually taking all the property to their hands. We saw something similar in those times when the criminal authorities of Russia tried to "cover" the whole business and did not miss any trade point.

Sicilian power unions were becoming more organized, traditions were born in them and inherited traditions aimed at preserving the criminal structure. Strong personalities, who are concerned about the security of the created system and about the protection of their interests, made their way to the chapter. Therefore, criminal authorities began to unite all members of their organizations with a mutual guarantee and solve all competition issues through blood revenge - vendetta, administering justice according to their rules.

The scope of their activities is so wide that no one is indifferent. Directly or indirectly, each resident of the island becomes associated with some grouping. Gradually, under the control of criminal authorities take and state officials, distributing posts and interested in their tempting contracts. Expansion of influence went so fast that prosperous mafia families already began to feel a shortage of manpower, so they began to expand through marriages and christenings. In this case, the leader of one clan - the godfather - was entrusted to several families of godchildren, whom he kept under control.

Only in the twentieth century, the criminal authorities of Sicily received the first strong blow, knocked them out for fifteen years, when the fascist dictator B. Mussolini came to power. He had his own army, formed from bandits, and he did not need the services of the old mafia clans.