Criminalità e giustizia in Sardegna all'inizio dell'Ottocento

The topic of this research is the study of crime and banditry during the eighteenth and nineteenth century, with the aim of defining the nature of the Sardinian criminality of this period and understanding the continuity with the past and the breaks, in a constant confrontation with the Mediterranean world and the European context at the same time. It is a crucial and eventful period, starting in 1780s, and touching several important moments of the Island’s history: the echoes of the French revolution, the Sardinian revolution, the arrival of the royal family, the establishment of the prefectures and finally, conscription. Many historians have, in the past, pictured banditry as a phenomenon born in the 1970s, the years of the so-called "anonima sequestri". The concept of an eternal banditry linked to the pastoral culture of the inner areas of the island, was therefore consolidated. Behind this interpretation we find the undisclosed influences of Nicephorus and the considerations made by Hobsbawm and Braudel, namely the idea of a banditry born from "social revolt" and the misery of a Mediterranean mountain. The increase in population could not be sustained any longer, so the mountain was forced to expel men in excess drastically, which then transformed them in predators of the plains and countryside. For about thirty years now, that stereotypical image of banditry, although it still resists, has entered a crisis. The recent Italian and European historical-geographical debate, as well as some first-hand archival research, have deeply renewed the debate about justice in modern times and on the modern state itself. The focus at the time was on conflicts, parties, factions, feuds. Judgments in court did not exclude the transactions with the authorities and the public and private "peace" revealed the simultaneous presence of different justices: community and institutional, retributive and negotiated, judicial and extrajudicial. Their position was not always hierarchical, nor was their relationship always conflictual, but above all, the state justice was no longer dominant, and the thesis of the state monopoly of violence was cracked. Hence, the need not only to open the debate on Sardinian banditry in the modern age to the one underway at national and international level, but also to renew the field of sources in depth. To grasp the complex dynamics of violence and banditry, we need to go beyond the traditional judicial sources which, according to Mario Sbriccoli, "treat crime but reveal justice"; their numbers do not measure "the presence of crime", but rather "persecuted" crimes and "the functioning of justice". The image outlined overall is that of a banditry concentrated in two main areas of the Island: Gallura and Barbagia. Gallura was basically an ideal border area for criminal and political escapees and a perfect hiding place for those who wanted to escape justice. The state repression, the hardness or the exemplariness of the penalties could not quell the fury of certain bandits. Only the replacement of community justice, with safe channels, amnesties and ‘peaces’ could bring back the order. Not very different will be the case of Barbagia in the early nineteenth century. The disorders were so widespread and worrisome that the government was forced to intervene in several occasions, even within the same communities. The episodes of hostility among villages, the feuds inside the inhabited centres and the inefficiency of the feudal justice ministers made these territories ungovernable, despite the "repressive" policy of the government. In fact, to avoid failures, he started ‘negotiating’ and resorted to appeal to the fundamental institution of "peace". These cases testify the persistence in Sardinia in the nineteenth century of these ways of conducting justice, which led the alter ego of the sovereign of the time to often put aside the repressive apparatus of the government.