1. Cory Satter
23 March 2015
Prof. Fisher
History and Politics
“OUR THING”
The Origins of the Cosa Nostra
The Cosa Nostra, Italian for “Our Thing”, is the name of the Sicilian mafia,
perhaps the world’s most famous one. As a testament to such infamy, the Italian
penal code bans “mafia-style organizations” in the country that has been plagued by
organized crime. This broad wording leads to new questions, however. What is,
exactly, a “mafia-style organization”? How did the Cosa Nostra become such a
menacing force within the Italian state? To gain answers to these questions, it is first
important to discover the origins of it. As shall be seen, the Cosa Nostra is the result
of a long, turbulent history: Millennia of feudal policies on the Sicilian island,
invasion and conquest, subsequent maladministration and corruption, and
modernization.
Sicily, the largest of the Italian Republic’s island, is one of the most distinct
regions of Italy in terms of culture and language. Its history is far different than that
of Northern Italy and, to this day, prejudices remain between the latter’s inhabitants

2. and those of the so-called Mezzogiorno.1 Perhaps the most striking distinction,
between the Mezzogiorno and Northern Italy is their respective histories, most
certainly Sicily’s. Here, Italy has what I call a ‘nation deficit’. As Martin Solly opens in
his Xenophobe’s Guide to the Italians opens, “Italians are not a race, but a collection
of peoples,” (1).2 Indeed, Massimo d’Azeglio, a leader of the Risorgimento, Italian
Unification, famously said shortly after, “We have made Italy; now we must make
Italians.” Italy is a nation of nations, each one having their own history. Progress
towards one nation, surely, has been made. At the time of unification, only 1 in 40
Italians actually spoke Italian, with most speaking their regional languages and yet
now it is spoken in every part of Italy — in addition to the regional languages
(Squires, “Italy Divided”). This divide can only be understood in the context of the
history of the Italian Peninsula as a whole, beginning the Rome.
The Roman Empire was, undoubtedly, the Italian Peninsula’s Golden Age. Not
until after WWII would it once again know peace as it did during the Pax Romana —
roughly two centuries of Roman hegemonic peace. Yet, nothing is eternal. The
Empire was split into two halves and various emperors’ mismanagements and wars
of succession weakened the Western Roman Empire to a point of no return. It
collapsed in CE 476 and the Peninsula was fought for between the Goths and the
Eastern Romans, the Byzantine Greeks. The latter group proved victorious but, in
the end, was unable to hold onto a united Italian Peninsula. The Byzantines would
1 The term Mezzogiorno is Italian and literally means “mid-day” but refers to the
southern half of the Italian Peninsula, below Rome, and includes Sicily. The
Mezzogiorno is primarily agricultural and rural, starkly contrasting with the much
more populous and industrial North. Organized crime here is endemic.
2Solly continues, “They tend to think of themselves and each other first and
foremost as Romans, Milanese, Sicilians or Florentines, and second as Italians,” (1).

3. soon lost the land they so craved to the hands of marauding tribes from the north.
The most important of these were the Lombards (after whom Italy’s richest and
most populous region, Lombardy, is named). The Lombard Invasion of CE 568 cast
the die. It led to the complete disintegration of the established political order in the
Italian Peninsula by the 10th Century (Encyclopædia Britannica, “Lombard”). It was
to be split between various ethnic groups both Italic and non-Italic alike each with
their own territories and all vying for control. It could be termed what international
relations’ theorists might refer to as anarchical (Richards, “Anarchy”). Following the
Renaissance, proxy wars between Europe’s Great Powers tore Italy’s social fabric
ever more apart. In the context of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars, a
feeble Italian nationalism began to emerge. By 1861, the Kingdom of Sardinia had
succeeded in not only subduing rivals in the North, but conquered the Kingdom of
the Two Sicilies as well and declared the Kingdom of Italy the same year.3
The Sardinians never could quite control the unruly Mezzogiorno, however.
Despite the fact that the Sardinians had reunited the Italian Peninsula for the first
time since the Fall of Rome, the southerners continued in their own distinct ways
and would come to be quite a headache to the new rulers, most certainly the
Sicilians. Five years after the conquest of the Two Sicilies, in 1866, the feeble Italian
Kingdom sent troops to quell unrest in Palermo, Sicily’s capital.
The history of Sicily may, at face value, look extremely complicated. The
Phoenicians, the Greeks, the Carthaginians, the Romans, the Byzantines, the Arabs,
and the Spanish — to name a handful — have all left their indelible mark upon the
3 The region of Latium was to remain under control of the Papal States until the
Capture of Rome in 1870 by the Kingdom’s forces.

4. distinct island. In reality, the history of Sicily, at least when it comes to tracing the
origins of the Cosa Nostra, is fairly straightforward. Although the Cosa Nostra has
only been formally around since the 19th Century, it is rooted in Sicily’s rather fluid
history of conquest and cultural exchange since the times of Ancient Rome.
The Romans had seized the entirety of the Sicilian island from the
Carthaginians following the First Punic War’s conclusion in 241 BCE. Following their
conquest, a feudal-style system called latifundia was put in place in which former or
retired soldiers were given large estates to be farmed by peasants or serfs. A major
characteristic of the latifundia was its judicial system: Each estate virtually had its
own rules, leading to many inconsistencies in the distribution of justice. This system
continued well into the Middle Ages and lasted in Sicily longer than many other
places. In fact, one could argue it simply became elaborated under the island’s
succeeding rulers (Servadio, 4).
The Arab influence on the island should not go unmentioned, either, nor
underestimated. Although their rule was limited to a few centuries and
characterized largely by religious tolerance, Arabo-Muslim culture of the medieval
era was nevertheless imported. There are several important characteristics that the
Arab legacy had left the Mafia with. To begin with is its name. The word mafia most
certainly derives from an Arabic word, although which is a matter of dispute. It may
lie in the word mahyas, signifying the verb “to boast” before evolving into the
Sicilian mafiusu (Italian: mafioso), signifying a man who was proud and, later, one
who exemplified the characteristics of a don, a nobleman. In this regard, it was an
honorific and denoted manliness. The FBI’s website states, “The Sicilian Mafia

5. changed from a group of honorable Sicilian men to an organized criminal group in
the 1920s,” (“Italian Organized Crime”).
The second Arab influence relates to the last line: “ . . . a group of honorable
Sicilian men.” The second caliph, or successor to the Prophet Muhammad, Umar, has
been remembered for a string of military victories in Islam’s early days. He has also
been remembered for his changes to Islamic law, or sharia, which subordinated
women in Islam.4 Consequently, when the Arabs began their invasion of Sicily in 827
CE, they brought this aspect with them. It has been argued that this is the reason
women have been separated from the affairs of the Sicilian mafia and, truly,
numerous mafia-type groups the world over (Servadio, 5). Lastly came the Arabs’
notion of “internalized justice” (Servadio, 5). This notion largely concerns family’s
settling disputes themselves, outside of the courts and the state apparatus. This, of
course, has remained central to the Cosa Nostra modus operandi until today.
After the Arabs came the Normans, a group hailing from modern-day France
with Viking origins. The Normans did not change much in Sicily, at least regarding
the latifundia administration. Their most significant influence was in the
architectural realm, with Byzantine-Arab architecture blending with that of the
Normans. Palermo, Sicily’s capital, remains famous to this day for this cultural mix.
Anyhow, the Normans did manage to bring the entirety of the Mezzogiorno under
4 Umar ibn Al-Khattab (d. 644 CE) required women to pray separately from men
and, by 700 CE, just decades after his death, women were banned from mosques
completely as so to prevent men from being tempted into lusting in a holy place.
Interestingly enough, the Prophet Muhammad had no such policies (Esposito,
“Women and Islamic).

6. their control — an impressive accomplishment — establishing the Kingdom of
Sicily. Unfortunately for the Normans, however, they would be expelled within two
centuries. Various royal houses of Europe’s great powers competed for control and,
in 1282, the French House of Anjou, too, would be expelled (this time by popular
revolt) and King Charles I would retain the other half of his kingdom in Naples
(Encyclopædia Britannica, “Kingdom of Naples”).5
The expulsion of Charles I marked the beginning of Spanish rule of Sicily,
under the Crown of Aragon. The island would change hands between the French and
Spanish a few times, but the Spanish legacy remained the most influential for the
island in modern times. The iron-fisted rule of the Spaniards over the Sicilian
population — and with no reform of the judicial system — encouraged them to
internalize justice evermore. Further, the feudal system also led to the development
of two contrasting groups: Guild versus bandits. Guilds were the democratic means
to achieve justice and representation among the native Sicilians. On the other hand,
banditry was the natural response to the ever-increasing gap between the
aristocracy and the peasants or serfs. Ironically enough, the feudal barons hired
private protectors to keep their estates safe — the same protectors that would
5 The Sicilians Vespers, as they are called, established the German House of
Hohenstaufen and Sicily continue to be known as the Kingdom of Sicily; however, as
is so often in history, it could not be so simple. Confusion seemed necessary, and
Charles I continued to call his remaining portion, now confined to Naples in the
Mezzogiorno, the Kingdom of Sicily as well. For this reason, Charles’ Kingdom is
referred to as the Kingdom of Naples. The two united in 1816 to form the Kingdom
of the Two Sicilies. In 1861, the Kingdom of Sardinia conquered it and the Kingdom
of Italy was then proclaimed.

7. eventually be popularized and form the backbone of the protection business, the
epitome of the Cosa Nostra.6
Feudalism was officially abolished in Sicily following Italian Unification but,
far from create a more stable environment, feudalism’s abolition opened up the
market. One scholar, Federico Varese, writes:
“The main effect of the demise of feudalism in Sicily was
the transformation of land into a market commodity
subject to legally defined individual property rights.
Trading in land became conceivable in the South of Italy
in the early nineteenth century. At the same time, vast
extensions of both common and Church land were
auctioned for the benefit of private purchasers. From
1812 to 1860, the number of landowners of large
estates in Sicily went from 2,000 to 20,000; from 1860
to 1900, the number of hectares in private hands
increased from 250,000 to 650,000.” (Varese, 226)
The Sardinians’ conquest of Sicily opened a political vacuum that allowed for
the Sicilian mafia to establish itself. The fledgling Italian government struggled to
assert itself over the historically uncooperative, rebellious island where so many of
its inhabitants were suspicious, if not outright hostile, to central authority. In fact,
6 In this sense, the mafia began as protectors to landowners, members of the middle-
to upper class.

8. the term mafioso, in addition to the aforementioned etymologies, describes someone
who is skeptical of such authority (“Origins of the Mafia”, History.com). If anything,
as Varese’s words show, the abolition of feudalism simply increased the demand for
private protection. He also adds, “Protection did not undergo the customary process
of centralization to become monopoly of the state, but was supplied by autonomous
suppliers, who were the ancestors of today’s Mafiosi,” (Varese, 226).7 Perhaps this is
because, in 1892, the Italian state banned the use of bravi, practically private armies
of landowners who used them to protect their land. Suddenly, the market was
oversupplied with people qualified in the protection business. The oversupply made
their skills cheap and available to the masses. From here, the bravi transformed
form an aristocratic amenity to a consumer good for the people at large. Private
protection now stood in for the lack of trust in the state that was (and remains) so
commonplace in Sicily (227-8).
It has now been seen where the Cosa Nostra’s roots lie; however, the true
growth of the Cosa Nostra into a recognizable force begins in the 20th Century. This
is especially true after World War II’s utter destruction of the country. Although
nearly stamped out by Italy’s Fascist Prime Minister Benito Mussolini, following the
Allied landings in Sicily with Operation Husky in 1943, many mafiosi were escaped
or were freed, easily able to present themselves as political dissidents. Fascist
mayors were deposed and the Cosa Nostra soon had members replace them. The
need to rebuild also allowed mafiosi to infiltrate the construction business and, with
7 The autonomy of the suppliers refers to the fact that, as the ‘proto-mafioso’ moved
into urban areas where they could offer protection services to yet more people. In
other words, the pool was large to choose from.

9. the help of the American-funded Marshall Plan, gain lucrative construction contracts
that would enrich them (“Origins of the Mafia,” History.com).
This pragmatism, along with the Cosa Nostra’s strict code of silence, omertà,
undoubtedly has led to its survival — and sprawl. Even today, the Cosa Nostra
continues to shape the course of Italy’s history as a whole with it being just one of
the four mafia-style groups in Italy that earn, according to the FBI, $100 billion per
year through a diversified, global network (“Italian Organized Crime”). Much of
what is known about the Cosa Nostra comes from defectors, or pentiti. The
organization was not even confirmed to exist in the United States until 1963, when
La Cosa Nostra pentito Joseph Valachi testified in an Arkansas court of law (“Their
Thing,” Time.com).8 Such discipline — such secrecy — will ensure the longevity of
the Cosa Nostra and, although it may have been outshown by rivals in the country or
abroad, it should not be underestimated.
8 La Cosa Nostra is the American Mafia, with origins in the Cosa Nostra of Sicily. It
started when members of the Cosa Nostra immigrated to the United States in the
early 20th Century (“Italian Organized Crime”).

10. Bibliography
"Avanti." Editorial. Economist 26 Feb. 2011: n.p. The Economist. The Economist
Newspaper Limited, 26 Feb. 2011. Web. 23 Mar. 2015.
Bezzone, Francesca. "Some Clichés About Italians." LifeInItaly.com. Life In Italy, 21
Feb. 2014. Web. 23 Mar. 2015.
"Italian Organized Crime." FBI.gov. Federal Bureau of Investigation, 27 Aug. 2010.
Web. 30 Mar. 2015.
"Kingdom of Naples.” Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Online.
Encyclopædia Britannica Inc., 2015. Web. 01 Apr. 2015
"Lombard." Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. Encyclopædia
Britannica Inc., Web. 2015. Web. 30 Mar. 2015.
"Origins of the Mafia." History.com. A&E Television Networks, 2009. Web. 16 Mar.
2015.
Richards, James C. “Anarchy. Internet Encyclopedia of IR. Towson University, n.d.
Web. 30 Mar. 2015.

11. Servadio, Gaia. “Mafioso: A History of the Mafia from Its Origins to the Present Day”.
New York: Stein and Day Publishers, 1976.
Solly, Martin. The Xenophobe's Guide to the Italians. London: Oval, 1999. Print.
Squires, Nick. "Italy Divided over Its Unified History." The Telegraph. Telegraph
Media Group, 13 Mar. 2011. Web. 23 Mar. 2015.
“Their Thing.” Time.com. Time Inc., 16 Aug. 1963. Web. 01 Apr. 2015.
Varese, Federico. “Is Sicily the Future of Russia?” Archives Europeenes de Sociologie,
vol. 35, (1994), pp. 224-258.
"Women and Islamic Religious Life." OxfordIslamicStudies.com. Ed. John Esposito.
Oxford University, n.d. Web. 01 Apr. 2015.