L’invenzione di un’icona borbonica: il brigante come patriota napoletano?

In the framework of the so-called neoborbonismo the figure of the brigand has been lately identified in terms of «Southern patriot» and as a cultural or even ethnographical heritage of the Neapolitan patriotism. By challenging this argument, the essay proposes to analyse if and to what extent the ideological construction of this heroic icon constituted a characterizing feature of the anti-unitarian discourse. By applying the methods of cultural history and by considering a wide range of printed sources, intertwined with some archival sources, the essay deals with the political debate that accompanied the conflict in the Italian southern provinces. The essay claims that during the exile of Francesco II of the Two Sicilies, in the early 1860s, the legitimist and counter-revolutionary propaganda kept a much more ambiguous attitude towards brigands. At first, Neapolitan writers and foreign observers oscillate between some feeble efforts of idealization and a general attempt to provide a political interpretation to the guerrilla warfare. Afterwards, they denounce the persistence of brigandage as a purely criminal phenomenon, trying by that to prove the weakness of the new Kingdom of Italy in matters of public order. More evident traces of romanticisation and «nationalization» of the brigand are rather to be found in the opposite field, precisely in the Risorgimento culture.

Keywords: Brigandage; Bourbonism; Neapolitan patriotism