The ‘noble bandit’ and the bandits of the nobles: brigandage and local community in nineteenth-century Andalusia

Abstract

Since Hobsbawm published his Primitive Rebels (1959) and Bandits (1969), the study of organized banditry is slowly moving out of the dusky fringe of history and social science. In the 1970s some interesting regional and biographical studies have come to light. Apart from the encouraging example set by Hobsbawm, this has largely been the result of the increasing rapprochement between history and social science. Ordinary, rural and marginal people are being set on the stage of history. However, detailed comparative local and regional studies are still needed to test Hobsbawm's frame of analysis. Moreover, as he himself admitted, the evidence on which Bandits relies—poems and ballads—is rather ‘tricky’ and needs to be supplemented with other sources.