Guerre civile et formation de l'État dans le Midi d'Italie (1860-1865) : histoire et usages du "Grand Brigandage" en Basilicate

Focusing on the Basilicata and opting for a closer look at actors, this work refers to a violent episode of the Italian unification process that still attracts a lot of debate: the Great Brigandage (1860- 1865). Dissecting the concept of civil war, the study leads to four results. First of all, we discover from behind the word-screen "brigandage" an attempt at an armed counter-revolution from the fall of 1860 to the summer of 1862. Thought of by the exiled Neapolitan government and instigated by local supporters of a restoration, it mobilized variously motivated actors. Distinguishing itself from macro-sociological explanations, the study allows the reconstruction of individual careers and the social mechanisms of the rebellion. Our second result is that it is appropriate to define post-unity Brigandage as a civil war. Fought in both camps by armed civilians, the war on brigandage, however, was more a Southern civil war than an Italian one. Whatever the combatants’ motivations, the issue of the clash was also clearly political. Third, the civil war did not last for long. At standstill, the conflict enabled the sedimentation of the brigandage that went hand in hand with profound changes in both the register of action and the political aims and support of brigands’ groups. The political rebellion turned into an effective criminality of armed gangs, perfectly embedded in local society. The conflict changed into a diffused confrontation in which the issue was less the preservation of the unitary state than its rooting among populations of the South. The state embarked on a conquest that was probably less one of hearts than one of minds. Allowing the mobilization of people against gangs, this led to the elimination of the brigands. Through the struggle, the unitary state imposed itself therefore upon the people of the South as a stable element that had to be taken into account for the definition of individual or collective strategies. But thanks to the structures created allowing local participation in the repression, the fight against brigands also contributed to the national political acculturation of southern populations. The brigandage war of the 1860s was thus a civil war of unification that became a conflict of state- and nation-making in the south of Italy. Finally, the work continues to this day so as to better understand the vividness of current debates and the present identity uses of this conflicting past. The reinvention of the post-unity Brigandage pertains today to a reconfiguration of the nation.Centré sur la Basilicate et décortiquant le concept de guerre civile, ce travail revient sur le Grand Brigandage (18601865), épisode violent de l'unification italienne. Derrière le mot-écran « brigandage », il découvre une tentative de contre-révolution armée (1860-1862), pensée et fomentée par les autorités napolitaines en exil et leurs partisans locaux mais menée par des combattants diversement motivés. L'étude reconstitue leurs carrières afin de dégager les mécanismes sociaux de cette rebellions. Le travail permet également de reconnaître dans le Grand Brigandage une guerre civile - plus méridionale qu'italienne cependant - ayant opposé des civils en armes dans un conflit politique par son enjeu mais qui, en s'enlisant, changea également de nature. La rébellion politique se mua en une efficace criminalité, encastrée dans la société locale et le conflit devint un affrontement diffus dont l'enjeu était moins la conservation de l’Etat unitaire que son enracinement dans le Midi. L'Etat italien sut alors s'engager dans une conquête qui fut moins celle des coeurs que celle des esprits mais qui mena à l'élimination des brigands en permettant la mobilisation des acteurs locaux. L'Etat sut s'imposer aux populations mais la répression fut aussi une occasion d'acculturation politique nationale des populations méridionales. La guerre du brigandage des années 1860 fut ainsi une guerre civile d'unification puis de formation de l'Etat et de la nation. Et la réinvention du Brigandage post-unitaire, étudiée dans une dernière partie, participe encore aujourd'hui d' une tentative de reconfiguration de la nation