bandits - book - 1969 - Bandits

Bandits
E.J. (Eric) Hobsbawm
Weidenfeld and Nicolson
1969
126 pages

Bandits by Eric Hobsbawm is probably one of the most significant scholarly works in the field of countercultural studies. Hobsbawm, who died on October 1, 2012, takes a structuralist approach to history and proposes a pattern to the tradition of the bandit, and to the support a bandit might find within its community, much like how Joseph Campbell, in his Hero with A Thousand Faces claims to identify a pattern to hero stories in myth and literature. Hobsbawm is perceiving his pattern in the popular discourse surrounding the figures of banditry, noting not simply the actual bandit, but also the socially constructed bandit figure. My copy, that I am discussing here, is the original 1969 edition that runs a mere 126 pages in length. My understanding is that the most recent edition contains more than 100 new pages of text.

The active bandit, according to Hobsbawm, can gain popular support via banditry when the establishment is perceived as hopelessly corrupt in the eyes of the populace. Then a bandit may even victimize members of the population that they draw support from as long as they also antagonize the dominant system. Hobsbawm also argues that the stories of bandits often involve an absent sovereign, which is the case in the Robin Hood stories, where the king is away and a despotic prince and his gooney sheriff strictly enforce taxation rules. This allows a populace who invests in the bandits glory to still believe in the dominant system, as the current state of society is a temporary aberration.  

Hobsbawm does not only discuss the structure of the Bandit story as it lives in folklore, he investigates the concrete historical bandits that inspired the trope of bandit folklore. He uses a variety of examples from history including Robin Hood (who, he speculates, may never have actually existed), but also figures such as the Australian Ned Kelly, Sandor Roza of Hungary, Gaetano Meomartino of Italy, and many others. The book includes a lot of images taken from popular sources throughout history, ranging from 17th century circulars featuring woodcuts of Robin Hood, to 19th century photographs and even 20th century film stills.