Bandits [antikvár]

Preface Except for chapter eight, which is based on first-hand research, most of this book rests on pubhshed material, though some of it is rather hard to come by. For the numerous countries whose languages I do not read or whose publications were inaccessible to me, I am also indebted for information, extracted or more likely volunteered with enthusiasm, by friends and colleagues aware of my interest in this subject. This applies to many of my references to banditry in Bulgaria, Greece, Hungary, Russia, Turkey and Tunisia, but also to some of what is written here about various countries of Latin America, the Indian subcontinent, Italy and Spain. My thanks to these learned aficionados of Robin Hood and to numerous seminars in Britain and the U.S.A. which criticized the arguments of this book and put me in the way of further sources. My thanks also to the Widener Library of Harvard University, as good a place as I know for the researcher to work in. My particular debts are acknowledged in footnotes, which I have kept to a minimum, the bibliography, and at the end of this preface. A special word of thanks to Enzo Créa ofRome,to M. Antoine Tellez of Paris, and to Sergeant José Avalos of Pampa Grande, Chaco, Argentina, farmer and formerly rural policeman, whose reminiscences of the bandits of Corrientes and the Chaco, whom he respected and pursued, confirm the analysis of Chapter three on almost all points. I can only regret that I did not make his acquaintance until after the text of this book was complete. Two brief methodological notes : First, it will be clear that I have tried to explain why social banditry is so remarkably uniform a phenomenon throughout the ages and continents. Can this explanation be tested? Yes, in so far as it predicts, broadly speaking, how bandits will act and what stories people will teU about them in areas hitherto unstudied. The present essay elaborates the 'model' originally sketched out in my Primitive