Christopher Duggan, the mafia and Fascism

This article starts by discussing aspects of Christopher Duggan’s first book La mafia durante il fascismo, published in 1986, whose main topic was the anti-mafia campaign led by the prefect Cesare Mori in the latter half of the 1920s. The book’s distinctive features were its rigorous historical approach and use of archival sources: these set it apart from most other work on these topics at the time, when the idea that the mafia could be subjected to historical research had not yet been properly established. In its central thesis Duggan’s book was influenced by previous interpretations of the mafia, then still widely shared, that denied its nature as a structured organisation. Duggan argued here that Fascism used accusations of mafia involvement essentially as a way of attacking its political opponents. The final part of the article presents key aspects of a newer area of research on the mafia and Fascism, the 1930s, when a new campaign to suppress the mafia was not made use of for propaganda purposes.