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In important recent studies about organized crime in contemporary Italy you generally do not find any historical materials with regard to the Bourbon’s age. This research focuses on the phenomenon of Camorra, which turned out in Naples in the post-Restoration as a strong territorial power based on extortion. I’ve studied it in the judicial police documentation you can find in public archives since 1840. The historical sources referring to first years document a progressive identification of Camorra and Camorrists by the officials, who tended to distinguish this phenomenon from other criminal events that were common in the same area. Among the cases recorded by the institution during the Forties of the XIXth century, we generally find some materials about gambling, prostitution and prison extortion, which are the traditional fields of Camorra. In the following ten-years period, new kinds of Camorra are recorded in several fields: the foods markets, the porterage services, the goldsmith’s work and the contraband. From Social History my case-study goes on to Political History during the important movements in 1848. Police sources document some very interesting political engagements of several Camorrists both in liberal networks in Naples and in prison strong disorders. This active involvement in constitutional front, which goes on for all the Fifties, induce a deeper attention and new repression strategies by Bourbon’s police towards this particular criminal groups in the capital of the Kingdom. During the fall of the Bourbon State in 1860, Camorrists’ lasting liberal networks produce the well-known cooptation of them in the Guardia cittadina by Liborio Romano. Police sources of the Italian State in the Sixties, and first excellent sociological literature about Camorra as well, document both continuative social aspects of the phenomenon, and by contrast a new liberal perception of the unbearable territorial organized crime in Naples to be repressed more seriously, like future antimafia.

Bourbon, House of.