Greek Bandits: Lone Wolves or a Family Affair?

Greek Bandits: Lone Wolves or a Family Affair? Γ. W. Gallant Since the work of Eric Hobsbawm (1959, 1969, 1973), the social bandit has come to occupy an important place in the study of peasant unrest and violence in rural societies. Those following in his wake have either used the social bandit as an ideal type around which to structure research—even when their topic was not social transformation as Hobsbawm's had been—or have entered into a dialogue with him on certain aspects of social banditry. The intention of this essay is both to contribute to that dialogue and to suggest another approach to the study of bandits. Through a detailed examination of memoirs and archival sources, I demonstrate that bandit gangs were composed primarily of extended kin groups and, moreover, that the factors influencing their behavior were the same as those operating on all peasant families. Based on this thesis, I further argue that bandits should be demystified and reintegrated as individuals into the societies from which they came and that banditry should be viewed as just one category of violent behavior found in violent societies.1 Hobsbawm recognizes three general categories of social banditry: the "noble robber" (1969: 41-57), the "avengers" (1969: 58-69) and "haiduks" (1969: 70-82). In this paper I am concerned only with the last category. Hobsbawm uses the word haiduk (either a Turkish or a Magyar word of unknown derivation [Hobsbawm 1969: 70]) to refer to the type of banditry found in the Balkans during the 18th and 19th centuries. Haiduks, or klefts as they were called in Greece, played a critical role in the nationalist revolutions of the various Balkan cultures against the Ottoman Empire. For this reason, a rich corpus of folk songs which made heros of bandits developed. Hobsbawm uses these folksongs as the basis for his study. The intention of this essay is to demonstrate that in one crucial area, that Journal of Modern Greek Studies, Volume 6, 188. 269 270 T. W. Gallant of the relationship between kinship and banditry, Hobsbawm's conclusions require modification. According to Hobsbawm, bandits were ". . . often kinless men ('without mothers all and without sisters'), living with the peasantry not so much like Mao's proverbial fish in water, but rather like soldiers who leave their village for the semi-permanent exile of army life" (1969: 73). These were men who had removed themselves from society, who stood outside their own culture as much as they stood opposed to the authorities. Hobsbawm further explains: Haiduks were always free men, but in the typical case of Balkan haiduks they were not free communities. For the ceta or band, being essentially a voluntary union of individuals who cut themselves off from their kin, was automatically an abnormal social unit, since it lacked wives, children and land. It was doubly 'unnatural,' for often the haiduk's road back to ordinary civilian life in his own native village was barred by the Turks. The haiduk ballads sing of men whose swords were their only sisters, whose rifles their wives . . . Normal forms of social organization were therefore not available to them. . . . (1969: 77) And indeed this is the picture presented in the folk songs. Two examples should make the point clear. The first is the "Ballad of Metsisos": Metsisos on the hills, high on the mountain ridges, Gathered round him young klephts [sic], and they were all Albanians. He gathered them, he drew them up, three thousand. 'Eat and drink brave boys! rejoice, and let's be merry; This lucky year, who knows what next will bring us, If we shall live, or if we shall die and go to the other world? Now listen to me my pallikars—listen to me my boys . . .' (Baggally 1936: 27) Spatially segregated high in their mountain camps, Metsisos' boys form their own community. The second song develops this theme further: Come out, my boys, and see the fun In Valtos and Xeromenon, Agrapha, and the five regions— The hills are buzzing like a hive. Oh, there are klephts [sic] numberless, And each has gold upon his dress. They eat, and drink, and sit them down, While panic spreads within the...