Just recently availability of portions of Maffei's book of 1865 "on the Internet", 
BRIGAND LIFE IN ITALY: 
A HISTORY OF BOURBONIST REACTION,
perpetuates some of that myth, as Professor Emeritus James Mancuso 
points out. He acknowledges that Maffei's discussion of how the government 
of Bourbon kings contributed to the growth and maintenance of brigandage 
in Southern Italy and Sicily is helpful to develop an accurate perspective.

Professor Mancuso suggested a concurrent reading of John Dickie's book:
DARKEST ITALY: THE NATION AND STEREOTYPES OF THE 
MEZZOGIORNO, 1860-1890, published in 1999, which is NOT available on 
the Internet.

Mancuso indicates how Dickie explains how conceptions of brigandage as 
used by the Bourbons were utilized by the Piedmontese to impose their 
views, and inflict their will on the South. 

Andrea Larson of the "Italians All" LIST was most edifying in his response.
Further distinguishing and detailing between the "banditry", Bourbon and 
Piedmontese "style", both Government/Establishment "sponsored", AND the 
Peasant "Resistance" "Freedom Fighters", "Guerillas" and " Rebels".

I found most intriguing the comments about Garibaldi's "disenchantment". 

Professor Mancuso then affirms Larson's comments.   
=======================================================
From: Andrea Larson

The term "banditism", was widely used to justify the frequent repressions 
made by the nobles for their own interest.  

And also the wider repression made by the Bourbonic army solely in the 
interest of the landed nobility when needed for wider unrest....

In fact the true bandits were, mostly, the private militias used by the
landlords to repress any attempt by the (very poor) peasants....

At this point the Piedmontese decided it was time to try and unify the 
country.  The Sicilian nobility understood it was the moment to "change 
everything so that nothing would really change" (Tommasi di Lampedusa- 
Il Gattopardo). The Sicilian nobility did exploit the Piedmontese need for 
military assistance, in exchange for privileges to be granted after 
unification...

The Sicilian nobility were indeed granted a high status in the Kingdom, 
obtained top places in the new Italian Parliament, participated in key posts 
in the Government, and generally conditioned the whole Italian Southern policy 
in the sense that the situation of the peasants did not change at all, and 
the privileges of the nobility were maintained.  The South was not developed. 
 
The consequences of this are felt to this day...

The second type of banditism, after the unification, was of a different
nature. The Piedmontese treated the South as an internal colony - no more 
no less. Instead of improving the general conditions of the people, and of
developing the southern half of Italy, they just exploited it.  

Small local rebellions appeared in many places, and the repression was 
cruel and bloody... These rebels were termed "bandits", and were actively 
chased up and killed at sight by Carabinieri...

It is little known that Garibaldi himself a few years later, indignant for the 
way the South was treated, set up another expedition *against* the Italian 
State. He fought the Italian army on Calabrian mountains, was wounded 
and defeated...

The other set of bandits right after the unification, were real bandits, fostered 
and financed by the ousted Bourbons, and actually fought the Italian army... 

==============================================
From: Jim Mancuso 

First, a small correction, Maffei's book was published in 1865, while 
Dickie's book was published in 1999.

That which Andrea Larsen has to say is very much the kind of material
that Dickie builds upon.  The North-dominated post-unification government
took off on the concepts of banditry that were built by books like Maffei's 
written, five years after Garibaldi turned the South over to the King of 
Savoy.   

They elaborated the ideas that were in vogue at the time that Maffei wrote 
the book, and they attributed the banditry to the evil nature of the 
Southerners, thus disguising the ways in which the new government had 
fostered a lawless reaction, by the kinds of actions that Andrea Larsen 
describes in his piece. (Larsen could have gone on and on with his 
descriptions of the injustices heaped on the southerners.  Consider the 
draft!!  Imagine if you were an 18 year old ordered up to serve in an army
of a country you barely understood, knowing that you might end up in
Ethiopia trying to build a colonial empire for that country.)

If one begins to understand the "propaganda value" of the BRIGAND 
concept, then he/she will want to read Dickie's book to put a brake on the 
kind of material that Maffei wrote.

Dickie's book, in my estimation, is a masterful discussion of the ways in 
which the perspective of Southerners as lawless characters became "truth," 
the ways in which that concept was promulgated, and the ways that that 
concept has been perpetuated right up until the writing of books like 
Banfield's (1958) THE MORAL BASIS OF A BACKWARD SOCIETY 
Putnam, [et al.] , (1993) MAKING DEMOCRACY WORK: 
CIVIC TRADITIONS IN MODERN ITALY.  
And, as is seen by the production of books like Sabetti's 
(2000) THE SEARCH FOR GOOD GOVERNMENT: 
UNDERSTANDING THE PARADOX OF ITALIAN 
DEMOCRACY and Dickie's (1999) DARKEST ITALY: 
THE NATION AND STEREOTYPES OF THE MEZZOGIORNO, 1860-1890,  
those views require closer analysis and the kind of tempering that can be 
brought about by writing such as those of Andrea Larsen...

We should thank Andrea Larsen for his contribution, but we should be sure
that readers understand that Dickie takes no part in perpetuating the
"Southerners as Bandits" perspective.