The mafia already existed as an established force by 1838.

Evidence

Yet the diffusion throughout southern Italy of the characteristics of the Spanish rule and of the peculiar responses it received do not tell us how and why some features of this system, mutatis mutandis, have endured until the present day. It is probably not a coincidence, though, that only 11 years (1838) after Tocqueville wrote his account, we read for the first time in an official report of the existence of a thing called the mafia (Hess 1986: 114); and, what is more, we read of it as an already established social force. — Diego Gambetta, Trust - Making and Breaking Cooperative…, 2128

Categorization

• QUESTION: The mafia being ‘already established’ at first official mention suggests its origins predate the 1838 report by decades — worth chasing what the earliest documented mafia activity actually was.