Many historians believe that the mafia started in the late-18th century. But the FBI and other many knowledgeable historians argue its existence may go back much further than that. It is thought that what would become known as the Mafia actually germinated in the year 1282 with a pivotal event known as “The Night of the Sicilian Vespers.”
Since I was a young boy, I have always heard that the true origins of what would become known as the Mafia throughout the world had its seeds in what was called “The Night of the Sicilian Vespers”!….. a purge over several weeks by the Sicilian townspeople of Angevin invaders to Palermo City. And that this “groundswell” of underground Sicilian “partisans” began to form across all of Sicily and mainland Southern Italy, from Calabria upward through the Campania region.
