How common were bandits in the pre-industrial world?

I was playing Mount & Blade Warband after I came home from work today, and I wondered how much of a problem banditry was before industrialization given its prevalence in fantasy fiction. Was "We'll have our pay, or we'll have our fun!" a typical phrase before the Industrial Revolution and the modern nation-state? :p

Could the much smaller pre-modern economies even support a significant number of bandits on land? Were governments weak enough that there was a low enough risk to make banditry a viable career option? (Piracy may be a different issue, given treasure fleets and the fact that so much commerce travels on waterways)

I had Europe during the High Middle Ages in mind when writing the topic, but you can use any pre-industrial society. Any information on the Silk Road and Saharan trade routes would be valuable too.
 

Dorozhand

Banned
I was playing Mount & Blade Warband after I came home from work today, and I wondered how much of a problem banditry was before industrialization given its prevalence in fantasy fiction. Was "We'll have our pay, or we'll have our fun!" a typical phrase before the Industrial Revolution and the modern nation-state? :p

Could the much smaller pre-modern economies even support a significant number of bandits on land? Were governments weak enough that there was a low enough risk to make banditry a viable career option? (Piracy may be a different issue, given treasure fleets and the fact that so much commerce travels on waterways)

I had Europe during the High Middle Ages in mind when writing the topic, but you can use any pre-industrial society. Any information on the Silk Road and Saharan trade routes would be valuable too.

Banditry was very common in the Sahara and the various Silk Road trade routes. Caravans often had small armies protecting them from robbery and foolish travelers often left town never to make it to the next. Whole tribes, especially of horseman, practiced banditry on a massive scale. One of the remarkable things that the Mongols accomplished was the unification of the various Silk Road routes under a single banner for a time, allowing the free flow of commerce, culture, and science between east and west, and pollinating the technological advancements of the Abbasids and the Song Dynasty across the world (and to Europe), because the Mongols turned their massive, well-trained, extremely mobile and logistically light armies to the task of effectively policing it and preventing banditry, making the routes far less dangerous.

In Europe banditry was also common in less well controlled regions, which were effectively anywhere that wasn't farmland or cities, in the interest of feudal lords, urban burghers or unitary imperii. The infamous highwaymen of Britain weren't brought to an end until the early 19th century.
 
In China banditry could probably be said to be endemic in frontier regions (whether internal or external frontiers), with the possibility of it becoming pandemic in cases of acute social collapse. It's difficult to estimate the actual amount of banditry at any given period, but considering the widespread use of convict labor even as early as the Qin and Han (with 10-50k convicts employed in state monopolies and more in frontier garrisons and infrastructure projects), banditry must have been pretty common during that period, even accounting for the fact that there were plenty of other crimes that would send one to hard labor during the period.

On the borders of empire, banditry routinely merged with ethnic tensions to produce endemic low-level warfare between Han settlers and non-Han natives. Guangxi was the site of such conflict between Miao and Han up until the Qing Dynasty and beyond, indirectly causing the devastating Taiping Rebellion in the 1850s.

The phenomenon of banditry also goes hand-in-hand with the tendency for peasants/local clans to retreat to fortified outposts in defensive terrain during times of social upheaval, a practice that went all the way up to the 1940s (as seen in the various fortified dialous/tulous in Fujian/Guangdong). Of course, one clan's stronghold is often another's bandit haven (the two usually share the same character, 'zhai' 寨) and one could assume that various inter-village fights and clan disputes were also classified as 'banditry'.
 
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In terms of the Islamic world, it depended heavily on what area we are speaking of and more importantly what time period.

In the early Islamic period, banditry was quite low as the powerful states rising from Arabia used these former bandits from Jahiliyya (period before Islam) as warriors in distant lands, thus the numbers were exhausted in foreign wars typically in Syria, Iran, Pakistan, Spain, Aegean islands, Anatolia, etc... These Arab warriors often, as opposed to the Byzantine and Sassanid models operated like bandits in terms of fighting capability and style of prolonged warfare. The reason for this is two fold:

1. The concept of banditry, in our sense, was the main form of well sustenance for Bedouin before Islam. Arab tribes raided the lands of Arabia, Aksum, Levant and Iran until either fulfilling their search for income or hired as mercenary operating again, as raiders.

2. The concept of Ghazw or more largely Jihad in the terms of "Baqiyyah wa Tattimidad" (remaining and expanding) lent itself well to a style of warfare in which a decentralized force of virtually independent warriors waged war without serious need of supply lines as their sustenance was the enemies suffering.

This style of warfare, the mix of banditry and regular armies (seen in the Abbasid period), was ingrained in the mind of Arab states lasting up until the rise of the Ilkhanate. The reason for its loss was the adoption of Turkish models of warfare, based around noble cavalry and horse archery. This would intensify with the Crusader (thus European) influence on Islamic armies in the 1000s. However, the Almohads would keep this style of warfare seen in the early days of Islam up till its demise, which theirs was modified to a slave army in some contexts and others exactly the originalArab model, but more to do with the Taureg and Berber influence than the old Arab one.

Banditry would become extremely prevalent in the rural areas of the Mid East, especially in Arabia, Iran and Iraq, following the decline of the Abbasid and the rise of the Saljuks. This can be seen in the Zanj, Qarmatians, Hashashin, Khurramiyyah, Druze, Fatimids, etc.... Fatimid models of warfare was essentially the last survivor of the old Arab models in Egypt, showing this style in Sicily, Cyprus, Crete, etc...

Later, this same style became the general Ghazw as practiced by the proclaimed Ghazi of Anatolia among the former remnants of the Sultanate of Rum. Who like the Uqaylids before them, lived upon the raid.

I could write all day about this, but for now I will stop lol.
 
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Banditry was pretty much universal in pre-industrial Europe, but the intensity could vary enormously. Reaching exact statistics is impossible, though.

it is important to keep in mind that banditry isn't a well defined concept. One man's bandit is another's belligerent. A lot of the banditry in the Roman Empire seems to have its roots in resistance to Roman (and local elite) rule, either as a rebellion from below or as an alternative power structure cultivated by the landowning classes. The servants of the powerful often indulged in robbery agaionst the weak for their own gain (and that included Roman soldiers, not just the bullyboys of the big man up the next hill). At the fringes of the empire, there is also an element of tribal identity, the assumed right to take from a stranger trespassing into 'our' territory. Whether you want to call this internal conflict, low-level warfare or organised crime is mainly a matter of style.

Similarly, bandits in late medieval Europe were often actually nobility, claiming the right to plunder based on a state of war - a feud - they declared at will. THeir followers belonged to a pool of itinerant labour that could be put to all kinds of purposes or, left to its own devices, would beg, steal, rob or extort to survive.

Early modern Europe was probably worse affected by banditry than its previous iterations had been because of the enormous growth of a poor and rootless underclass. These people turned to creime to survive, and violent crime (usually with the collusion of local establishment figures needed to fence and scout) was a prestigious discipline in that field. Even people who did not normally rob or rape might be tempted by opportunity.

In all these cases, being a bandit was a valid career only for a very few. Most people who engaged in banditry did it temporarily or on the side. Local powerbrokers employed violent men and protected them, giving them opportunity to enrich themselves. Itinerants would rob or extort where opportunities arose, otherwise seek seasonal work as mercenaries, labourers or petty criminals. When these gropups became large enough, their depredations could become de-facto military occupations. Locals would rob outsiders when it looked safe. The typical 'outlaw gang' of song and story was a rare phenomenon (just as rare as the 'pirate ship' of myth). Usually, even organised bands of robbers depended on support networks in established society. It's not uncommon for innkeepers or millers to act as the brains of such gangs.
 
D'Arcy Wentworth, a down on his luck aristocrat, avoided conviction for his 4th charge of Highway Robbery by announcing he was moving to Botany Bay on the Second Fleet to become the Assistant Surgeon in 1789. The early convict settlement fleets had a number of quite notable and often flashy highwaymen among them as well as poachers and the like at about he 1800 mark, so I'd say banditry was common enough right up to the Industrial Revolution.

I also watched a doco on smuggling in Cornwall and it was common at the start of the 1800s, finally dying out with an evangelical revival and more law enforcement.
 
Actually from my understanding, the mongols made banditry a way more dangerous line of work along asian and middle eastern trade routes.

It would depend, some would classify their armies as such at least to start. Later in their period, than yes. As far as I know, the famed banditry of the Silk Road tapered out following the rise of the Mongol hordes and continuing in that trend as the Silk Road one; deteriorated in importance and two; states straddling it protected it more frequently (Ming, Chagatayid, Zhungar, Russia and Qing).
 
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