Mafia: A Global History

Few forces have shaped our world as powerfully – or as secretly – as mafias.

Groups such as La Cosa Nostra, the Medellín Cartel, New York’s Five Families, the Japanese yakuza and Russian vory are notorious, endlessly covered in news stories and popular media. Yet when official histories are written, their role in shaping nations, economies and societies is rarely acknowledged.

In Mafia: A Global History, Ryan Gingeras draws on more than a decade of research to uncover this suppressed underworld history. Crossing centuries and continents, he introduces legendary figures – Al Capone, Pablo Escobar, Du Yuesheng – and explores the conditions, cultures and locales that gave birth to modern mafias: Sicily, Marseille, New York, Colombia, Tokyo. As he reconstructs the rise of a gang or the life of a gangster, he also charts the expanding power of states and the increasingly international reach of trade, crime and law enforcement. After all, governments define what is a crime and who is a criminal, and their agents create the strategies used to limit or defend against their threat. 

Beginning with bandits and ending with today’s ‘mafia states’ – and the alarming blurring of lines between gangsters, corporations and political leaders – this sweeping narrative traces the evolution of organised crime in response to industrialisation, globalisation and technological change. By charting the origins, consolidation and transformation of mafias, Gingeras reveals not only where contemporary gangsters come from, but how they became central to our imagination and why they are the uncredited architects of the modern world.

Review

‘A history of mafias, suffused with violence, intrigue and secrecy, this is gripping, essential, global and just plain fascinating’ -- Simon Sebag Montefiore

‘A wide-ranging history of wannabe Corleones and other kindred criminals . . . A revealing study of organized crime and its many forms’ ― Kirkus Reviews

‘Historian Gingeras (The Last Days of the Ottoman Empire, 2022) offers a historical deep dive into the murky world of gangland, from the gritty streets of the Five Points area of early twentieth-century New York City to ravaged, post-WWII Japan; from drug running to human trafficking. A valuable historical reference on organized crime’ ― Booklist

‘From ancient bandits to modern hackers, organised criminals have long been unheralded architects of the evolution of state and society. Ryan Gingeras offers us an important and eye-opening guide to the way the underworld and upperworld shape each other’ -- Mark Galeotti, author of Homo Criminalis: How Crime Organises the World

About the Author

Ryan Gingeras is a professor in the Department of National Security Affairs at the Naval Postgraduate School and is an expert in modern Eastern European and Middle East history. He is the author of six books, including The Last Days of the Ottoman Empire and Sorrowful Shores: Violence, Ethnicity, and the End of the Ottoman Empire 1912–1923, which was shortlisted for numerous book prizes. He has published on a wide variety of topics related to history and politics in publications such as Foreign Affairs,  New York Times, Washington Post, Times Literary Supplement and Foreign Policy. As a faculty member of the Naval Postgraduate School, he has participated and contributed to research and executive education projects on the behalf of the US Department of State, Department of Energy and the Department of Defense. In addition to speaking German, Spanish and Turkish fluently, he also possesses working knowledge of Ottoman Turkish, Albanian, Macedonian and Greek. Ryan was born in New York City but has spent much of his life in California. He currently lives with his wife and children in the Santa Cruz Mountains.