feud

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A feud (pronounced /ˈfjuːd/) (referred to in more extreme cases as a blood feud or vendetta or faida) is a long-running argument or fight between parties—often, through guilt by association, groups of people, especially families or clans. Feuds begin because one party (correctly or incorrectly) perceives itself to have been attacked, insulted or wronged by another. Intense feelings of resentment trigger the initial retaliation, which causes the other party to feel equally aggrieved and vengeful. The dispute is subsequently fuelled by a long-running cycle of retaliatory violence. This continual cycle of provocation and retaliation makes it extremely difficult to end the feud peacefully. Feuds frequently involve the original parties' family members and/or associates, can last for generations and may result in extreme acts of violence e.g. the 20 year feud which resulted in the Bilge Koyu massacre of May 2009 during which 44 men, women and children were killed at a wedding reception in Turkey: the bride, the groom, his parents and his four-year-old sister, as well as the village's imam numbered among the dead.^[1]

Until the early modern period, feuds were considered legitimate legal instruments and were regulated to some degree. Once modern centralizing states asserted and enforced a monopoly on legitimate use of force, feuds became illegal and the concept acquired its current negative connotation.

Blood feuds/vendetta

A blood feud is a feud with a cycle of retaliatory violence, with the relatives of someone who has been killed or otherwise wronged or dishonored seeking vengeance by killing or otherwise physically punishing the culprits or their relatives. Historically, the word vendetta has been used to mean a blood feud. The word is Italian, and originates from the Latin vindicta (vengeance). In modern times, the word is sometimes extended to mean any other long-standing feud, not necessarily involving bloodshed.

Vendetta history

Originally, a vendetta was a blood feud between two families where kinsmen of the victim intended to avenge his or her death by killing either those responsible for the killing or some of their relatives. The responsibility to maintain the vendetta usually falls on the closest male relative to whoever has been killed or wronged, but other members of the family may take the mantle as well. If the culprit had disappeared or was already dead, the vengeance could extend to other relatives.

A fortified tower used as refuge for men involved in a blood feud that are vulnerable to attack. Thethi, northern Albania.

Vendetta is typical of societies with a weak rule of law (or where the state doesn't consider itself responsible for mediating this kind of dispute) where family and kinship ties are the main source of authority. An entire family is considered responsible for whatever one of them has done. Sometimes even two separate branches of the same family could come to blows over some matter.

The practice has mostly disappeared with more centralized, rationalistic societies where law enforcement and criminal law take responsibility of punishing lawbreakers.

In ancient Homeric Greece, the practice of personal vengeance against wrongdoers was considered natural and customary: "Embedded in the Greek morality of retaliation is the right of vendetta . . . Vendetta is a war, just as war is an indefinite series of vendettas; and such acts of vengeance are sanctioned by the gods".^[2]

In the ancient tribal Hebraic context, it was considered the duty of the individual and family to avenge evil on behalf of God. The executor of the law of blood-revenge who personally put the initial aggressive killer to death was given a special designation: go'el haddam, the blood-avenger or blood-redeemer (Num. 35: 19, etc.). Six cities of refuge were established to provide a "cooling off" phase as well as due process for the accused. As the Oxford Companion to the Bible states: "Since life was viewed as sacred (Gen. 9.6), no amount of blood money could be given as recompense for the loss of the life of an innocent person; it had to be 'life for life'" (Exod. 21.23; Deut. 19.21)".^[3]

The Middle Ages, from beginning to end, and particularly the feudal era, lived under the sign of private vengeance. The onus, of course, lay above all on the wronged individual; vengeance was imposed on him as the most sacred of duties ... The solitary individual, however, could do but little. Moreover, it was most commonly a death that had to be avenged. In this case the family group went into action and the faide (feud) came into being, to use the old Germanic word which spread little by little through the whole of Europe--'the vengeance of the kinsmen which we call faida', as a German canonist expressed it. No moral obligation seemed more sacred than this ... The whole kindred, therefore, placed as a rule under the command of a chieftain, took up arms to punish the murder of one of its members or merely a wrong that he had suffered.

—Marc Bloch, trans. L. A. Manyon, Feudal Society, Vol. I, 1965, p. 125-126

The Celtic phenomenon of the blood feud demanded "an eye for an eye," and usually descended into murder. Disagreements between clans might last for generations in Scotland and Ireland. Due to the Celtic heritage of many whites living in Appalachia, a series of prolonged violent engagements in late- nineteenth-century Kentucky and West Virginia were referred to commonly as feuds, a tendency that was partly due to the nineteenth-century popularity of William Shakespeare and Sir Walter Scott, authors who both wrote semihistorical accounts of blood feuds. These incidents, the most famous of which was the Hatfield-McCoy feud, were regularly featured in the newspapers of the eastern U.S. between the 1880s and the early twentieth century. Although they were interpreted as such at the time, there is little reason to believe that these American incidents had any correlation to "feuding" in Europe centuries earlier.

Chariot racing in the Byzantine Empire also included the racing clubs. The Blues and the Greens were more than simply sports teams. They gained influence in military, political,^[4] and theological matters. The Blue-Green rivalry often erupted into gang warfare, and street violence had been on the rise in the reign of Justin I. Riots culminated in the Nika riots of 532 AD during the reign of Justinian I, with nearly half the city being burned or destroyed and tens of thousands of people killed.^[5]

In Japan's feudal past the Samurai class upheld the honor of their family, clan, or their lord by katakiuchi (敵討ち), or revenge killings. These killings could also involve the relatives of an offender. While some vendettas were punished by the government, such as that of the 47 Ronin, others were given official permission with specific targets.

At the Holy Roman Empire's Reichstag at Worms in 1495 the right of waging feuds was abolished. The Imperial Reform proclaimed an "eternal public peace" (Ewiger Landfriede) to put an end to the abounding feuds and the anarchy of the robber barons and it defined a new standing imperial army to enforce that peace. However, it took a few more decades until the new regulation was universally accepted.^[6] In 1506, for example, knight Jan Kopidlansky killed somebody in Prague and the Town Councillors sentenced him to death and had him executed. Brother Jiri Kopidlansky revenged himself by continuing atrocities.^[7]

More than a third of the Ya̧nomamö males, on average, died from warfare. The accounts of missionaries to the area have recounted constant infighting in the tribes for women or prestige, and evidence of continuous warfare for the enslavement of neighboring tribes such as the Macu before the arrival of European settlers and government.^[8]

A Kasbah in the Dades valley, High Atlas. Historically, tribal feuding and banditry were a way of life for the Berbers of Morocco. As a result, hundreds of ancient kasbahs were built.

The Clan Gordon was at one point one of the most powerful clans in middle Scotland. Clan feuds and battles were frequent, especially with the Clan Cameron, Clan Murray, Clan Forbes, and the Chattan Confederation.

In Corsica, vendetta was a social code that required Corsicans to kill anyone who wronged the family honor. It has been estimated that between 1683 and 1715, nearly 30,000 out of 120,000 Corsicans lost their lives to vendetta.^[9]

Throughout history, the Maniots—one of Greece's toughest populations—have been known by their neighbors and their enemies as fearless warriors who practice blood feuds. Some vendettas went on for months and sometimes years. The families involved would lock themselves in their towers and when they got the chance would murder members of the opposing family.^[10]

The Basque Country in the Late Middle Ages was ravaged by bitter partisan wars between local ruling families. In Navarre, these conflicts became polarised in a violent struggle between the Agramont and Beaumont parties. In Biscay, the two major warring factions were named Oinaz and Gamboa. (Cf. the Guelphs and Ghibellines in Italy). High defensive structures ("towers") built by local noble families, few of which survive today, were frequently razed by fires, sometimes by royal decree.

The defensive towers built by feuding clans of Svaneti, mountains of Caucasus.

Leontiy Lyulye, an expert on conditions in the Caucasus, wrote in the mid-19th century: "Among the mountain people the blood feud is not an uncontrollable permanent feeling such as the vendetta is among the Corsicans. It is more like an obligation imposed by the public opinion." In the Dagestani aul Kadar, one such blood feud between two antagonistic clans lasted for nearly 260 years, from the 17th century till the 1860s.^[11]

An alternative to feud was blood money (or weregild in the Norse culture), which demanded payment of some kind from those responsible for a wrongful death (even an accidental one). If these payments were not made or were refused by the offended party, a blood feud would ensue.

Vendetta in modern times

Vendetta is reputedly still practiced in some areas in France (especially Corsica) and Italy (especially Sicily, Sardinia, Campania, Calabria, Apulia, and other areas of Southern Italy),^[12] in Crete (Greece), among Kurdish clans in Iraq and Turkey,^[13][14][15] in northern Albania, among Pashtuns in Afghanistan, among Somali clans,^[16] over land in Nigeria,^[17] in India (a caste-related feuds among rival Hindu groups)^[18][19], between rival tribes in the north-east Indian state of Assam,^[20] among rival clans in China^[21] and Philippines,^[22] among the Arab Bedouins and Arab tribes inhabiting the mountains of Yemen and between Shiites and Sunnis in Iraq,^[23] in southern Ethiopia,^[24][25] among the highland tribes of New Guinea,^[26] in Svaneti, in the mountainous areas of Dagestan, many northern areas of Georgia and Azerbaijan, a number of republics of the northern Caucasus and essentially among Chechen teips where those seeking retribution do not accept or respect the local law enforcement authority. Vendettas are generally abetted by a perceived or actual indifference on the part of local law enforcement.

In rural Yemen, state authority is weak, and disputes between tribes are frequently solved through violence.^[27]

In Albania, the blood feud has returned in rural areas after more than 40 years of being abolished by Albanian communists led by Enver Hoxha. More than 5,500 Albanian families are currently engaged in blood feuds. There are now more than 20,000 men and boys who live under an ever-present death sentence because of blood feuds. Since 1992, at least 5,000 Albanians have been killed due to blood feuds.^[28]

Mutual vendetta may develop into a vicious circle of further killings, retaliation, counterattacks, and all-out warfare that can end in the mutual extinction of both families. Often the original cause is forgotten, and feuds continue simply because it is perceived that there has always been a feud.

There is a scene in The Godfather, in which Michael Corleone, hiding from U.S. police in Sicily, walks through a village with his two bodyguards. Michael asks, "Where are all the men?" The bodyguard replies, "They're all dead from vendettas."

Some of the gang wars between organized crime groups are effectively forms of vendetta, where the criminal organization (like the Mafia "family") has taken the place of blood relatives.^[29]

Famous blood feuds

• Njál's saga, an Icelandic account of a Norse blood feud
• The Percy–Neville feud (1450s; England)
• The Wars of the Roses (1455–1487; England)
• The Campbell–MacDonald feud, including the Massacre of Glencoe (1692; Scotland)
• The Battle of the North Inch, Michaelmas, 1396, Scotland; a set-piece inter-clan "battle to the death" between 30 members each of two long-feuding rival clans of the Clan Chattan Confederation, Clan MacPherson and Clan Davidson; staging the event received royal and legal approval citing the Scottish concept of trial by combat; the battle of fictionalised in the novel The Fair Maid of Perth by Sir Walter Scott, in which one combattant for the MacPhersons, the blacksmith Henry Gow or Hal O' The Wynd, was immortalised.
• The Donnelly–Biddulph community feud (1857-1880; Ontario, Canada)
• The Lincoln County War (1878-1881; New Mexico, USA)
• The Clanton/McLaury–Earp feud (see also Earp Vendetta Ride), also known as the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral (1881; Arizona, USA)
• The Hatfield–McCoy feud (1878–1891; West Virginia & Kentucky, USA)
• The Pleasant Valley War, also known as the Tonto Basin Feud (1882–1892; Arizona, USA)
• The Capone–Moran feud, including the St. Valentine's Day massacre (1925–1930; Chicago, Illinois, USA)
• The Castellammarese War (1929–1931; New York City, USA)
• The Gunn–Keith feud
• The Talbot–Berkeley feud
• The Great Mafia War (1981–1983; Sicily, Italy)
• The Feud of Scampia (2004–2005; Naples, Italy)

Fictional blood feuds

• The Interlopers a short story by Saki, is a multi-generational feud between the families of Georg Znaeym and Ulrich von Gradwitz.
• The Atreides–Harkonnen feud from Frank Herbert's Dune (novel)
• The Corleone–Tattaglia feud from Mario Puzo's The Godfather
• The Montague–Capulet feud, from Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet
• The Grangerford–Shepherdson feud, from Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn.
• The Barnes–Ewing feud, from the soap opera Dallas
• The Kryeqyqe–Berisha feud, from Ismail Kadare's novel, Broken April
• The DiMera–Brady feud, from the soap opera Days of our Lives
• The Karahasan–Mitrevski feud, from the movie Odmazda ("Vengeance"), a multi-generational feud between a Turkish and Slav-Macedonian family.
• The Pollock–Maugg feud, from the computer role-playing game Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura.
• The Heathcliff–Linton family feud from Wuthering Heights
• The Robinson-Ramsay family feud from Australian soap Neighbours

Hip-hop feuds

See Hip-hop feud

Wrestling feuds

In professional wrestling, a feud is a staged disagreement between two wrestlers or factions.

Football rivalries

Literature

• Jonas Grutzpalk: Blood Feud and Modernity. Max Weber's and Émile Durkheim's Theory. In: Journal of Classical Sociology 2 (2002); p. 115-134.[1]

See also

External links

• BBC: In pictures: Egypt vendetta ends May, 2005, One of the most enduring and bloody family feuds of modern times in Upper Egypt has ended with a tense ceremony of humiliation and forgiveness. Police are very edgy. After lengthy peace talks, no one knows if the penance - and a large payment of blood money - will end the vendetta which began in 1991 with a children's fight.
• Blood feud in Caucasus
• Blood feuds tearing Gaza apart
• Albania: Feuding families…bitter lives
• Blood feuds blight Albanian lives
• Thousands fear as blood feuds sweep Albania
• Blood feud in Medjugorje, 1991-1992
• Chad: Clan Feuds Creating Tinderbox of Conflict
• Tribal Warfare and Blood Revenge
• Iraq's death squads: On the brink of civil war
• Bedouin family feud
• A "Yakuza War" has started in Central Tokyo
• Gangs clash in Nigerian oil city
• NZ authorities fear retaliatory attacks between rival gangs
• Gang mayhem grips LA
• Mafia feuds bring bloodshed to Naples' streets
• Blood in the Streets: Subculture of Violence
• Mexico drugs cartels feud erupts
• State Attorney: Problems Posed By Haitian Gangs Growing
• Calabrian clan feud suspected in slayings
• Violent ethnic war looms between Filipino and Vietnamese gangs
• Tribal warfare kills nine in Indonesia's Papua
• Crow Creek Massacre
• BBC News, July 2008 - Family Feud in Ireland Involves 200 rioters

References