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‪This essay aims to provide a historiographical map of the discussion on postunitary southern banditry within the public debate. ‪The collapse of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies led to the sudden emergence of alternative narratives that were meant to counter the media strategy of the Italian unitary front. In this sense, and over the course of the twentieth century, various interpretations have recycled the legitimist vulgate and shaped it while using opposing political visions. ‪Socialist and Catholic-reactionary theories subsequently converged to produce a variety of historically revisionist accounts by writers and journalists, who used the “scandal” to bring the Risorgimento into the present : the unitary phase has been described as the decisive moment that informed the backwardness of Southern Italy. ‪This “Neo-meridionalist” impulse is opposed by recent historiographical publications, which have had the merit of holding back the Neo-bourbon wave, thus bringing new, methodologically correct interpretations into the public and political debate around the Mezzogiorno.