What is the history of Mafia?

Question

Where did it start?

Answer 1

Violence and exploitation.

Answer 2

Sicily.....Just a family trying to make it any way they can.  

Answer 3

Like most criminal organizations, they started from a GOOD beginning and turned ugly.

Their political/social "ancestors" were the patriotic groups in Sicily that led the nationalist resistance to Napoleon's invasion force.

Mix that with a little feudalism-style "respect the padrone," and later on the regional repression of northern-dominated Italian power structures pushing the poorer southern Italians around, and voila! you've got the Mafia.