There are many entrances to the world of the Mafia, but a walk up the citrus groves may be the road to enlightenment. It has, after all, been taken by ­Francis Ford Coppola. His Godfather films pelt the viewers with oranges. Most scenes pertaining to death or violence have orange somewhere in view, whether as a fruit or a colour. These include the Don shopping for fruit before an attempt on his life or the advert for Florida oranges as Sonny is riddled at the toll booth. There are many more.

It may be more than a Coppola affectation; it just may be his nod to the origins of the mafia among the citrus growers of Sicily in the mid-19th century. It was the humblest of starts for an organisation that has gripped the world through portrayals on screen and bled it through a variety of scams.

It is difficult to chart precisely the walk from the groves. The organisation seeped into sulphur mining and then into the larger world. This seems the end of certainty. Even the origin of the term “mafia” or even “maffia” has produced a series of blood feuds among scholars. And what of the organisation that carries its name? The mafia has become impossible to categorise, with even its very existence questioned by a generation of upholders of the law. It has become a synonym for organised crime. But, as one historian has remarked, “if everything is mafia, then nothing is mafia”. The Sicilian society is either a distinct entity or it falls into the mass of criminality.

Leopold Franchetti, who wrote one of the earliest reports on the mafia, was perhaps closest to the mark when he wrote in 1876: “The term mafia found a class of criminals ready and waiting for a name to define them, and, given their special character and importance in Sicilian society, they had a right to a different name from that defining vulgar criminals in other societies.”

Lupo seeks to discover that “special ­character” and look at how it has impacted on Italy and beyond. This is not a book of dramatic shoot-outs or even one that lingers long on individual characters. It is a sober assessment of the history of a movement. This can make the walk up the citrus groves merely a prelude to a hard slog up the mountain of criminal theory, Italian politics and the growth of an illicit global capitalism.

The classic mafia operation was to offer threat and protection from the same source – a simple way to make money. It worked in the citrus groves of Sicily when owners were told that they needed security from brigands. It worked later across the world.

Lupo’s book offers much more than an exposition of this crude, criminal philosophy. The mafia has never moved far from protection rackets but has made its money and formed its considerable influence by other means. The undeniable evidence is that the mafia entered the drugs trade on the ground floor. The United States of America was to be its greatest, most faithful customer. More than 800,000 Sicilians entered America between 1901 and 1914, and some of them formed an infrastructure that allowed the mafia to dominate the drugs trade.

This created huge wealth and political power. In Italy, the mafia is linked closely to freemasonry and politics. Giulio Andreotti, below, the once Italian prime minister and enduring power broker, was convicted of having links with the mafia although he was cleared on appeal. The influence in the US may be less visible but surely undeniable. It is, after all, almost half a century since the mafia demonstrated that it could reach into the life and the bedroom of a president of the US in the shape of John F Kennedy.

Lupo does not stray into the areas marked “mafia conspiracy”. He has no need to do so. His tone is neutral, his words are sober. This is the scholarly history of the mafia, but it still has the capacity to chill the bones. The mafia has moved on from the citrus fields, but its bitter harvest of death, drugs and fear shows no sign of having a barren year.

History of the Mafia is published by Columbia University Press, priced £21.95