Historically, one of the most reliable sources of widespread banditry was rulers ramping up military recruitment for major wars, then cutting their soldiers loose afterwards without pay, leaving a bunch of heavily armed men with military experience floating around broke and homeless.
Knowing this, whenever someone jokingly refers to raccoons as "trash bandits", I get a vivid mental image of, like, a raccoon succession crisis leading to a raccoon civil war, the aftermath of which forced the former soldiers of the losing side (who are all raccoons) to take up the life of the raccoon outlaw.
#I've seen the soldier thing in historical Cdramas! #what a bad idea #but also lol (via @fake-married-my-dead-fiance)
The interesting thing about this particular phenomenon in Chinese history is we've got multiple recorded cases of the winner of a civil war going out of their way to make sure the losing side's soldiers got paid; having them all rounded up and executed was politically untenable – in a civil war, the losing side's soldiers are your loyal subjects' friends and neighbours! – so the only real options were either to pay them or to have to deal with an explosion of bandit activity a few years down the road.
Another Chinese option is to fight the bandits (or pirates) for a while, then pardon the strongest group of bandits and hire them to fight the remaining bandits. All enemies will be brought to heel by bureaucracy!
A third Chinese option is to be hired to capture some bandits, and instead set them free and start a new dynasty with them as your army
