| History of Corsica |
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 Historyportal |
Italian irredentism in Corsica was a cultural and historical movement promoted by Italians and by people from Corsica who identified themselves as part of Italy rather than France, and promoted the Italian annexation of the island.
Corsica was part of the Republic of Genoa for centuries until 1768, when the Republic ceded the island to France, one year before the birth of Napoleon Bonaparte in the capital city of Ajaccio. Under France, the use of Corsican (a regional language closely related to Italian) has gradually declined in favour of the standard French language. Italian was the official language of Corsica until 1859. [1]
Giuseppe Garibaldi called for the inclusion of the "Corsican Italians" within Italy when the city of Rome was annexed to the Kingdom of Italy, but Victor Emmanuel II did not agree to it.
The course of Italian irredentism did not affect Corsica very much, and only during the Fascist rule of Benito Mussolini were the first organizations strongly promoting the unification of the island to the Kingdom of Italy founded. [2]
Before World War I in Livorno, professor Francesco Guerri founded the review Corsica antica e moderna, inspired on the Archivio storico di Corsica of Gioacchino Volpe. Petru Rocca created in the 1920s the Partito autonomista (Autonomist Party) of Corsica, of which he was the leader, with the support of monsignor Domenico Parlotti and dr. Croce, director of the "Archivi di Stato della Corsica".
Before and during World War II, some Corsican intellectuals staged pro-Italian propaganda and cultural activities in Italy (mainly in the Gruppi di Cultura Corsa "Corsican culture Associations"). These included Marco Angeli, Bertino Poli, Marchetti, Luccarotti, Grimaldi, and finally Petru Giovacchini, who was later proposed as a possible governor of Corsica in case Italy had annexed it. [3] The most renowned was Petru Giovacchini, who considered Pasquale Paoli (the hero of Corsica) as the precursor of Corsican irredentism in favor of the unification of the island to Italy. [4] The "Gruppi di Cultura Corsa" of Giovacchini reached a membership of 72,000 members by 1940, according to the historian R.H. Rainero. [5]
In November 1942 the VII Army Corps of the Regio Esercito occupied Corsica as part of the German-led response to the Allied landings in Africa, leaving the island still under the formal sovereignty of Vichy France. Because of the lack of partisan resistance at first, and to avoid problems with Marshal Philippe Pétain, no Corsican units were formed under Italian control (except for a labour battalion formed in March 1943). However, a Resistance movement based on local inhabitants loyal to France and boosted by Free French leaders developed, opposing the irredentist propaganda and the Italian occupation, and was repressed by the fascist forces and subsequently by German troops.
Some irredentist Corsican military officials collaborated with Italy, including the retired Major Pantalacci (and his son Antonio), colonel Mondielli and colonel Petru Simone Cristofini (and his wife, the first Corsican female journalist Marta Renucci). [6] After Free French forces and Resistance forces, together with some Italian troops who sided with the Allies, retook Corsica, Petru Cristofini was executed in 1943. Petru Giovacchini was also condemned to death, but fled to Italy where he found refuge until his death in 1955. Italian irredentism as an active movement in Corsica essentially died out with him. [7]
Colonel Pietro Cristofini (or Petru Simon Cristofini) was born in Calenzana (near Calvi, Corsica) on 26 May 1903 and in 1939 became a captain of the 3rd Algerian Fusiliers regiment. He was initially a supporter of Pétain. After the Allied occupation of French North Africa he commanded the Phalange Africaine .
In Tunisia, he was wounded in one eye and then, before returning to Corsica, met Benito Mussolini in Rome. He was a supporter of the union of Corsica to Italy and defended irredentist ideals. He actively collaborated with Italian forces in Corsica during the first months of 1943. In the island he worked with Petru Giovacchini (the possible governor of Corsica if the Axis had won the war). Cristofini, as head of the Ajaccio troops, helped the Italian Army to repress the Resistance opposition in Corsica before the Italian Armistice in September 1943.
He was put on trial for treason after the Allies retook Corsica, and sentenced to death. He tried to kill himself, and was executed while suffering from his wounds in November 1943. His wife, Marta Renucci, was sentenced in 1946 to 15 years of jail in Algiers for supporting irredentism and for collaborating with Italian fascism, but served only a reduced sentence.
While Corsican was spoken at home as a local vernacular, Italian had been the public and literary language on the island until the first half of the 19th century.
The Constitution, written in 1755 for the short-lived Corsican Republic, was written in Italian and Paoli proclaimed Italian as the sole official language of Corsica. Italian had been the prestige language in Corsica until the end of the 19th century. [8] Even Paoli's second Corsican Constitution, for the Anglo-Corsican Kingdom in 1794, was in Italian. [9] In the second half of the 19th century French replaced Italian, mainly because of Napoleon III. Corsican started to be used by Corsican intellectuals.
The modern varieties of Corsican (corsu) are directly related to the Tuscan dialect of Pisa, an Italian city that dominated the island before Genoa. In the north of the island (Calvi), there was also a local dialect (now nearly extinct) very similar to medieval Genoese. In the mountainous interior of Corsica, many villagers have some proficiency of Corsican, a medieval Pisan lect. [10]
The similarity of Corsican to Italian, because of their common Tuscan origin, can be seen in an example phrase: "I was born in Corsica and I spent there the best years of my youth".
Sò natu in Corsica è v'aghju passatu i megli anni di a mio ghjuventù (Corsican);
Sono nato in Corsica e vi ho passato i migliori anni della mia gioventù (Italian);
Je suis né en Corse et j'y ai passé les meilleurs années de ma jeunesse (French).
Nearly 12% of Corsicans can speak Italian as a foreign language nowadays, while three-quarters understand it thanks to the television programmes from Italy. [11]
The irredentist Marco Angeli di Sartèna wrote the first book in Corsican (titled Terra còrsa) in 1924 and many lyrics (titled Malincunie) in Ajaccio. He created and wrote the newspaper «Gioventù» of the Partito Corso d'azione ("Corsican Action Party"), partially in Italian and Corsican.
Pasquale Paoli was considered by Niccolò Tommaseo, who collected his Lettere (Letters), as one of the precursors of Italian irredentism. Paoli was sympathetic to Italian culture and regarded his own native language as an Italian dialect (Corsican is an Italo-Dalmatian tongue closely related to Tuscan). The Babbu di a Patria ("Homeland's father"), as Pasquale Paoli was nicknamed by the Corsican separatists, wrote in his Letters [12] the following message in 1768 against the French:
We are Corsicans by birth and sentiment, but first of all we feel Italian by language, origins, customs, traditions; and Italians are all brothers and united in the face of history and in the face of God ... As Corsicans we wish to be neither slaves nor "rebels" and as Italians we have the right to deal as equals with the other Italian brothers ... Either we shall be free or we shall be nothing... Either we shall win or we shall die, weapons in hand ... The war against France is right and holy as the name of God is holy and right, and here on our mountains will appear for Italy the sun of liberty....
Pasquale Paoli wanted the Italian language to be the official language of his Corsican Republic. His Corsican Constitution of 1755 was in Italian and was used as a model for the American constitution of 1787. [13] Furthermore, in 1765 Paoli founded in the city of Corte the first University of Corsica (where the teaching was done in Italian).
The Florentine dialect promoted by the Corsican Italians, had been the language of culture in Corsica since the Renaissance. Many Corsican authors wrote an extensive literature in Italian in the last centuries.
In the 14th century there was La Cronica of Giovanni della Grossa (1388-1464), Pier Antonio Monteggiani (1464-1525) and Marcantoni Ceccaldi (1526-1559). Storia di Corsica was published in 1594 by Anton Pietro Filippini. In the 15th and 16th centuries there were Ignazio Cardini (1566-1602), Pietro Cirneo (1447-1507), Guiglielmo Guglielmi di Orezza (1644-1728) with A Malannata and Ottave giocose.
In the 18th century, the Accademia dei Vagabondi was founded in Bastia, following the model of the Italian "Accademie". Angelo Francesco Colonna wrote Commentario delle glorie e prerogative del Regno e Popoli di Corsica in 1685.
During the Corsican Republic of Pasquale Paoli, there were Giulio Matteo Natali (Disinganno intorno alla Guerra de Corsica in 1736), Don Gregorio Salvini (Giustificazione della Revoluzione di Corsica (1758-1764)) and the same Pasquale Paoli (Corrispondenza, published only in 1846).
During the 19th century in Bastia, Salvatore Viale wrote La Dionomachia in 1817, Canti popolari corsi in 1843 and Dell'uso della lingua patria in Corsica in 1858, where he lamented the decline in the use of Italian language as a learned language in favor of French.
Many Corsican authors (who wrote in Italian) were influenced by the ideals of the Italian Risorgimento during the second half of the 19th century, such as Giuseppe Multado, Gian Paolo Borghetti, Francesco Ottaviano Renucci (Storia della Corsica dal 1789 al 1830 and Novelle storiche corse). Even the Italian Niccolò Tommaseo collected the Canti popolari corsi (with points of view of Italian irredentism) and made a compilation of the letters (Lettere di Pasquale de Paoli) of Pasquale Paoli.
Santu Casanova founded the famous literary review A Tramuntana (published in Ajaccio between 1896 and 1914) and wrote in Italian Meraviglioso testamento di Francesco in 1875 and La morte ed il funerale di Spanetto in 1892. He is considered the link between the old generations of Corsican writers who wrote in Italian language and the new ones, who started to use the Corsican language.
During the first half of the 20th century, the most important Corsican publication in Italian was the literary review A Muvra of Petru Rocca. Other Corsican authors in Italian were Domenicu Versini (nicknamed Maistrale), Matteu Rocca (I lucchetti in 1925), Dumenicu Carlotti (Pampame corse in 1926), Ageniu Grimaldi and Ugo Babbiziu (Una filza di francesismi colti nelle parlate dialettali corse in 1930).
The Corsican Italians who promoted the ideal of Corsican irredentism published mainly in Italy, because of the persecutions from the French regime in the island in the first half of the 20th century.
Thus, Petru Giovacchini wrote the poems Musa Canalinca and Rime notturne in 1933 in Corsica, but successively wrote and published Aurore, poesie corse, Corsica Nostra and Archiatri pontifici corsi in Rome (the last, while he was in exile in 1951, a few years before his premature death).
The irredentist Marco Angeli published in Milan Gigli di Stagnu and Liriche corse in 1934 and Bertino Poli wrote Il pensiero irredentista corso e le sue polemiche in Florence in 1940.
Small list of renowned Corsican Italians:
Corsican is a Romance language consisting of the continuum of the Tuscan Italo-Dalmatian dialects spoken on the Mediterranean island of Corsica, a territory of France, and in the northern regions of the island of Sardinia, an autonomous region of Italy.
Corte is a commune in the Haute-Corse department, on the island of Corsica, France.
Filippo Antonio Pasquale de' Paoli was a Corsican patriot, statesman, and military leader who was at the forefront of resistance movements against the Genoese and later French rule over the island. He became the President of the Executive Council of the General Diet of the People of Corsica and wrote the Constitution of the state.
Italian irredentism was a political movement during the late 19th and early 20th centuries in Italy with irredentist goals which promoted the unification of geographic areas in which indigenous peoples were considered to be ethnic Italians. At the beginning, the movement promoted the annexation to Italy of territories where Italians formed the absolute majority of the population, but retained by the Austrian Empire after the Third Italian War of Independence in 1866.
The Corsicans are a Romance-speaking ethnic group, native to the Mediterranean island of Corsica, a territorial collectivity of France.
Corsica is an island in the Mediterranean Sea and one of the 18 regions of France. It is the fourth-largest island in the Mediterranean and lies southeast of the French mainland, west of the Italian Peninsula and immediately north of the Italian island of Sardinia, the nearest land mass. A single chain of mountains makes up two-thirds of the island. As of January 2024, it had a population of 355,528.
The history of Corsica goes back to antiquity, and was known to Herodotus, who described Phoenician habitation in the 6th century BCE. Etruscans and Carthaginians expelled the Ionian Greeks, and remained until the Romans arrived during the Punic Wars in 237 BCE. Vandals occupied it in 430 CE, followed by the Byzantine Empire a century later.
The University of Corsica Pasquale Paoli is a university, based in Corte, Haute-Corse, Corsica, France with secondary campuses in Ajaccio, Biguglia and Cargèse. Founded in 1765, closed in 1769, and re-founded in 1981, it is the only university on the island of Corsica.
Petru Giovacchini was a Corsican activist, born in Canale-di-Verde to an old family of the Corsican nobility with deep-rooted pro-Italian feelings. Giovacchini was the most renowned of the Corsican Italians, who actively promoted the unification of Corsica to the Kingdom of Italy during the Fascist years.
The Corsican Republic was a short-lived state on the island of Corsica in the Mediterranean Sea. It was proclaimed in July 1755 by Pasquale Paoli, who was seeking independence from the Republic of Genoa. Paoli created the Corsican Constitution, which was the first constitution written in the Italian language. The text included various Enlightenment principles, including female suffrage, later revoked by the Kingdom of France when the island was taken over in 1769. The republic created an administration and justice system, and founded an army.
The flag of Corsica was adopted by General of the Nation Pasquale Paoli in 1755 and was based on a traditional flag used previously. It portrays a Moor's head in black wearing a white bandana above his eyes on a white background. Previously, the bandana covered his eyes; Paoli wanted the bandana moved to above the eyes to symbolize the liberation of the Corsican people from the Genoese.
The Anglo-Corsican Kingdom, also known officially as the Kingdom of Corsica, was a client state of the Kingdom of Great Britain that existed on the island of Corsica between 1794 and 1796, during the French Revolutionary Wars.
Corsican nationalism is the concept of a cohesive nation of Corsica and a national identity of its people. The Corsican autonomy movement stems from Corsican nationalism and advocates for further autonomy for the island, if not outright independence from France.
The French conquest of Corsica was a successful expedition by French forces of the Kingdom of France under Comte de Vaux, against Corsican forces under Pasquale Paoli of the Corsican Republic. The expedition was launched in May 1768, in the aftermath of the Seven Years' War. A French expeditionary force was landed on the island of Corsica, then ruled by the Corsican Republic. Marching inland to overcome any Corsican opposition, the French force initially suffered an unexpected defeat at the Battle of Borgo. But a new commander, the Comte de Vaux, was appointed to lead the expedition, and decisively defeated the Corsican army at the Battle of Ponte Novu in 1769, effectively bringing an end to Corsican resistance.
The Italian occupation of Corsica refers to the military occupation by the Kingdom of Italy of the French island of Corsica during the Second World War, from November 1942 to September 1943. After an initial period of increased control over the island, by early spring 1943 the Maquis had begun to occupy the hinterland. In the aftermath of the Armistice of Cassibile, the Italian capitulation to the Allies, the Germans evacuated Sardinia via Corsica and occupied the island with the support of Italian units who had defected to them. Italian troops under Giovanni Magli, the Maquis and Free French Forces joined forces against the Germans and liberated the island.
Petru Rocca was a Corsican politician and writer who supported Corsican independence from France. Initially he advocated regionalism for Corsica within the French state. He briefly supported Italian irredentism in Corsica, before returning to a position of French-Corsican regionalism before World War II.
Marco Angeli di Sartena (1905-1985) was a politician from Corsica, who wrote in the famous Literary Review "A Muvra". He was an active irredentist, supporting the union of Corsica to Italy.
Simon Petru Cristofini (1903–1943), also known as Pietro Simone Cristofini, was a Corsican soldier who commanded the Phalange Africaine during Tunisia Campaign in World War II and was executed for treason by French authorities because of his support for Italian irredentism in Corsica during the Italian occupation of Corsica.
Gian Paolo Borghetti was a Corsican writer, poet and politician. He has been described as "one of the greatest Corsican poets writing in Italian", and "one of the most brilliant Corsican intellectuals of the nineteenth century".
The Col de Teghime is a mountain pass in the Haute-Corse department of Corsica, France. The pass is in the south of the Monte Stello massif and is one of the main passes in the island.
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