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Corsican nationalism
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Corsican nationalism
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.
A sense of Corsican particularity can be traced back to the mid-18th century, when the island was fought over by the Genoese Republic and the Kingdom of France. Pasquale Paoli led a rebellion by Corsicans against the various foreign powers contesting the island, founding a short-lived independent state governed from Corte. Inspired by the Enlightenment political ideas currently becoming fashionable in Europe, Paoli set up a liberal constitutional republic: a deliberative assembly, the Diet, was elected through universal manhood suffrage, with evidence to suggest that female suffrage also existed. Paoli's practical exercise in Enlightened constitutional government was inspired by thinkers such as Voltaire and Rousseau, but also in turn inspired them, being the sole example of their political philosophies put into practice until the American Revolution a decade later. The French conquest of 1767 put an end to the experiment (with the exception of a brief British-governed separation from France during the French Revolutionary Wars), and the island was incorporated into the Kingdom of France. The memory of the brief period of self-rule would act as an inspiration to later regionalist and nationalist movements, even as many among Corsica's educated elites accepted a place in the French state, with Napoleon Bonaparte becoming the French head of state less than thirty years after the island was conquered by France.
As with most European nationalist and separatist movements, the 1890s saw the first stirrings of a consciousness of a distinct regional way of life, and the first ideas that regional culture should be reflected in distinct political institutions. With Corsica in an agricultural depression, misruled by powerful local political bosses, subject to mass emigration devastating rural communities, and increasingly confronted by the culture of the French state (which was encouraging cultural assimilation and administrative centralisation, through the establishment of the countrywide laic school system), stirrings began of a movement to defend the Corsican language and way of life.
The first group to do so formed in 1896 around the newspaper La Tramontana ('Beyond the Mountains'), but this small group of intellectuals remained a minority within the political landscape of the time. A new generation carried the torch with the foundation of A Cispra newspaper in 1914, which made the first demands for a Corsican political separatism: "Corsica is not a department of France. It is a nation that has been conquered and will rise again."
It was World War I that generated an audience for these previously marginal ideas. Conscription affected agrarian communities more than industrial ones, and the death-toll for France's rural regions was consequently higher than the national average, with Corsica the department with the highest ratio of casualties per capita: the trauma of losing a dozen young men in a small village caused many Corsicans to begin to question the French state. For some this prompted a desire for greater administrative decentralisation within the French Republic (this was the focus of the Estates-General of Corsica, a 1934 conference held in Ajaccio); for a few, it triggered a desire to work towards an independent Corsican state; and for yet others it, along with the perception that neighbouring Italy was being regenerated under a dynamic modern regime, prompted a desire to integrate into Fascist Italy. These different ideas were centred on the Corsican nationalist newspaper A Muvra (The Moufflon). Hostility to the French state grew following military operations on the island in 1930 to root out the popular bandit, Spada.
1923 saw the foundation of the Partitu Corsu d'Azione, under the leadership of Petru Rocca, an Italian irredentist who initially promoted the union of Corsica to the Kingdom of Italy, and Pierre Dominique, a prominent political journalist who soon after joined France's ruling centre-left Radical-Socialist Party. World War Two modified this sentiment, as Italian troops occupied the island: after the war the sentiment evolved in favour of promoting changed to promote Corsican decentralisation, via the new Partitu Corsu Autonomista. Rocca in 1953 demanded from France the acceptance of the Corsican people and language and the creation of the University of Corte.
Corsican nationalism was a minority movement during these decades, and many Corsicans participated in the French state as administrators, soldiers, policemen and several cabinet ministers; indeed during the interwar some of the most prominent political figures within France's countrywide political organizations were Corsicans (see Jean Chiappe, Horace Carbuccia, François Piétri, Cesar Campinchi, Gabriel Péri). However, the work of the smaller intellectual, cultural and political groups formed the prehistory to the modern nationalist movement that would find a mass audience after the political crisis of 1958.
The end of the 1950s saw the high point of Corsica's population and economy. Since the end of the 19th century, Corsica had continued to decrease in population[contradictory], culminating in a precarious economic situation and a huge delay in the development of industry and infrastructure.
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Corsican nationalism
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.
A sense of Corsican particularity can be traced back to the mid-18th century, when the island was fought over by the Genoese Republic and the Kingdom of France. Pasquale Paoli led a rebellion by Corsicans against the various foreign powers contesting the island, founding a short-lived independent state governed from Corte. Inspired by the Enlightenment political ideas currently becoming fashionable in Europe, Paoli set up a liberal constitutional republic: a deliberative assembly, the Diet, was elected through universal manhood suffrage, with evidence to suggest that female suffrage also existed. Paoli's practical exercise in Enlightened constitutional government was inspired by thinkers such as Voltaire and Rousseau, but also in turn inspired them, being the sole example of their political philosophies put into practice until the American Revolution a decade later. The French conquest of 1767 put an end to the experiment (with the exception of a brief British-governed separation from France during the French Revolutionary Wars), and the island was incorporated into the Kingdom of France. The memory of the brief period of self-rule would act as an inspiration to later regionalist and nationalist movements, even as many among Corsica's educated elites accepted a place in the French state, with Napoleon Bonaparte becoming the French head of state less than thirty years after the island was conquered by France.
As with most European nationalist and separatist movements, the 1890s saw the first stirrings of a consciousness of a distinct regional way of life, and the first ideas that regional culture should be reflected in distinct political institutions. With Corsica in an agricultural depression, misruled by powerful local political bosses, subject to mass emigration devastating rural communities, and increasingly confronted by the culture of the French state (which was encouraging cultural assimilation and administrative centralisation, through the establishment of the countrywide laic school system), stirrings began of a movement to defend the Corsican language and way of life.
The first group to do so formed in 1896 around the newspaper La Tramontana ('Beyond the Mountains'), but this small group of intellectuals remained a minority within the political landscape of the time. A new generation carried the torch with the foundation of A Cispra newspaper in 1914, which made the first demands for a Corsican political separatism: "Corsica is not a department of France. It is a nation that has been conquered and will rise again."
It was World War I that generated an audience for these previously marginal ideas. Conscription affected agrarian communities more than industrial ones, and the death-toll for France's rural regions was consequently higher than the national average, with Corsica the department with the highest ratio of casualties per capita: the trauma of losing a dozen young men in a small village caused many Corsicans to begin to question the French state. For some this prompted a desire for greater administrative decentralisation within the French Republic (this was the focus of the Estates-General of Corsica, a 1934 conference held in Ajaccio); for a few, it triggered a desire to work towards an independent Corsican state; and for yet others it, along with the perception that neighbouring Italy was being regenerated under a dynamic modern regime, prompted a desire to integrate into Fascist Italy. These different ideas were centred on the Corsican nationalist newspaper A Muvra (The Moufflon). Hostility to the French state grew following military operations on the island in 1930 to root out the popular bandit, Spada.
1923 saw the foundation of the Partitu Corsu d'Azione, under the leadership of Petru Rocca, an Italian irredentist who initially promoted the union of Corsica to the Kingdom of Italy, and Pierre Dominique, a prominent political journalist who soon after joined France's ruling centre-left Radical-Socialist Party. World War Two modified this sentiment, as Italian troops occupied the island: after the war the sentiment evolved in favour of promoting changed to promote Corsican decentralisation, via the new Partitu Corsu Autonomista. Rocca in 1953 demanded from France the acceptance of the Corsican people and language and the creation of the University of Corte.
Corsican nationalism was a minority movement during these decades, and many Corsicans participated in the French state as administrators, soldiers, policemen and several cabinet ministers; indeed during the interwar some of the most prominent political figures within France's countrywide political organizations were Corsicans (see Jean Chiappe, Horace Carbuccia, François Piétri, Cesar Campinchi, Gabriel Péri). However, the work of the smaller intellectual, cultural and political groups formed the prehistory to the modern nationalist movement that would find a mass audience after the political crisis of 1958.
The end of the 1950s saw the high point of Corsica's population and economy. Since the end of the 19th century, Corsica had continued to decrease in population[contradictory], culminating in a precarious economic situation and a huge delay in the development of industry and infrastructure.
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