Musings on Corsica, Sardinia, and accidents of history

Two close islands these days have almost nothing to do with each other. I've been travelling between the two thinking about how the nation-state has eroded Europe's regional identities.

I’m on a train travelling through the mountains of Corsica, from the French-vibed capital of Ajaccio to what I hear is the more Italian-vibed second city of Bastia. I’m coming toward the end of a two-week trip by plane, train, automobile and boat across this island, part of France, and the Southern island of Sardinia, part of Italy. It’s not been easy. An initial desire to travel these two islands (who together have no common name, like the Balaeric Islands or the Virgin Islands, despite sharing identical heraldry on their flags) became a near-obsession when I discovered that apparently nobody does this and getting between the islands is difficult. Nevertheless, she persisted and it’s gone off without a hitch. Fun fact which sums up the difficulties: the Corsica-Sardinia Ferries does not have any route taking people between the two islands. They do France to Corsica and Italy to Sardinia. The only regular crossing is the 45 minute journey across the Bonifacio straight, by a different company.

Some history

The current status of the islands would have surprised people living there 300 years ago. At that time, Corsica was part of Genoa (Italy) and Sardinia was part of Aragon (Spain). In Corsica, still today they speak a dialect of Italian (despite France’s efforts to eradicate it in the 19th century). In Sardinia they speak Sardinian - an entirely separate language from Italian - except in the very North where they speak Corsican Italian and Catalan. The reason for the difference is that Corsica and Northern Sardinia received heavy immigration from Pisa 1,000 years ago, who supplanted the Latin-derived Old Corsican (now extinct) and Sardinian in those areas.

The two islands were united in the single province of Sardinia and Corsica in the Roman Empire, before being briefly occupied by Germanic tribes and then becoming part of the Byzantine Empire at its height. Eventually the Byzantine control of the islands was only nominal, and in reality they were controlled by powerful families of Pisa and Genoa. The Muslims of Iberia sought to take the islands in the 9th century, but Charlemagne swooped in to defend them. Saying they were his now because the Genoans and Pisans had been unable to defend them, he then gifted them to the pope. The papacy maintained nominal ownership for two centuries (though in reality Genoa and Pisa were in control of both islands), before eventually gifting them to the King of Aragon - proclaiming the Kingdom of Sardinia and Corsica in 1297. This is a running theme of these islands - people claiming ownership of them without actually controlling them giving them away to other entities.

King James II of Aragon (Catalonia), claiming his gift, decided to take Sardinia first. But it took some time because the locals resisted him. By the time he finished, the Genoans had established impregnable defences in Corsica. King James launched a naval invasion across the straight and conducted a siege of Bonifacio, but was famously defeated at the Stairs of the King of Aragon (seen cut into the cliff in the photo above) in 1420. This was the definitive date that split the two islands, though they each went in unusual directions. The Kingdom of Sardinia (the ‘and Corsica’ was dropped) became part of the Spanish monarchy (just like Belgium was) and Corsica became part of the Republic of Genoa (later part of Italy).

But just before the creation of the nation-states of Spain and Italy, the islands passed to other hands. In 1708, due to the vagaries of negotiations settling the Spanish War of Succession, the Kingdom of Sardinia was passed from the Spanish monarchy to the ambitious House of Savoy, ruler of the Duchy of Piedmont - just eight years before the creation of the nation-state of Spain by the Nueva Planta Decrees merging the various kingdoms owned by the Spanish monarchy. The Savoyards didn’t so much want the island as they wanted its status of a kingdom. They had ambitions to unite all the lands of Italy into a single nation-state, but all they had was a duchy. By uniting Piedmont with Sardinia, Duke of Savoy Victor Amadeus II thus became king of Sardinia. Though historians retroactively call this the Kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia, at the time it was in fact just called the Kingdom of Sardinia, meaning this was the name of the unified Italian state until it changed its name to the Kingdom of Italy in 1861.

Meanwhile, the residents of Corsica rose up in rebellion against the Genoese in 1729. The ruling Genoese elite, who spoke Lugurian Italian, had always kept themselves very separate from the natives, who spoke Corsican Italian (based on the Tuscan dialect used by the first settlers from Pisa, which is the basis for today’s standard Italian). The rebels defeated the Genoese, drove them from the island (except for a few strongholds) and established their own Republic of Corsica, writing down Europe’s first democratic constitution in 1755. After years of trying to retake the island, the Genoese gave up and decided, ‘if you can’t beat them, sell them’. Since according to the pope (still the final arbiter of such things at the time) they still owned the island, they sold it to France in 1769. King Louis XV then invaded, annexed the island and expelled all the people who had been leaders of the independent republic.

One of those people was Napoleon’s father Carlo Buonaparte. But the first emperor of France, who was born the very same year as Corsica’s annexation, would end up denouncing his father’s former political activities and firmly embracing France. Fun fact: Napoleon couldn’t speak French until he was ten years old. His first language, like everyone else on the island, was Corsican Italian. Today, the Corsican capital of Ajaccio firmly leans in to its status as Napoleon’s birthplace, which I find a bit sad given that Napoleon never showed any sign of caring very much about Corsica and never even visited after he became leader of France (the closest he ever got was his exile in Elba). His last visit home was as a general coming back from the Egyptian campaign, and he got his mother and siblings out of there as soon as he could (then making them kings and duchesses of the various territories he conquered - the origin of the word ‘nepotism’).

It was in fact his nephew, Emperor Napoleon III, who firmly linked Corsica with Napoleon 50 years later. Napoleon IIi needed to shore up his links to his uncle as he built a cult of personality around him. He made a visit to Corsica with much pomp and circumstance in 1860 and established the Bonaparte residence in Ajaccio as a place of pilgrammage. He then poured investment into the island, which had been completely neglected under both his uncle and the Bourbons. He was horrified to find that few people on the island could speak French, and set about trying to eradicate Corsican Italian and force people to speak French, as he was busy doing in his quest to murder regional languages throughout mainland France. France ended up being the most successful and prolific murder or languages in European history. Today, a visit to Bonaparte’s birthplace is well worth it. It actually tells you more about Napoleon III and the creation of French national identity in the 19th century than it tells you about Napoleon I.

When Italy was created in 1861, there was a lot of irredentist desire in Corsica to join the new state. Napoleon III’s investment helped to dampen that, because Corsicans imagined they were getting a lot more attention from Paris than they would get from Rome. But by the 1930s this investment had waned. Mussolini identified Corsica as one of the Italian-speaking areas he wanted to annex (along with Nice, Dalmatia and Albania). He had a lot of support, until the Italians actually invaded in 1942, (Hitler rebuffed Mussolini’s requests to take Corsica and Nice from Vichy France until he decided to disband the puppet state). 85,000 Italian troops were stationed on the island, a colossal amount for a population of 215,000 people. They were by all accounts absolutely brutal to the local population, which had the effect of dampening the enthusiasm that had existed for joining Italy. By the time of the island’s liberation by the Americans few were left advocating for joining Italy. The cause of Corsican independence, which has sometimes been violent like in the Basque Country, now centers on autonomy or independence from France rather than unification with Italy.

Meanwhile in Sardinia, the Italians were much more successful in integrating the island into the Italian Republic. Though few people could speak Italian there at the time of the second world war, a big education push in the 1950s along with mass media meant that by the end of the century most people except the very elderly could speak Italian. Today, people speak Sardinian at home and Italian outside the home. And the only part of the island where they still speak Catalan is the town of Alghero in the Northwest. People speak Sardinian, but they feel Italian. By contrast, in Corsica the native language has been steadily overpowered by French and today only 28% of Corsicans can speak it well. However the fact that the majority of seats in their regional assembley are held by separatist parties shows they don’t really feel French. As I drove through the islands, I would say about half of the road signs had the French crossed out with graffiti leaving only the names in Corsican Italian. By contrast, there is no separatist movement in Sardinia to speak of.

Some observations

One of the really interesting things about this trip has been seeing how, despite their similar-looking geography and place names, the two islands are so culturally different. The architecture is the most striking change. Corsica has been part of France for 250 years, so it shouldn’t be surprising that the buildings here look very French. I really feel that I’m in the South of France, with the traditional grey brick buildings and iron balconies. But when you take the 45-minute journey on the ferry across the straight of Bonifacio, suddenly everything looks different. The buildings look, you guessed it, Italian.

As for the people, general stereotypes seem to apply (I’ve never in my life met a stereotype that didn’t prove to be true). In my experience the people in Sardinia seem much nicer than the people in Corsica, but less well-dressed. The people in Corsica look very beautiful and well put together, but they’re not very friendly. The people in Sardinia are much more approachable. These differences fascinate me. These are, effectively, the same people. But the accidents of history that put one island in France and the other in Italy implanted national behaviours onto the people. If I’m brutally honest, I found Corsica to be disappointingly French. I was thinking these would be Italians who happen to speak French. Instead, I found French people who happen to live in (what should logically be) Italy. That being said, I haven’t arrived in Bastia yet. I’ve been in Portovecchio, Bonifaccio and Ajaccio. Ajaccio felt extremely French, but perhaps that’s natural since its the closest to mainland France. The capital during the 500-year Genoan period was Bastia, but it was moved to Ajaccio after the French occupation.

Another noticeable difference is that Sardinia has more people, more towns and generally feels more developed (unlike Corsica, it actually has motorways). This is partly due to geography (Corsica is smaller and much more mountainous). With a population of just 350,000 (way less than tiny Malta), Corsica is the third-least populated of region of France after Mayotte and French Guiana. Sardinia, by contrast, has a population of 1.6 million. This probably explains why I’ve met many people from Sardinia in my life, but until coming here I had never met anyone from Corsica.

During my travels, I’ve been asking the locals what they think of the other island, and if they’ve ever been there. The responses have been confusion over why I’m even asking the question. Most people said they’ve never been to the other island, perhaps not surprising considering that it’s rather difficult to travel between them and there’s no direct flights. “I’ve never really thought about them,” Giovanni from Sassari in Sardinia told me about Corsicans. He was also unaware that his home dialect, Sassarese Italian, is actually the same as Corsican Italian (understandable if he’s never met a Corsican). Antoine, from Ajaccio in Corsica, similarly told me he’s never been to Sardinia and it’s never occurred to him to go. Despite speaking an Italian dialect at home with his grandmother, he’s never been to Italy. “At the end of the day we’re very French, I don’t feel Italian at all,” he told me. When he travels, he usually takes the ferry to Marseille.

I did not hear French once in Sardinia, nor have I heard Italian once in Corsica. In fact I don’t think I’ve heard a single language other than French here. In Sardinia I heard a lot of Dutch and German (it’s not yet the high season so prices are much cheaper - I told you I’ve never met a stereotype that isn’t true).

A Europe of the regions

Coming from a federal country, I am often surprised by just how centralized European countries like France and the UK are. As a European History major at university, one of the themes that greatly interested me was the creation of European nation states in the 19th century, whether they were brand-new entities like Germany and Italy or conversions of previous multiethnic and multilingual kingdoms like France, Britain and Spain. I was fascinated by how much effort it took to create these national identities which had never existed before, and why that pointed to just how artificial they are.

That is why the idea of a European Union of the Regions has greatly interested me since moving to Brussels. So often the story of ever-closer union is portrayed only as Brussels stealing away power from the national capitals. But in another way, the European project is trying to chip away at the outrageous power amassed by Paris, London, Madrid, etc and move it in two directions - up to Brussels and down to the regions. France’s regions, for instance, have almost no power and the regional assemblies are mostly talking shops. Local issues of the most bizarrely minute detail are decided in Paris. For the regions of France’s South, who two centuries ago didn’t even speak French but rather various other languages (completely separate from French, not “patois” dialects of French as students are taught in school), this centralisation reflects the brutal nation-state ideology of the 19th century rather than the millennium of history these regions have. And it isn’t just regional identities that the EU can foster and protect. The EU can do so for all non-national identities, recognising that people are more than the nation-state identities that have been pushed upon them from birth. I was thinking about that when I took the photo of the three flags above. A Europe of non-national identities.

Corsica and Sardinia are good cases in point. All national borders are accidents of history, but some more so than others. The fact that Sardinia is part of Italy and not Spain is due to a last-minute idea someone had during negotiations for how to settle the Spanish succession dispute. The fact that Corsica is part of France and not Italy is due to a last-minute greedy conniving idea by the Doge of Genoa, and France’s willingness to go along with it. Everything that has happened since then, culturally separating these two islands, has been purely artificial. The European Union can help right these 19th century wrongs by encouraging a federalization at both European and national level. Decisions should be made where it is most logical to make them, whether it be municipal, regional, national or confederal level. For separatists in Catalonia, Corsica, Brittany, Bavaria, Flanders, or Åland who want more autonomy, the European Union should be offering them ways to escape from these nation-state constraints without violence and without actual separation.

Given how sidelined the Committee of the Regions is in Brussels (and by contrast the power of the EU Council), I know it’s an uphill struggle. But I hope this is an idea that gains more traction. Because for me, one of the saddest things I see in Europe is just how much regional identities, languages and cultures have been eroded on this continent over the past two centuries by the great mistake that was the nation-state

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