Corsican Republic (1755–1769) 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.
Fin-de-siècle and the interwar (1890–1940) 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.
Corsica in the 1960s 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, culminating in a precarious economic situation and a huge delay in the development of industry and infrastructure. Corsican society was then further affected by three events: • The first was the collapse of the
French Colonial Empire. The Colonial Army and colonial enterprises were the principal form of employment for Corsicans. In 1920, Corsicans made up 20% of colonial administration, despite only making up 1% of Metropolitan France's population. The end of colonialism deprived young Corsicans of the opportunities of their elders and forced many to return to the island. This situation resulted in the emergence of a regionalist movement with the objective of increasing the number of opportunities for the islanders. During the uprisings in Algeria in 1958 and 1961, Corsica was the only French
département that joined the insurgent colonists. • The second shock was the arrival of people returning from the former African colonies, French citizens but not always of Corsican ancestry, to whom the state controversially granted land in the fertile eastern plain. At the beginning of the 1960s, before the arrival of returnees from Algeria, they represented around 10% of the island's population. • The third involved
France's nuclear programme, in the context of the
Cold War. In 1960 French leaders
Charles de Gaulle and
Michel Debré sought to develop a nuclear arms testing site in the abandoned silver
mines of Argentella (Balagne). This provoked a significant protest movement across the island, which was successful in convincing the French government to abandon nuclear testing on the site, later
carried out in
French Polynesia. The episode was key in the development of the nationalist movement: first, in generating a sense of distrust towards the French state; second, in demonstrating what islanders could achieve through campaigning; and third by politicising the new generation who would go on to lead the nationalist movement for the remainder of the twentieth century, notably
Edmond Simeoni. For this reason, modern Corsican nationalism has retained strong links to the broader
Green movement.
Origins of the modern regionalist movement Many Corsicans began to become aware of the demographic decline and economic collapse of the island. The first movement appeared as the
Corsican Regional Front, a group largely formed by Corsican emigrants in Paris. This evolved into
Corsican Regionalist Action, which demanded that the French state take into account the island's economic difficulties and distinct cultural characteristics, notably linguistic, greatly endangered by the demographic decline and economic difficulty. These movements caused a major revival of the
Corsican language, and an increase in work to protect and promote Corsican cultural traditions. But these movements felt that their demands were being ignored and saw the state's treatment of the returnees as a sign of contempt. They argued against the idea that Corsica was made up of "virgin land" where there is no need to consult the local population on repatriation, and criticised the financial support and aid received by the new arrivals through the Society for Agricultural Development of Corsica (SOMIVAC), which had never been offered to the Corsicans.
Aléria incident and birth of the FLNC fighters In a situation that many considered dire, the group Corsican Regionalist Action (ARC)
(fr) decided to choose more radical methods of action. On 21 August 1975, twenty members of the ARC, led by the group's leader Edmond Simeoni, occupied the Depeille wine cellar, in the eastern plains near
Aléria. Equipped with rifles and machine guns, they wanted to bring to public attention the economic situation of the island, particularly that regarding agriculture. They denounced the takeover of lands in the east of the island by "
pieds-noirs" and their families. The French Interior Minister at the time,
Michel Poniatowski, sent 2,000
CRS and
gendarmes backed with light armoured vehicles, and ordered an attack on the 22nd at 4pm. Two gendarmes were killed during the confrontation. A week later the cabinet ordered the dissolution of the ARC. The tension rose rapidly in
Bastia and scuffles broke out in the late afternoon, which turned to riots by nightfall that included armed confrontation. One member of the ARC was killed and many were wounded. On 4 May 1976, some months after the events in Aléria, nationalist militants founded the
National Liberation Front of Corsica (FLNC), a joining of the
Fronte Paesanu di Liberazone di a Corsica (FPCL), responsible for the bombing of a polluting Italian boat, and
Ghjustizia Paolina, reputed to be the armed wing of the ARC. The founding of this new group was marked by a series of bombings in Corsica and in mainland France. A press conference was held in
Casabianca, the location of the signing of the
Corsican Constitution and where
Pasquale Paoli declared Corsican independence in 1755. Although claiming to be influenced by Marxist ideology, most separatist leaders have been from the nationalist right or apolitical backgrounds. == Themes of Corsican nationalism ==