Why is Corsica a part of France? (Short Animated Documentary)

corsica sits here a short distance from the italian coast throughout the medieval and early modern periods its people spoke corsican and italian it was economically culturally and politically tied to the italian peninsula for most of its existence and yet today it's a part of france which raises the question why why is corsica french and not italian so throughout the medieval period corsica swapped hands a few times from pisa to genoa to aragon to france to milan to a bank briefly to france again and finally back to genoa and across these years the people of corsica had revolted numerous times and retaking the islands often proved costly for its overlords and in that same spirit came the year 1729 when a heavy tax burden led the people of corsica to revolt against their genoese rulers it briefly became a kingdom before declaring the creation of a republic previously revolts in corsica were nasty but ultimately doomed affairs however this time the revolt lasted for decades because now the corsicans were being supported by others and by others i mean the british this wasn't out of some kind-hearted wish to see the corsicans prosper that would be silly in fact the actual reason was to deprive the french of the islands as the genoese were paying french troops to suppress the rebellion as the rebellion went on the genoese knew that they'd lost the island and so opted to sell it to france france agreed to the sale and soon after sent a lot of troops to corsica and the rebellion was crushed in 1769 so that's france's control over corsica established and settled then right well no when the french revolutionary wars broke out corsica rebelled again and soon threw in the lot with the british as a sort of shared kind of sovereign british colony the french retook the island after a couple of years and they were in possession of it when napoleon was defeated and exiled he briefly came back was defeated again and as a part of the congress of vienna europe's major powers decided to take france's recent gains from her yet corsica remained a part of france and this was mostly due to france buying it prior to the french revolution since the goal of the congress was to mostly reset europe to before the french revolution not to simply humiliate france which upset the corsican since all that british support didn't go very far as such corsica would remain a part of france for the foreseeable future but its inclusion wasn't guaranteed you see up until the mid 19th century italian was the most spoken language on the island and so to many in what would soon become italy corsica was one of their own one man with such an opinion was giuseppe garibaldi who after the conquest of rome by italy in 1870 called for the immediate invasion of corsica to which the italian king said no because he didn't feel like picking a fight with france when world war 1 kicked off there were some discussions by the central powers that if italy were to join their side corsica as well as some other territories would be handed to them if they won of course italy sided with the anton but the idea of corsica rightfully belonging to italy would persist until benito mussolini came to power as you know italy joined world war ii by invading france and after its full italy didn't get corsica it remained a part of vichy france until 1942 when germany decided that it didn't need to exist anymore and so along with italy they put an end to it with this italy came into control of corsica which mussolini had wanted and this control lasted a whole year since italy was defeated in 1943. soon afterwards the brand new italy had joined the allies and from it french troops liberated the island and thereafter corsica would remain a part of france i hope you enjoyed this episode and thank you for watching with a special thanks to my patrons james bissonette kelly money maker corso wolfe jordan longley adam stalter jerry lambda marcus arsenault y and hockey words about books podcast rodney martin captain cydog marvin cassel casaugustav swan spencer lightfoot boogerly wuggly common yoon winston k wood aaron the white matthew shipley alex schwinn maxson flaudio maggie patzkowski anthony beckett the mcquapper corey turner coppertone spinning through plates charles the first ben evanson and scottish trekkie

Channel: History Matters

Views: 1,581,246

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Id: p0MXae-elfs

Length: 3min 33sec (213 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 11 2022