Italian irredentism in Corsica

Italian irredentism in Corsica was a cultural and historical movement promoted by Italians and by Corsicans who identified themselves as Italian, rather than French or just Corsican, and promoted the Italian annexation of Corsica.

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 French rule, the use of the Corsican language, which is closely related to standard Italian, has gradually declined and has been replaced by French.

Giuseppe Garibaldi promoted the unification of Corsican Italians to Italy when Rome was annexed to the Kingdom of Italy, but Victor Emmanuel II did not agree to it.

The course of Italian irredentism only marginally affected Corsica, 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.

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 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"). These included Marco Angeli, Bertino Poli, Marchetti, Luccarotti, Grimaldi and Petru Giovacchini (he was later proposed as a possible governor of Corsica if Italy had annexed it). 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. The "Gruppi di Cultura Corsa" of Giovacchini reached a membership of 72,000 members by 1940, according to the historian R.H. Rainero.

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