The island has a long history of militant separatist movements, but can anyone fill in some specific background/explanation for the following (simplified) sequence of events:
[0. Conquered by France in 1768–1769. Napoleon born.]
Following the French revolution, in 1790 Corsica becomes a department of the French Republic.
Split into two departments in 1793.
Recombined into a single department in 1811.
Split up again in 1976.
Reunification referendum narrowly fails in 2003.
Re-re-unified into the Corsican Collective in 2018.
Why the repeated scission and reconstitution?
If the initial split was due to separatists in the north, what specifically changed in 1811? And why was it decided to split it up again in 1975? And what relevant things changed between the 2000s and 2010s?
Two departments seems to be Paris’ go-to whenever an independence movement rears its head on the island. Perhaps Napoleon was grooming Corsica as a hedge on exile if world events went South (no pun intended) for him. A united Corsica would be a handier Napoleonic kingdom than a divided one and certainly more prestigious than Elba.
I was in Corsica last year, and the history as described to me there was basically, that it used to be run by the Genoese, and then was taken over by the French, but that was basically just swapping out the guards in the towers. I.e. the native Corsicans never felt like they are part of either nationality – just occupied by powers who wanted control of the island for strategic reasons – which is why it is rife with independence movements still.
The only reason France made a deal with Genoa to take over Corsica was so that the British couldn’t use it as a base in the Mediterranean.
The Corsican nationalist leader at that time, Pasquale Paoli, was very pro-British and wanted an alliance with Britain to get rid of the Genoese. So the French thought they’d better move quickly to keep the British out.
In other words, they didn’t take over because they wanted Corsica, they simply didn’t want Britain to have a naval base there.
The single person responsible for the whole episode was James Boswell, the biographer of Samuel Johnson.
Boswell travelled around Corsica while on his tour of Europe, and spent some time with Paoli. When he got home, he wrote a book, An Account of Corsica, praising the Corsican nationalists and strongly advocating an alliance with Paoli. The book became a huge bestseller, and Boswell raised enough money (partly from the British government) to send six ships packed with arms and military supplies to Paoli.
The French government quickly had Boswell’s book translated into French and published in France. Shortly afterwards they made an arrangement with Genoa to take over Corsica (Genoa was basically glad to get rid of it), and sent a large military expedition to occupy Corsica, while the British government was still thinking about it and dithering.
A lot of pieds-noir from Algeria immigrated to Corsica from Algeria after the French gave Algeria independence. That led to a lot of tension between the native Corsicans and the new arrivals, who were French nationalists. I just imagine that the split up has something to do with that.
If the questions is specifically about whether Corsica should be divided into two départements or governed as one, then I’d say this to-and-fro reflects the changing attitudes in French national politics about devolution versus centralisation. In times during which devolution, i.e. the delegation of policy-making powers from the central government to subnational entities, is en vogue, French politics will be open towards having strong regional governents, and that would favour a united Corsica. In times when the pendulum swings towards stronger centralisation in Paris, a split into two départements, on equal footing with any other département on the mainland, would be preferred, as it would impede the development of autonomous Corsican politics. Kind of a “divide and conquer” logic.
In New Caledonia, by the way, France did recently agree to let the inhabitants vote on independence. A 2018 referendum rejected independence, but a second one is coming up next week. Unlike Corsica, it was never a French department, and has had its own unique set of problems (like being used as a penal colony).