economy based on vineyards and a primitive barter system meant there
were few opportunities for generating a surplus, hence no possibility for
profits and making money. Even if there had been, Carlo Buonaparte's
aspirations to noble status stood in the way, for to a noble the Church,
the Law and the Army were the only acceptable professions, and even the
lower reaches of the Law, such as Carlo's position as procureur, were
essentially beyond the aristocratic pale.
Napoleon was often, to his fury, called 'the Corsican'. He always
denied that his birthplace had any significance, but no human being can
slough off early environmental and geographical influences just by say-so.
The restlessness in Napoleon's later character must owe something to the
confused and chaotic politics of the island, which he imbibed with his
mother's milk, or rather that of his wet-nurse. As Dorothy Carrington
has written: 'defeat, resistance, betrayal, heroism, torture, execution and
conspiracy were the topics of the first conversations he overheard.
Conversations that left a permanent imprint on his mind.'
After 1729 a Corsican independence movement gathered momentum
against the Genoese overlords. In 1755 this took a more serious turn
when the twenty-nine-year-old Pasquale Paoli put himself at the head of
the Corsican guerrillas. Taking advantage of Corsica's mountainous
terrain (a chain of high granite sierras runs down Corsica from the north
west to the south-east and the highest peaks are always snowcapped), the
Paolistas drove the Genoese out of central Corsica, confining them to the
coastal towns of Ajaccio, Bastia and Calvi. Regarding himself as the true
ruler of Corsica, Paoli brought in a series of much-needed land reforms,
which confirmed the ancient customs of the land in defiance of Genoese
exploitation. In an early form of mixed economy, Paoli divided land into
two categories: in the lowlands there was the piage or public land used for
pasture and growing crops; but in the highlands, the vineyards, olive
groves, sweet chestnut and other trees were in private hands. Paoli's
power base was· always the widespread support he enjoyed among the
peasantry.
Paoli attracted admirers throughout Europe. Jean-Jacques Rousseau
thought Corsica, with its tiny population, was the ideal laboratory for the
political experiment he outlined in his Social Contract. An early exponent
of 'small is beautiful', Rousseau thought that the 'General Will' could
emerge in Corsica as the city state. The island was ideal, with a total
population of no more than 130,000 and its cities were glorified villages;
in the census of 1770 Bastia had 5,286 inhabitants and Ajaccio 3,907.
Rousseau actually sketched a constitution for Corsica and announced: 'I
have a presentiment that one day this small island will astonish Europe.'
marcin
(Marcin)
#1