Bonifacio, Corsica
Our dawn approach to Bonifacio from the south gave us a spectacular view of the Citadel that is historic core of this city, perched some 200 feet atop an equally impregnable limestone cliff. We had not traveled far, sailing slowly overnight through the narrow strait that separates Corsica from Sardinia, the more southerly island clearly visible from the cliff top where we started our morning walk through the old town. By an accident of modern politics, Corsica is in France and Sardinia in Italy. But loyalties in Europe are deeply rooted and long precede the activities of eighteenth-century manufactures of maps and constitutions. The dialect of Corsica has enough in common with that of Sardinia to have entered into Italian history had not the French seized the island on the eve of the French Revolution. The splendid fortifications that dominate the Strait came into their own during the French Revolutionary Wars, when Sardinia was a bastion of royalism against the new democratic sentiments of the first French Republic. The most successful French general of then all, Napoleon, was born on the island, in Ajaccio, in 1769. His father had been a Corsican separatist. His propensity to reward his family with top positions in his Empire, often seen as an incipient royalism that betrayed the republican values of the revolution, may have been no more than island Mafiosi mentality at work. We were shown the house in the town where the Emperor once spent a few nights – few towns between Boulogne and Borodino do not have one of these – but not far away a sign in the Corsican dialect commemorated the birthplace of a famous Cardinal. To the French and Italian mix, we must add another dimension. Both Alghero (which we visited yesterday in Sardinia) and Bonifacio are proud of their Catalan connection, for those shrewd Mediterranean traders from Barcelona held sway in these parts before the coming of the French and in the days when Italy was no more than a geographical concept.
Both Sardinia and Corsica have separatist movements today. Yet while boats and buildings are as likely to fly island flags as those of mainland Italy or France, the blue and gold flag of the European Community is equally prominent. The European Project has been described as a process of "hollowing out" of nation states. Power is shifting, even from rigidly centralizing Paris, up to Brussels (the seat of the EU executive) and down to the localities. There is more than just room for difference in the new Europe; diversity is celebrated as never before. Local and regional loyalties are increasingly seen as complimentary rather than contradictory. We are all Europeans now.
Our dawn approach to Bonifacio from the south gave us a spectacular view of the Citadel that is historic core of this city, perched some 200 feet atop an equally impregnable limestone cliff. We had not traveled far, sailing slowly overnight through the narrow strait that separates Corsica from Sardinia, the more southerly island clearly visible from the cliff top where we started our morning walk through the old town. By an accident of modern politics, Corsica is in France and Sardinia in Italy. But loyalties in Europe are deeply rooted and long precede the activities of eighteenth-century manufactures of maps and constitutions. The dialect of Corsica has enough in common with that of Sardinia to have entered into Italian history had not the French seized the island on the eve of the French Revolution. The splendid fortifications that dominate the Strait came into their own during the French Revolutionary Wars, when Sardinia was a bastion of royalism against the new democratic sentiments of the first French Republic. The most successful French general of then all, Napoleon, was born on the island, in Ajaccio, in 1769. His father had been a Corsican separatist. His propensity to reward his family with top positions in his Empire, often seen as an incipient royalism that betrayed the republican values of the revolution, may have been no more than island Mafiosi mentality at work. We were shown the house in the town where the Emperor once spent a few nights – few towns between Boulogne and Borodino do not have one of these – but not far away a sign in the Corsican dialect commemorated the birthplace of a famous Cardinal. To the French and Italian mix, we must add another dimension. Both Alghero (which we visited yesterday in Sardinia) and Bonifacio are proud of their Catalan connection, for those shrewd Mediterranean traders from Barcelona held sway in these parts before the coming of the French and in the days when Italy was no more than a geographical concept.
Both Sardinia and Corsica have separatist movements today. Yet while boats and buildings are as likely to fly island flags as those of mainland Italy or France, the blue and gold flag of the European Community is equally prominent. The European Project has been described as a process of "hollowing out" of nation states. Power is shifting, even from rigidly centralizing Paris, up to Brussels (the seat of the EU executive) and down to the localities. There is more than just room for difference in the new Europe; diversity is celebrated as never before. Local and regional loyalties are increasingly seen as complimentary rather than contradictory. We are all Europeans now.
