The ancient Greeks, who founded Aleria, were succeeded

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On the crossroads of two maritime routes, one linking France, Africa and the Near East, the other central Europe, Italy and Spain, Corsica has always been a valuable possession; but apart from a short period in the eighteenth century, her history has always been the history of others. The first invasions took place in pre-historic times and intensified during the classic period. by the Etruscans, the Syracusians, the Carthaginians and after them the Romans.

Who established themselves there for six centuries. The Ostrogoths followed on from the Vandals, were in their turn chased out by the Byzantines; after them came the Lombards and the Saracens, whose terrorising of the inhabitants caused many of them to set up home in villages built on dizzy mountain peaks. Pisa and Genua allied to expel phone number list the Saracen, but themselves disputed the right of rule over an island possession of which gave the owner control of the Tyrrenian Sea. Kalliste (the very beautiful) as Corsica was called by the Greeks, was valued far more in terms of its strategic importance than for any intrinsic wealth. When the Genuans did finally survey the land for the purpose of evaluating it, they did so at the expense of the inhabitants and in the face of native hostility.

From 1553, the firebrand Sampiero, in openly declaring his struggle against Genoan rule, laid the basis for a patriotic consciousness. A hundred and fifty years later, a collective feeling of national frustration had come to maturity and the Corsican War of Independence began. It lasted for forty years and ended with the proclamation of Pascal Paoli as General of the Corsican Nation in 1755; this event was followed by the adoption of a constitution, the opening of the University of Corsica, the inauguration of a navy, the creation of a new town, Isularossa (Red Island)...Corsica had come of age, brandishing the symbol of its newly won independence, the Blackamoore's Head, emblem of resistance against the Muslim invader.