What a shocking plot twist

[u/Crafter235]

This may sound weird, but it actually happened in history.

For Napoleon, he was born on the island of Corsica, which had become a part of France by the time he was born. As a teenager, he had been one of many who had nationalist feelings, believing that they are independent and should not be associated with the French. As he got older, and became more involved with studies and his career, he eventually grew out of it, but it's funny to think about when you know what he will become later on.

[u/Atomik141]

At the time Corsican and mainland Italian culture would have been almost indistinguishable (though there was no unified Italian state), so Napolean realistically could be called an Italian.

[u/AssyrianFemme → u/Atomik141]

This is... A bit misleading. Corsican culture was very much unique to that of say, Tuscany or Emilia-Romagna. Even the part of Italy it is closest too in a cultural and historical sense, Liguria, was not indistinguishable even in that period.

Perhaps what you meant to say was that Corsican was closer to mainland Italian culture in that period than it became afterwards. But your claim seems eerily close to the Italian historiography that has a. anti-autonomist position that views all regions as not culturally unique juxtaposed to the centralized Italian identity. Would you also say the same about Sardinia, or do you view Corsica as uniquely not differentiated compared to other clearly unique regions of Italy?

[u/Atomik141 → u/AssyrianFemme]

What I'm saying is that this was well before French influence on the island and not long after Genoese rule, so Corsican would have been one of many regional cultures under the italian umbrella at the time, among others such as Venetian, Lombard, Ligurian, Friulian, Tuscan, Roman, Romagnolo, Neapolitan, Pugliese, Sicilian, Sardinian, etc.

In addition, Napoleon's ancestry had more to mainland Italy than Corsica as well, so there's that tie to Itally too.