Italian irredentism in Nice was the political movement supporting the annexation of the

County of Nice The County of Nice (french: Comté de Nice / Pays Niçois, it, Contea di Nizza/Paese Nizzardo, Niçard oc, Contèa de Niça/País Niçard) is a historical region of France located around the southeastern city of Nice and roughly equivalent t ...

to the

Kingdom of Italy The Kingdom of Italy ( it, Regno d'Italia) was a state that existed from 1861, when Victor Emmanuel II of Sardinia was proclaimed King of Italy, until 1946, when civil discontent led to an institutional referendum to abandon the monarchy and f ...

. According to some Italian nationalists and fascists like Ermanno Amicucci,

Italian Italian(s) may refer to: * Anything of, from, or related to the people of Italy over the centuries ** Italians, an ethnic group or simply a citizen of the Italian Republic or Italian Kingdom ** Italian language, a Romance language *** Regional Ita ...

- and Ligurian-speaking populations of the County of Nice ( it, Nizza) formed the majority of the county's population until the mid-19th century. However, French nationalists and linguists argue that both

Occitan Occitan may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to the Occitania territory in parts of France, Italy, Monaco and Spain. * Something of, from, or related to the Occitania administrative region of France. * Occitan language, spoken in parts o ...

and Ligurian languages were spoken in the County of Nice. During the Italian unification, in 1860, the House of Savoy allowed the

Second French Empire The Second French Empire (; officially the French Empire, ), was the 18-year Imperial Bonapartist regime of Napoleon III from 14 January 1852 to 27 October 1870, between the Second and the Third Republic of France. Historians in the 1930 ...

to annex Nice from the

Kingdom of Sardinia The Kingdom of Sardinia,The name of the state was originally Latin: , or when the kingdom was still considered to include Corsica. In Italian it is , in French , in Sardinian , and in Piedmontese . also referred to as the Kingdom of Savoy-S ...

in exchange for French support of its quest to unify Italy. Consequently, the Niçois were excluded from the Italian unification movement and the region has since become primarily French-speaking.

History

The region around ''Nicaea'', as Nice was then known in Latin, was inhabited by the

Ligures The Ligures (singular Ligur; Italian: liguri; English: Ligurians) were an ancient people after whom Liguria, a region of present-day north-western Italy, is named. Ancient Liguria corresponded more or less to the current Italian regi ...

until its subsequent occupation by the

Roman Empire The Roman Empire ( la, Imperium Romanum ; grc-gre, Βασιλεία τῶν Ῥωμαίων, Basileía tôn Rhōmaíōn) was the post- Republican period of ancient Rome. As a polity, it included large territorial holdings around the Mediter ...

after their subjugation by

Augustus Caesar Augustus (born Gaius Octavius; 23 September 63 BC – 19 August AD 14), also known as Octavian, was the first Roman emperor; he reigned from 27 BC until his death in AD 14. He is known for being the founder of the Roman Pr ...

. According to

Theodor Mommsen Christian Matthias Theodor Mommsen (; 30 November 1817 – 1 November 1903) was a German classical scholar, historian, jurist, journalist, politician and archaeologist. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest classicists of the 19th centu ...

, fully Romanized by the 4th century AD, when the invasions of the Migration Period began. The

Franks The Franks ( la, Franci or ) were a group of Germanic peoples whose name was first mentioned in 3rd-century Roman sources, and associated with tribes between the Lower Rhine and the Ems River, on the edge of the Roman Empire.H. Schutz: Tools, ...

conquered the region after the fall of Rome, and the local Romance language speaking populations became integrated within the County of Provence (with a brief period of independence as a maritime republic (1108–1176).) In 1388, the

commune A commune is an alternative term for an intentional community. Commune or comună or comune or other derivations may also refer to: Administrative-territorial entities * Commune (administrative division), a municipality or township ** Communes of ...

of Nice sought the protection of the Duchy of Savoy, and Nice continued to be controlled, directly or indirectly, by the Savoy monarchs until 1860. During this time, the maritime strength of Nice rapidly increased until it was able to cope with the Barbary pirates. Fortifications were largely extended by the House of Savoy and the roads of the city and surrounding region improved.

Emmanuel Philibert, Duke of Savoy Emmanuel Philibert ( it, Emanuele Filiberto; pms, Emanuel Filibert; 8 July 1528 – 30 August 1580), known as ( pms, Testa 'd fer, links=no; "Ironhead", because of his military career), was Duke of Savoy from 1553 to 1580. He is remembered fo ...

, abolished the use of

Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...

and established

as the official language of Nice in 1561. Conquered in 1792 by the armies of the French First Republic, the County of Nice was part of France until 1814, after which it was placed under the protection of the

by the

Congress of Vienna The Congress of Vienna (, ) of 1814–1815 was a series of international diplomatic meetings to discuss and agree upon a possible new layout of the European political and constitutional order after the downfall of the French Emperor Napoleon B ...

. By a treaty concluded in 1860 between the Sardinian king and

Napoleon III Napoleon III (Charles Louis Napoléon Bonaparte; 20 April 18089 January 1873) was the first President of France (as Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte) from 1848 to 1852 and the last monarch of France as Emperor of the French from 1852 to 1870. A nephew ...

, the County of Nice was again ceded to France, along with Savoy, as a territorial reward for French assistance in the

Second Italian War of Independence The Second Italian War of Independence, also called the Franco-Austrian War, the Austro-Sardinian War or Italian War of 1859 ( it, Seconda guerra d'indipendenza italiana; french: Campagne d'Italie), was fought by the Second French Empire and t ...

against Austria, which saw Lombardy unified with Piedmont-Sardinia. This event caused the Niçard exodus, that was the emigration of a quarter of the

Niçard Italians Niçard Italians ( it, nizzardi italiani ) are Italians who have full or partial Nice heritage by birth or ethnicity. History Niçard Italians have roots in Nice and the County of Nice. They often speak the Ligurian language after Nice joined th ...

to Italy. Giuseppe Garibaldi, born in Nice, strongly opposed the cession to France, arguing that the plebiscite that ratified the treaty was not "universal" and contained irregularities. He was elected at the "French National Assembly" for Nice with 70% of the votes in 1871, and quickly promoted the withdrawal of France from Nice, but the elections were invalidated by the French authorities. In 1871/72 there were mass riots in the city (labeled ''Vespri Nizzardi'' or Nizzard Vespers by Garibaldi), promoted by the "Garibaldini" in favor of unification with the

. Fifteen Nizzardi Italians were processed and condemned for these riots, supported by the 'Nizzardo Republican Party'. Plan-Nice-1624

More than 11,000 Nizzardi Italians who refused to be French subsequently moved to Italy (chiefly to

Torino Turin ( , Piedmontese: ; it, Torino ) is a city and an important business and cultural centre in Northern Italy. It is the capital city of Piedmont and of the Metropolitan City of Turin, and was the first Italian capital from 1861 to 1865. T ...

and

Genova Genoa ( ; it, Genova ; lij, Zêna ). is the capital of the Italian region of Liguria and the sixth-largest city in Italy. In 2015, 594,733 people lived within the city's administrative limits. As of the 2011 Italian census, the Province of G ...

, respectively) after 1861. The French government closed the Italian language newspapers ''Diritto di Nizza'' and ''Voce di Nizza'' in 1861, and ''Il Pensiero di Nizza'' in 1895. In these newspapers wrote the most famous writers in

Italian language Italian (''italiano'' or ) is a Romance language of the Indo-European language family that evolved from the Vulgar Latin of the Roman Empire. Together with Sardinian, Italian is the least divergent language from Latin. Spoken by about ...

of Nice: Giuseppe Bres, Henri Sappia, Giuseppe André. One of the most renowned Nizzardo Italians was Luciano Mereu, a follower of Garibaldi. In November 1870 he was temporarily exiled from Nice together with the "Garibaldini" Adriano Gilli, Carlo Perino and Alberto Cougnet. Later, Luciano Mereu was elected in 1871 as counselor of Nizza under Mayor Augusto Raynaud (1871–1876) and was member of the ''Commissione garibaldina di Nizza'' with Donato Rasteu, its President until 1885. Benito Mussolini considered the annexation of Nice to be one of his main targets. In 1942, during

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...

, after Operation Torch (the landing of the Allies in

North Africa North Africa, or Northern Africa is a region encompassing the northern portion of the African continent. There is no singularly accepted scope for the region, and it is sometimes defined as stretching from the Atlantic shores of Mauritania in ...

), the former County of Nice was occupied and administered by Italy from November 11, 1942 until September 8, 1943. The Italian occupation government was far less severe than that of

Vichy France Vichy France (french: Régime de Vichy; 10 July 1940 – 9 August 1944), officially the French State ('), was the fascist French state headed by Marshal Philippe Pétain during World War II. Officially independent, but with half of its te ...

; thus, thousands of

Jews Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...

took refuge there. For a while, the city became an important mobilization center for various Jewish organizations. However, when the Italians signed the Armistice of Cassibile with the Allies, German troops invaded the region on September 8, 1943, and initiated brutal raids.

Alois Brunner Alois Brunner (8 April 1912 – December 2001) was an Austrian (SS) SS-Hauptsturmführer who played a significant role in the implementation of the Holocaust through rounding up and deporting Jews in occupied Austria, Greece, Macedonia, France, ...

, the SS official for Jewish affairs, was placed at the head of units formed to search out Jews. Within five months, 5,000 Jews were caught and deported. The area was returned to France following the war and in 1947, the areas of

La Brigue La Brigue (; lij, Briga; oc, La Briga; it, Briga Marittima) is a commune in the Alpes-Maritimes department in southeastern France. La Brigue became part of France after World War II, when Italy was forced to hand it over in September 1947 ...

and

Tende Tende (; Italian, Occitan and Royasc: ''Tenda'') is a commune in the Alpes-Maritimes department in southeastern France. Geography Tende is located within Mercantour National Park in the French Alps. The mountainous commune is bordered b ...

, which had remained Italian after 1860 were ceded to

France France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Oceans. Its metropolitan area ...

. Thereafter, a quarter of the Nizzardi Italians living in that mountainous area moved to

Piedmont it, Piemontese , population_note = , population_blank1_title = , population_blank1 = , demographics_type1 = , demographics1_footnotes = , demographics1_title1 = , demographics1_info1 = , demographics1_title2 ...

and

Liguria it, Ligure , population_note = , population_blank1_title = , population_blank1 = , demographics_type1 = , demographics1_footnotes = , demographics1_title1 = , demographics1_info1 = , demographics1_title2 ...

in Italy (mainly from the Roya Valley and Tenda). Today, after a sustained process of

Francization Francization (in American English, Canadian English, and Oxford English) or Francisation (in other British English), Frenchification, or Gallicization is the expansion of French language use—either through willful adoption or coercion—by more ...

conducted since 1861, the former county is predominantly French-speaking. Only along the coast around

Menton Menton (; , written ''Menton'' in classical norm or ''Mentan'' in Mistralian norm; it, Mentone ) is a commune in the Alpes-Maritimes department in the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region on the French Riviera, close to the Italian border. Me ...

and in the mountains around Tende there are still some native speakers of the original

Intemelio dialect Intemelio is a Ligurian dialect spoken historically from the Principality of Monaco to the Italian province of Imperia. History Since the Renaissance the Ligurian language was spoken in all the territories of the Republic of Genoa; in the wes ...

of Ligurian. Currently the area is part of the Alpes-Maritimes department of France.

Language

Before the year 1000, the area of Nice was part of the Ligurian League, under the

Republic of Genoa The Republic of Genoa ( lij, Repúbrica de Zêna ; it, Repubblica di Genova; la, Res Publica Ianuensis) was a medieval and early modern maritime republic from the 11th century to 1797 in Liguria on the northwestern Italian coast. During the La ...

; thus, the population spoke a dialect different from the one typical of western Liguria: that spoken in the eastern part of Liguria, which today is called "Intemelio" was spoken. The medieval writer and poet

Dante Alighieri Dante Alighieri (; – 14 September 1321), probably baptized Durante di Alighiero degli Alighieri and often referred to as Dante (, ), was an Italian poet, writer and philosopher. His ''Divine Comedy'', originally called (modern Italian: '' ...

wrote in his ''

Divine Comedy The ''Divine Comedy'' ( it, Divina Commedia ) is an Italian narrative poem by Dante Alighieri, begun 1308 and completed in around 1321, shortly before the author's death. It is widely considered the pre-eminent work in Italian literature ...

'' that the

Var Var or VAR may refer to: Places * Var (department), a department of France * Var (river), France * Vār, Iran, village in West Azerbaijan Province, Iran * Var, Iran (disambiguation), other places in Iran * Vár, a village in Obreja commune, Ca ...

near Nice was the western limit of the Italian Liguria. Around the 12th century, Nice came under the control of the French

Capetian House of Anjou The Capetian House of Anjou or House of Anjou-Sicily, was a royal house and cadet branch of the direct French House of Capet, part of the Capetian dynasty. It is one of three separate royal houses referred to as ''Angevin'', meaning "from Anjou" ...

, who favored the immigration of peasants from

Provence Provence (, , , , ; oc, Provença or ''Prouvènço'' , ) is a geographical region and historical province of southeastern France, which extends from the left bank of the lower Rhône to the west to the Italian border to the east; it is bor ...

that brought with them their

Occitan language Occitan (; oc, occitan, link=no ), also known as ''lenga d'òc'' (; french: langue d'oc) by its native speakers, and sometimes also referred to as ''Provençal'', is a Romance language spoken in Southern France, Monaco, Italy's Occitan Vall ...

. From 1388 to 1860, the County of Nice came under Savoyard rule and remained connected to the Italian dialects and peninsula. In the fantastic linguistics and historical inventions of the Italian fascists, in this era, the people of the mountainous areas of the upper Var Valley started to lose their former Ligurian linguistic characteristics and began to adopt Provençal influences. They believe that in those centuries the local

Niçard dialect ( Classical orthography), ( Mistralian orthography, ), ( , ), or () is the dialect that was historically spoken in the city of Nice, in France, and in all the area of the historical County of Nice. The affiliation of Niçard is debated: it is ...

became distinct from the Monégasque of the

Principality of Monaco Monaco (; ), officially the Principality of Monaco (french: Principauté de Monaco; Ligurian: ; oc, Principat de Mónegue), is a sovereign city-state and microstate on the French Riviera a few kilometres west of the Italian region of Liguria ...

. Traditionally, Italian linguists maintained that Niçard originated as a Ligurian dialect. Before the annexation of the county of Nice to France in 1860, all the historical texts and archives of the city were written either in the Ligurian language, or in

. On the other hand, French linguists argue that Niçard is a dialect of Occitan while conceding that Monégasque is a dialect of Ligurian. However, Sue Wright notes that before the

ceded the County of Nice to

, "Nice was not French-speaking before the annexation but underwent a shift to French in a short time... and it is surprising that the local Italian dialect, the Nissart, disappeared quickly from the private domain." She also wrote that one of the main reasons of the disappearance of the Italian language in the County was because "(m)any of the administrative class under Piedmont-Savoy ruler, the soldiers; jurists; civil servants and professionals, who used Italian in their working lives, moved ackto Piedmont, after the annexation and their places and roles were taken by newcomers from France". Indeed, immediately after 1861, the French government closed all the Italian language newspapers, and more than 11,000 Nizzardi Italians moved to the Kingdom of Italy. The sheer scale of the exodus can be inferred from the fact that in the Savoy census of 1858, Nice had only 44,000 inhabitants. In 1881, ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...

'' wrote, "Before the French annexation, the Niçois were quite as much Italian as the Genoese and their dialect was if anything, nearer the Tuscan, than is the harsh dialect of Genoa. Giuseppe Garibaldi defined his "Nizzardo" as an Italian dialect, albeit with strong similarities to Occitan and with some French influences, and for this reason promoted the union of Nice to the Kingdom of Italy. Today some scholars, like the German Werner Forner, the French Jean-Philippe Dalbera and the Italian Giulia Petracco Sicardi, agree that the Niçard has some characteristics - phonetic, lexical and morphological - that are typical of western Ligurian. The French scholar Bernard Cerquiglini pinpoints in his ''Les langues de France'' the actual existence of a Ligurian minority in Tende, Roquebrune-Cap-Martin and

. Another reduction in the number of the Nizzardi Italians happened after

, when defeated Italy was forced to surrender to France the small mountainous area of the County of Nice, that had been retained in 1860. From the ''Val di Roia'', Tenda and Briga, one quarter of the local population moved to Italy in 1947. The entire population of Nice before the 1960s had Italian surnames. The Niçard Vespers were three days of popular uprising of the inhabitants of Nice in 1871, promoted by Giuseppe Garibaldi in favor of the union of the county of Nice with the

. In the century of

nationalism Nationalism is an idea and movement that holds that the nation should be congruent with the state. As a movement, nationalism tends to promote the interests of a particular nation (as in a group of people), Smith, Anthony. ''Nationalism: The ...

between 1850 and 1950, the Nizzardi Italians were reduced from a majority of 70%Amicucci, Ermanno. ''Nizza e l’Italia''. p. 126 of the 125,000 people living in the County of Nice at the time of the French annexation, to a current minority of nearly two thousand (in the area of

and

) today. Nowadays, even though the populations of Nice and its surroundings are fluent in French, some still speak the original Niçard language of '' Nissa La Bella''.

References

Bibliography

* André, Giuseppe. ''Nizza, negli ultimi quattro anni''. Editore Gilletta. Nizza, 1875 * Amicucci, Ermanno. ''Nizza e l’Italia''. Ed. Mondadori. Milano, 1939. * Barelli Hervé, Rocca Roger. ''Histoire de l'identité niçoise''. Serre. Nice, 1995. *Barberis, Francesco. ''Nizza italiana: raccolta di varie poesie italiane e nizzarde, corredate di note''. Editore Tip. Sborgi e Guarnieri (Nizza, 1871). University of California, 2007 * Bec, Pierre. ''La Langue Occitane''. Presses Universitaires de France. Paris, 1963 * Gray, Ezio. ''Le terre nostre ritornano... Malta, Corsica, Nizza''. De Agostini Editoriale. Novara, 1943 * Holt, Edgar. ''The Making of Italy 1815–1870,'' Atheneum. New York, 1971 *Ralph Schor, Henri Courrière (dir.), Le comté de Nice, la France et l'Italie. Regards sur le rattachement de 1860. Actes du colloque organisé à l'université de Nice Sophia-Antipolis, 23 avril 2010, Nice, éditions Serre, 2011, 175 p. * Stuart, J. Woolf. ''Il risorgimento italiano''. Einaudi. Torino, 1981 * Université de Nice-Sophia Antipolis, Centre Histoire du droit. ''Les Alpes Maritimes et la frontière 1860 à nos jours''. Actes du colloque de Nice (1990). Ed. Serre. Nice,1992 * Werner Forner. ''L’intemelia linguistica'',

Intemelion I). Genoa, 1995.

External links

Nice and Italian Irredentism

* ttps://web.archive.org/web/20091121010734/http://www.liguri.net/portappennini/rnidaigura.htm#Brigaschi Magazine about Briga and Tenda
Fancesco Barberis: "Nizza Italiana" (Google Books)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Italian Irredentism In Nice Italian irredentism Political history of France Ligurian language (Romance) History of Nice France–Italy relations Political controversies in Italy

History

Language

See also

References

Bibliography

External links