Italian irredentism in Corsica corse" in 1934 and Bertino Poli wrote "Il pensiero irredentista corso e le sue polemiche" in Florence in 1940. Small list of renowned Corsican Italians: Italian irredentism in Corsica Italian irredentism in Corsica was a cultural and historical movement promoted by Italians and by people from Corsica who identified themselves as part of Italy rather than France, and promoted the Italian annexation of the island. Corsica was part of the Republic of Genoa for centuries until 1768, when the Republic ceded the island to France, one year before the birth of Napoleon Bonaparte in the capital city of Ajaccio. Under
Cuisine of Corsica Renaissance: in the Gallery of Maps in the Vatican, which depicts the regions of Italy and its surrounding islands, the 16th century Italian cosmographer Ignazio Danti wrote above the map of Corsica: "Corsica has received four major gifts from Nature: its horses, its dogs, its proud and courageous men and its wines, most generous, that princes hold in the highest esteem!" In 1887 the vineyards of the island were hit by the Phylloxera. A dramatic change in the island's viticulture happened at the beginning of the 1960s. At that time about 20,000 pied-noirs (French colonists from Algeria) had to leave