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
History of Corsica would one day astonish Europe. This was written some seven years before Napoleon was born. The prehistory of Corsica covers the long period from the Upper Paleolithic to the first historical event, the founding of Aléria by the ancient Greeks in 566 BCE. The ancient Greeks, notably Herodotus, called the island Kurnos; the name Corsica is Latin and was in use in the Roman Republic. Why Herodotus used Kyrnos and not some other name remains a mystery, and the phrases of the authors give no clue. The Roman historians, however, believed Corsa or Corsica (rightly or wrongly they interpreted -ica