Summary: “in 1767, the Republic of Genoa, exhausted by forty years of fighting, decided to sell the island to France which, after its defeat in the Seven Years' War, was trying to reinforce its position in the Mediterranean. In 1768, with the Treaty of Versailles (1768), the Genoese republic ceded all its rights on the island.”
However, Corsica was already de facto independent from Genoa at this time, so France had to send troops to conquer it.
In general, there are lots of places in Europe where language and culture don’t align with state borders (for example: Austria and parts of Switzerland and Italy are German-speaking, but not part of Germany). The reason usually dates to the time before modern nation-states.
The reason usually dates to the time before modern nation-states.
Also, the nation-state norm was largely aspirational when it arose (and now), and the attempts to realize it since have been as much about attempting to craft new national identities corresponding to states as to align states to pre-existing national identities.
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https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_conquest_of_Corsica
Summary: “in 1767, the Republic of Genoa, exhausted by forty years of fighting, decided to sell the island to France which, after its defeat in the Seven Years' War, was trying to reinforce its position in the Mediterranean. In 1768, with the Treaty of Versailles (1768), the Genoese republic ceded all its rights on the island.”
However, Corsica was already de facto independent from Genoa at this time, so France had to send troops to conquer it.
In general, there are lots of places in Europe where language and culture don’t align with state borders (for example: Austria and parts of Switzerland and Italy are German-speaking, but not part of Germany). The reason usually dates to the time before modern nation-states.
Also, the nation-state norm was largely aspirational when it arose (and now), and the attempts to realize it since have been as much about attempting to craft new national identities corresponding to states as to align states to pre-existing national identities.