Niçard Italians

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Giuseppe Garibaldi, a prominent Niçard Italian

Niçard Italians 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 the Genoa league formed by the cities of Liguria at the end of the 7th century.[1] In 729, with Genoese help, Nice expelled the Saracens from its territory.[1]

During the Middle Ages, as an Italian city, Nice participated in numerous Italian wars. As an ally of the Republic of Pisa, it was also an enemy of the Republic of Genoa.[1] In 1388, Nice placed itself under the protection of the Comital family of Savoy, led by Amadeus VII, Count of Savoy, in an anti-Provençal function (creating the County of Nice).[1] On 25 October 1561, following the , Italian replaced Latin as the language for drafting official documents of the County of Nice.[1] Niçard Italians, with their Niçard dialect, considered themselves completely Italian during the Renaissance, according to Nice scholars such as Enrico Sappia.

The French penetration began in the early 18th century when numerous Occitan peasants moved to the mountainous hinterland of the county of Nice occupied by the French, and reached its apogee at the time of the French Revolution when Nice was annexed to France for the first time.[2] Italians from Nice reacted with the guerrilla warfare of "Barbetismo".[3]

The so-called "Savoy period" (which lasted from 1388 to 1860) ended with Risorgimento. Nice, despite being the birthplace of Giuseppe Garibaldi, was not united with Italy during the Italian wars of independence of the 19th century. The Savoy government allowed France to annex (through a highly contested Plebiscite) the region of Nice, which was part of the Kingdom of Sardinia, as compensation for French support for the Second Italian War of Independence (Treaty of Turin (1860)).[1]

Giuseppe Garibaldi tenaciously opposed the cession of his hometown to France, arguing that the Plebiscite he ratified in the treaty was vitiated by electoral fraud. Garibaldi was elected in 1871 in Nice at the National Assembly where he tried to promote the annexation of his hometown to the newborn Italian unitary state, but he was prevented from speaking.[4] Because of this denial, between 1871 and 1872 there were riots in Nice, promoted by the Garibaldini and called "Niçard Vespers",[5] which demanded the annexation of the city and its area to Italy.[6] Fifteen Nice people who participated in the rebellion were tried and sentenced.[7]

Nice in 1624

More than 11,000 Nice people refused annexation to France, and emigrated to Italy (mainly to Turin and Genoa) after 1861. This emigration is known as the Niçard exodus.[8] The French government closed the Italian-language newspapers in Nice, and in 1861 Il Diritto di Nizza ("The Law of Nice") and La Voce di Nizza ("The Nice Voice") closed their doors (temporarily reopened in 1871 during the Niçard Vespers), while in 1895 it was the turn of Il Pensiero di Nizza ("The Thought of Nice"). The most important Italian-language journalists and writers from Nice, such as Giuseppe Bres, Enrico Sappia and Giuseppe André, wrote in these newspapers.

Another Niçard Italian, Garibaldian Luciano Mereu, was exiled from Nice in November 1870, together with the Garibaldians Adriano Gilli, Carlo Perino and Alberto Cougnet.[9] In 1871, Luciano Mereu was elected City Councilor in Nice during the term of Mayor of Augusto Raynaud (1871–1876) and was a member of the Garibaldi Commission of Nice, whose president was Donato Rasteu. Rasteu remained in office until 1885.[10]

In 1881, The New York Times compared that before the annexation to France, the Nice people were as Italian as the Genoese, and that their dialect was an Italian dialect.[11]

From 1860, there was a Frenchization of the toponyms of the municipalities of Nice (the official name taken from the current 101 municipalities of the former County of Nice which formed the arrondissement of Nice), which acted as a bank to the obligation to use French in Nice.[12] This led to the beginning of the disappearance of the Niçard Italians. Many intellectuals from Nice took refuge in Italy, such as Giovan Battista Bottero who took over the direction of the newspaper La Gazzetta del Popolo in Turin. In 1874, it was the second Italian newspaper by circulation, after Il Secolo in Milan.

Giuseppe Bres tried to counter the French propaganda, which claimed that the Niçard dialect was Occitan and not Italian, publishing his Considerations on Niçard dialect in 1906 in Italy.[13]

In 1940, Nice was occupied by the Italian army and the newspaper Il Nizzardo ("The Niçard") was restored there. It was directed by Ezio Garibaldi, grandson of Giuseppe Garibaldi. Only Menton was administered until 1943 as if it were an Italian territory, even if the Italian supporters of Italian irredentism in Nice wanted to create an Italian governorate (on the model of the Governorate of Dalmatia) up to the Var river or at least a "Province of the Western Alps".[14]

Another reduction of Niçard Italians took place after the Second World War, when Italy's defeat in the conflict led to the cession of other territories in the area to France following the Paris treaties. A quarter of the population emigrated to Italy from Val Roia, La Brigue and Tende in 1947.

Demography[]

A map of the County of Nice showing the area of the Kingdom of Sardinia annexed in 1860 to France (light brown). The red area was already part of France before 1860.

In a historical period that was characterized by nationalism, between 1850 and 1950, Niçard Italians were reduced by the absolute majority (about 70 percent of the resident population of the region, which was about 125,000 inhabitants in 1859) at the time of the annexation to France, to the current minority of about 2,000 inhabitants in the vicinity of Tende and Menton.[15]

Even at the end of the 19th century, the coastal area of Nice was mostly Niçard dialectal (Nice) and Ligurian (Menton/Monte Carlo).[16] There was also the figun dialect to the west of the Var river.[16]

Currently there are numerous residents of Italian nationality in Nice, especially southerners who emigrated after the Second World War. With their descendants, they are about 10 percent of the city population, but they are almost never related to the native Italians of the Savoy era.

Italian press of the Niçard Italians[]

La Voce di Nizza ("The Nice Voice") was an Italian-language newspaper that was founded around 1800 in Nice. Suppressed following the annexation of Nice to France in 1860, the newspaper was never reinstated.[17]

Il Pensiero di Nizza ("The Thought of Nice") was founded after the fall of Napoleon; it was suppressed by the French authorities in 1895 (35 years after the annexation) on charges of irredentism, while it was almost exclusively autonomist.[18] The major Italian writers of County of Nice collaborated with them: Giuseppe Bres, Enrico Sappia, Giuseppe André and many others.

Fert was a renowned periodical, the voice of the Italians from Nice who took refuge in Italy after the annexation of Nice to France in 1860 and remained active until 1966.[19]

This demonstrates a large segment of the Italian-speaking population in Nice which then gradually died out as a result of the French authorities' struggle against Italophony. Many surnames of the Nice people were changed (for example "Bianchi" became "Leblanc" and "Del Ponte", "Dupont").[17]

Il Pensiero di Nizza was revived after the Second World War as a periodical and as the voice of the Italian-speaking Nice people by Giulio Vignoli, a Genoese scholar of Italian minorities. In this sheet, in several numbers, the Italian literature of Nice has been summarized, from the early beginnings (16th century) to present day.[20]

See also[]

Notes[]

Citations[]

  1. ^ Jump up to: a b c d e f "Storia di Nizza" (in Italian). Retrieved 17 May 2021.
  2. ^ "L'Occitania" (in Italian). Retrieved 17 May 2021.
  3. ^ "La corrispondenza dell'anno 1793 tra i Ministri De Hauteville e Damiano di Priocca" (in Italian). Retrieved 17 May 2021.
  4. ^ "Times article dated February 13, 1871". Retrieved 20 October 2011.
  5. ^ "I Vespri Nizzardi del 1871: conferenza storica e annullo speciale". Retrieved 20 October 2011.
  6. ^ J. Woolf Stuart, Il risorgimento italiano, Turin, Einaudi, 1981, p. 44 (In Italian).
  7. ^ Giuseppe André, Nizza negli ultimi quattro anni, Nice, Editore Gilletta, 1875, pp. 334-335 (In Italian).
  8. ^ ""Un nizzardo su quattro prese la via dell'esilio" in seguito all'unità d'Italia, dice lo scrittore Casalino Pierluigi" (in Italian). Retrieved 14 May 2021.
  9. ^ Letter from Alberto Cougnet to Giuseppe Garibaldi, Genoa, December 7, 1867 - "Garibaldi Archive", Milan - C 2582
  10. ^ "Lingua italiana a Nizza" (in Italian). Retrieved 17 May 2021.
  11. ^ "Articolo del New York Times, 1881". Archived from the original on 10 November 2012. Retrieved 23 October 2011.
  12. ^ "Il Nizzardo" (PDF) (in Italian). Retrieved 17 May 2021.
  13. ^ "Considerazioni Sul Dialetto Nizzardo" (in Italian). Retrieved 17 May 2021.
  14. ^ Davide Rodogno. Il nuovo ordine mediterraneo - Le politiche di occupazione dell'Italia fascista in Europa (1940 - 1943) p.120-122 (In italian)
  15. ^ Ermanno Amicucci, Nizza e l'Italia, Rome, Mondadori, 1939, p. 126.
  16. ^ Jump up to: a b "Italiani, Francesi, Piemontesi, Liguri, Monegaschi o Occitani? Lo scrittore Casalino Pierluigi ci descrive con maestria la mista ed ambigua identità di Nizza e della Costa Azzurra nel XIX secolo". Retrieved 17 May 2021.
  17. ^ Jump up to: a b "Un'Italia sconfinata" (in Italian). Retrieved 17 May 2021.
  18. ^ "Si vuol sopprimere il Pensiero di Nizza" (in Italian). Retrieved 17 May 2021.
  19. ^ "1388, La Dédition de Nice à la Savoie" (in French). Retrieved 17 May 2021.
  20. ^ Vignoli: Storie di Nizza e del Nizzardo Archived 2011-07-22 at the Wayback Machine

Bibliography[]

  • (in Italian) Ermanno Amicucci, Nizza e l'Italia, Rome, Mondadori, 1939.
  • (in French) Hervé Barelli, Roger Rocca, Histoire de l'identité niçoise, Nice, Serre, 1995, ISBN 2-86410-223-4.
  • (in Italian) Francesco Barberis, Nizza italiana: raccolta di varie poesie italiane e nizzarde, corredate di note, Nice, Sborgi e Guarnieri, 1871.
  • (in Italian) Ezio Gray, Le terre nostre ritornano... Malta, Corsica, Nizza, Novara, De Agostini, 1943.
  • Edgar Holt, The Making of Italy 1815–1870, New York, Atheneum, 1971.
  • (in Italian) Rodogno, Davide. Il nuovo ordine mediterraneo - Le politiche di occupazione dell'Italia fascista in Europa (1940 - 1943), Bollati Boringhieri. Turin, 2003
  • (in French) Sappia, Enrico. Nice contemporaine, edited by Alain Rouillier, Nice: France Europe Editions, 2006
  • (in Italian) J. Woolf Stuart, Il risorgimento italiano, Turin, Einaudi, 1981.
  • (in French) Sophia Antipolis, Les Alpes Maritimes et la frontière 1860 à nos jours - Actes du colloque de Nice (1990), Nice, Université de Nice, Ed. Serre, 1992.
  • (in Italian) Giulio Vignoli, Storie e letterature italiane di Nizza e del Nizzardo (e di Briga e di Tenda e del Principato di Monaco), Edizioni Settecolori, Lamezia Terme, 2011.
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