King Theodore's Corsica
- Thread starter Carp
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If nothing else, once the war ends I suspect London will want to ensure Corsica doesn't drown financially to maintain her influence there.
I have in fact spent some time looking into possible eminent Jewish visitors to Corsica, either as tourists or immigrants, but thus far I haven't encountered many notable Jews who travelled - the luminaries of the Haskalah seem to have engaged with the broader European cultural milieu with letters rather than journeys. Naturally, the same is true of many non-Jewish intellectuals of the era, as travelling across the continent was neither fast nor cheap. As for Mendelssohn personally, my understanding was that his health was not particularly good by this time, and traveling to Ajaccio to satisfy one's intellectual curiosity seems like something that would only be attempted by the healthy and spirited (or, in the case of Rousseau, because the locals are throwing rocks at your house).
We will meet some foreign Jews in the next chapter who take an interest in the kingdom's finances, and there is one historical Venetian Jew who has already visited the island whom I have not yet mentioned in the story (although he may come up soon). As ever, I'm open to suggestions as to other historical figures who might fit the bill.
Fearless Leader
Donor
Perhaps Mendellsohn decides that the warmer climate might help him recover faster??
It might be a bit outside of the scope of this TL, but the Montefiores probably visit Corsica eventually...
I woild think that the Greek Corsicans could provide an avenue for ties to Thessaloniki's Jewish comminity.
Not really. His dowry was 180,000 scudi, which is not even close to the 1.6 million scudi which the government owes. If that's invested - we'll assume a rate of 4% - that represents an income of 7,200 scudi a year, or about 37,000 livres. By the standards of the French nobility that's "comfortable rural gentleman" tier, not "grand aristocrat," let alone "king." A skilled laborer in France might earn around 1,000 livres per annum, and the king has to maintain an entire household staff on his income (although admittedly the cost of labor is even cheaper in Corsica than it is in France). Like the state itself, the royal household presently runs a deficit, and if the present trend continues Theo will eventually face the same choices as the government - cut back or face insolvency.
Fortunately for Theo, he can count on an eventual windfall when Rauschenburg dies and all his assets, including the various Neuhoff baronies, pass to him as Rauschenburg's senior agnatic cousin. The total value of that estate is worth even more than his dowry, although even with an extremely timely death that's still not really sufficient to save Corsica's finances unless Theo wants to bankrupt himself in the process.
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Btw does Rauschenberg have any contact with the isle at all? At this point he's secured his place as a rich Rhineland baron for years and years and years, and while it's not quite true that he has nothing but money and time while being so wrapped up in early industrialization and coal empires and etc..., he's still very much the type of man who'd be up for wasting some money to aquire some agents in Livorno to eagerly read reports about the highland shepherds crying out his name as a battle-cry, I think.
The Wages of Tolerance
The Wages of Tolerance
Palais Itzig, Berlin, 19th century
Palais Itzig, Berlin, 19th century
In 1778 the Gradiscan Jew Elia Morpurgo boarded a small boat at Livorno, where he had been hard at work translating manuscripts, and headed for Bastia. Morpurgo was a rabbi, poet, author, translator, and silk manufacturer who corresponded with such Jewish luminaries as Moses Mendelssohn and Naphtali Wessely. Although he was quite familiar with “Theodoran liberty” - he had written a eulogy for King Theodore I - Morpurgo had never actually visited the island before, and took the opportunity to travel onwards to Ajaccio, the heart of Corsican Jewry. The result of this journey was, in 1779, the publication of Osservazioni sugli ebrei della Corsica (“Observations on the Jews of Corsica”), an account of his travels on the island and a description of the Corsican Jews and the conditions of their lives.[1]
Morpurgo related that all the Jews of Corsica lived in what he called the “three principal towns” of the island, that of Ajaccio, Bastia, and Calvi. (Evidently Corti, which he never visited, did not merit inclusion.) Ajaccio was by far the largest, with more than 900 Jews, while Bastia and Calvi possessed 200 and 30 Jews each. In absolute terms this paled in comparison to Livorno, which had between four and five thousand Jews in the 18th century, but Livorno was also a much larger city. Jews made up only 10% of the population of Livorno, but Ajaccio was around 20% Jewish at the time of Morpurgo’s visit. The Jewish population of Corsica was overwhelmingly Sephardic and Italian-speaking, although there were a small number of German-speaking Jews in Bastia who had migrated from the Austrian lands, many of them connected to the citron trade.
While the Jewish “colony” of Ajaccio had been essentially a satellite of the Livornese coral industry in the 1760s, the community underwent rapid economic diversification in the 1770s. Coral remained the primary business in Ajaccio, although even there the Jews of Ajaccio had branched out from merely trading in coral to manufacturing coral beads and other finished products. Jewish dealers were also involved in the trade of oil, grain, tobacco, textiles, and clothing. Jewish tradesmen included tailors, buttonmakers, leatherworkers, soapmakers, printers, and carpenters. Morpurgo met a handful of Jewish tobacco manufacturers in Ajaccio who had recently immigrated from Venice, a consequence of the Venetian government banning all Jews in the city from engaging in productive trades in 1777 (done at the behest of the Venetian guilds).
Notably, the vocations of “banker” and “financier” scarcely appear at all in Morpurgo’s account. Prior to the establishment of the Bank of Ajaccio the only real lending business in Ajaccio was the maritime loan business, which involved fronting money for fishing expeditions (which could last for months) which would then be paid back once the boat returned successfully - plus a premium which could reach as high as 18%. This business was dominated by old Corsican families, and they had an informal understanding with the Jewish coral merchants that they would not muscle in on each others’ turf. This did not preclude investments in maritime trade, however, and many Jewish merchants financed merchant ventures through buying shares in a ship and its cargo.
Morpurgo was especially interested in the attempts by Jews to buy land. Whereas Jewish involvement in trade and manufacturing was tolerated or even encouraged in many different countries, Jewish ownership of agricultural land was banned in much of Europe. Italian Jews could often find ways around these restrictions by way of special dispensations, but such licenses were not cheaply bought. At the time of Morpurgo’s visit Jewish rural land ownership was still rare, but purchases of agricultural land became increasingly common among Jewish merchants and manufacturers in the 1780s. For some it was about more than just investment diversification, as was the case with a Jewish cloth merchant who insisted on taking Morpurgo to a plot of land in the hills outside Ajaccio which was by all appearances little more than a fallow field. The merchant proudly informed Morpurgo that he was going to plant vines there, as it had always been his dream to own a vineyard - a dream which he had been unable to realize in his home country.
Another facet of social life newly open to Jewish participation was the military. At the time of Morpurgo’s visit, Jews in the regular army were virtually unknown. The Corsican army was dominated by interior Corsicans, with peasants filling the ranks and a mix of rural notables, noblemen, and former mercenaries comprising the officer corps. Service in the kingdom’s part-time military formations, however, was becoming increasingly popular among Jewish tradesmen. Membership in the provincial infantry was not favored as it often involved being sent to far-away posts, but the civic militias of the presidi offered a means to demonstrate patriotism, civic solidarity, and a certain military vigor which was not available to Jews elsewhere.
Particularly coveted among “middle class” Jewish artisans was membership in the companies of bombardieri, the part-time garrison artillerymen who were usually drawn from the ranks of the “practical trades” (carpenters, wheelwrights, smiths, and so on). Being an artillerist was considered more dignified for a tradesman than serving in the provincial infantry, and a bombardier’s duty seldom called him away from the city. Aside from the modest stipend and various perks, the post also offered opportunities for socialization: the bombardieri took part in civic events and maintained “bombardier halls” where off-duty company members could drink, dine, and discuss business and politics. For middle-class Jews who lacked the money and influence to break into “high society,” this was a way of building respectability and making connections with the broader (non-Jewish) urban middle class.
A curious development which Morpurgo hinted at in his work was the individual character of the relationship between the Jews and the Corsican state. In most of Europe, even in places like Livorno where there were few disabilities placed upon Jews, Jewish populations operated as a sort of “corporate nation” within the state. Jewish communities (often within ghettos) had their own systems of justice, politics, and administration, and the state government dealt with them only on a corporate basis through the parnasim, meaning “stewards” or “trustees,” leaders of the Jewish community who served as intermediaries between Jews and state agents. In some states, one specific Jew - often a Hofjude or “court factor” - spoke for all his coreligionists.
Corsican law, however, simply regarded Jewish citizens as citizens, not members of a corporate body. While this was a refreshing change for some Jewish immigrants who had chafed under the rule of deeply conservative Jewish oligarchies, the consequences were not always desirable. Many Jewish immigrants were accustomed to being able to resolve intra-community disputes internally, with Jewish courts giving opinions based on Halakhic law. In many countries this Jewish communal right to the internal administration of justice, at least for civil matters like matrimony and inheritance, was recognized by the state. Corsica, however, had no experience with such a parallel law system. Jewish Corsicans were instead subject to Corsican courts and Christian judges, whose rulings could be tainted by prejudice and who had neither knowledge of nor interest in Jewish custom. One judge memorably rejected an appeal to Jewish law regarding an inheritance dispute by declaring that it had as much relevance to the tribunal as “the edicts of the Grand Turk.” Jews could enter into private contracts which stipulated that both parties agreed to be subject to Halakhic law and would forgo any recourse to Corsican civil law, but Corsican judges rarely respected such contracts if one party defected from the agreement and brought the matter before a civil tribunal.
The lack of “corporate nationhood” also complicated the process of exerting political power. Without any officially recognized parnasim to speak for their community collectively, Jews had to seek power through Corsican institutions, but just because many Corsicans were willing to tolerate Jews did not mean that they readily admitted them to positions of formal power. Despite making up nearly a quarter of the population of Ajaccio at the end of the century, not one Jew was elected to join the anziani of Ajaccio until the 1800s. Christian families like the Peraldi, Rossi, and Buonaparte had dominated the city council for generations and had no incentive to let in new blood, let alone Jewish parvenus. In fact it took longer for a Jew to be elected to the anziani of Ajaccio than to the consulta generale, which seated its first Jewish procurator in 1789. An obvious contrast can be drawn with the status of the Catholic Church, which had dozens of reserved seats for curates, prelates, and monastic orders at the consulta and a formal line of communication to the government through the office of the Grand Almoner. “Tolerance” did not mean that the state did not play favorites, only that it inflicted no disabilities on individual citizens for their faith.[2]
As a consequence, Corsican Jews in the late 18th century had to rely on informal power which accrued to them by dint of their economic strength and their personal relationships with local officials, the ministry, and the court. Informal power could still be quite powerful, and could reach to the highest levels: Chancellor Paoli did not need to be reminded of the importance of Jewish industry and finance to the state’s bottom line, and the royal family frequently called upon the services of Jewish professionals (particularly doctors and bankers) who had opportunities to exert personal influence. The Jewish community understood the need to make the most of their economic clout and had a long tradition of gifts to the state, from cloth merchants donating the “black superfine cloth” which draped the coffin of Theodore I to coral brokers launching a subscription to purchase vessels for the Navy. This was all intended to remind the king and his government that the Corsican Jews were both loyal and useful, but a relationship based on utility is always fraught. After all, the state’s cost-benefit analysis might one day change, or those in positions of power might succumb to the temptation to abuse this relationship by demanding ever more generous “gifts” for preserving legal toleration.
Despite its fascinating portrait of Jewish society in Corsica, the Osservazioni elided most of the concerns and difficulties of the community because it was a polemic, not a work of dispassionate anthropology.[3] Morpurgo, who dedicated his work to Emperor Joseph II, used his rosy account of the Corsican Jewish community to make a case for religious tolerance and Jewish emancipation. While he did appeal to justice and sentiment, Morpurgo’s main thrust was economic - that tolerance was a rising tide that would lift all boats, including the ship of state. Moreover, Morpurgo attempted to show by the Corsican example that this economic boom came with no drawbacks - that contrary to the fears of many Christians (and some Jews), Jewish emancipation would not undermine civic harmony and would pose no danger to the faithful observance of either Christianity or Judaism.
Morpurgo’s work met with considerable success. It was highly praised by his fellow Jewish intellectuals; Mendelssohn hailed it as a masterful contribution to the “science” of tolerance. Emperor Joseph seems to have read it, or was at least aware of it, and the book is often claimed to have influenced his later edicts on religious toleration. In fact the book was considerably more influential in the German lands than in Italy - Morpurgo had published it in both languages - and the circulation of the work in Germany is associated with the relaxing of strictures against Jews by a number of German princes from the early 1780s. Many princes, statesmen, and bureaucrats in the Empire saw Corsica as an intriguing analogue to their own domains - a small state under a German prince (by breeding, if not culture), notionally sovereign yet continually menaced by larger neighbors, historically reliant on the sale of mercenaries but weighed down by an underdeveloped agrarian economy. If Jewish liberty could provide the economic boost needed to “regenerate” this backwards state, and without imperiling civic harmony, was it not an experiment worth repeating?
In 1780 the Osservazioni arrived in the Jewish community of Berlin and came into the hands of the electorate’s “Court Jew” Daniel Itzig. Itzig had made his initial fortune as a minter and thereafter expanded into banking, textiles, leather, ironworking, and mining. By 1770 he was one of the richest men in Berlin, and indeed in all of Brandenburg. Itzig was proud of his achievements and displayed his wealth magnificently: “Palais Itzig” was one of the largest and most impressive residences in all Berlin, boasting gardens, fountains, and an impressive painting collection. His real love, however, was philanthropy. Itzig himself was no philosopher and published no works, but he established a Jewish school with a modern curriculum and patronized numerous Jewish writers, scholars, and artists. He lobbied on behalf of the Jews of Brandenburg (of whom he was the official representative) to lift legal restrictions upon the community and advocated for full religious toleration. Not surprisingly, he had been a lifelong admirer of King Theodore.
Don Isacco Sonsino had tried to make the most of his contacts among the Sephardim of London and Amsterdam to raise funds for the Bank of Ajaccio, and thus far had not met with much success. Daniel Itzig, however, had contacts in the Amsterdam bullion market and it may be in this manner that he learned of Corsica’s struggle to rescue the national credit in 1783. Morpurgo’s argument had been premised on the fact that the Jews of Ajaccio had brought great economic benefits to Corsica; if the state were to suffer a fiscal collapse it would cast doubt on this achievement, even if the collapse was no fault of the Jews. Itzig realized that with one investment he could potentially “rescue” Morpurgo’s thesis, forward the cause of Jewish emancipation in his own homeland, and benefit the Corsican Jewish community. Itzig dispatched his son Isaak to Ajaccio, who arrived in October of 1783 and held meetings with Chancellor Paoli, Minister Carli, the bank directors, and even King Theodore II himself.
Itzig proposed to buy shares in the Bank of Ajaccio worth 300,000 gulden, or about 185,000 scudi, which would more than double the bank’s present assets. Although this would give Itzig a majority stake in the bank, he was a foreigner and thus any shares he purchased would be non-voting shares. Without actual influence in the bank’s governance Itzig requested certain assurances from the state, including the creation of a sinking fund which would commit specific government revenues to repaying debt principal. This infusion of cash was valuable enough on its own, but it also served as a signal to other financiers that the Bank of Ajaccio was a credible organization. If such an eminent and successful banker as Daniel Itzig had confidence in the bank there was little reason to doubt its solvency.
British 3% Consol, issued 1788
Rather than continuing to sell shares, the bank opted to raise further capital by issuing annuities. Modeled after British “consols,” or consolidated annuities, these were bonds which paid their bearers annual interest in perpetuity, or until the government chose to redeem them. As Corsica was a riskier investment than Britain, the bank had to offer a higher interest rate than the 3% rate of British consols. 4% annuities from the Bank of Ajaccio met with only limited interest, in part because during wartime the British government sold their consols at well below par,[A] but in September of 1784 the Treaty of Paris formally ended the American War and British consols returned to par.
By early 1785 the bank’s total assets exceeded 400,000 scudi, allowing the bank to float a new loan to the government for 240,000 scudi which was used to pay off most of the government’s high interest war debt. Combined with the reduction of debt principal with the sinking fund, which was funded by the sale of mercenaries to Sardinia and a 2% increase on the coral duty, the consolidation of the debt through the sale of consols reduced the state’s annual debt service from over 100,000 scudi in 1783 to 62,000 scudi in 1786. In the same period, government revenues increased thanks to the growth of the coral, silk, and tobacco industries, the resumption of British trade, and general population growth. When the “two year suspension” on debt payments expired in 1785, Carli was able to meet the state’s obligations. The crisis had passed.
Chancellor Paoli utilized the bank not only to refinance old debts, but to fund the capital projects which he had long dreamt of. While most of the 240,000 scudi loan issued in 1784 was used to settle war debt, the chancellor retained 30,000 scudi from this sum to fund the rebuilding of Capraia and restart work on the Via Nazionale, the carriage road intended to run between Bastia and Ajaccio which would ultimately be completed in 1788. The chancellor had a long list of other projects - roads, bridges, drainage canals, mills, dock facilities - and although Corsica was still a poor country which operated under financial constraints, the stabilization of the country’s finances in the mid-1780s allowed some progress to be made on ventures which had languished as mere ideas since Paoli’s first entry into government in the 1750s.
Footnotes
[1] Morpurgo was not the first Jew to publish an account of his travels in Corsica. That distinction belongs to Haim Yosef David Azulai, a widely-traveled rabbi of Jerusalem who visited Ajaccio in 1774. Azulai’s travel diaries, however, were published only in Hebrew and never found wide circulation, nor were they intended as a political tract.
[2] The organs of state administration which did see a relatively early Jewish presence were the camere provinciali, the provincial administrative boards created by Federico to manage fiscal affairs at the regional level. Because the members of the camera were appointed by the Council of Finance, not elected, Jews were well-represented (indeed, over-represented) in the Ajaccio camera and also present in the camera of Bastia.
[3] Morpurgo did not completely omit any mention of Christian-Jewish friction, but he blamed such incidents entirely on the Jesuits. He contrasted the “productive nature” of the Jewish community with the “parasitic nature” of the Society of Jesus, and accused the Spanish Jesuits of holding the native Corsicans in contempt, contributing little to the common good, and using their positions as educators to promote bigotry and intolerance among the nation’s youth. Although this was obviously a gross exaggeration, the Spanish Jesuits were often critical of Theodoran tolerance, an attitude that would steadily drive a wedge between them and the government. Blaming the Jesuits was a convenient and effective tactic, as it allowed Morpurgo to dismiss any contraindications to his thesis as the work of foreign reactionary agitators - and since virtually every other monarch in Europe had already expelled or liquidated the Society, they presumably had nothing to worry about.
Timeline Notes
[A] A perpetual bond is a bond which does not mature (that is, it has no set expiration). If you buy a 3% consol for $10,000 from the government, the government pays you 3% interest on that bond ($300) every year in perpetuity. The government has the option of redeeming the consol at any time by paying back your $10,000 principal, but you as the bondholder cannot demand a redemption of the bond; the government pays you back when it feels like it. Formerly the British government had issued higher interest bonds to finance wars, but from the 1750s they shifted to a new system in which 3% consols were sold “below par” - that is, for less than their nominal value. If the government is selling 3% consols for 60% of par, that means I can buy a $10,000 consol by paying only $6,000, and I receive 3% interest on the face value of the bond ($10,000) - effectively making this a 5% bond. The government, of course, now has to pay me $10,000 to redeem a bond which I paid them only $6,000 to acquire, but this was originally conceived of as a selling point, as the buyer is rewarded for his faith in the British government in time of war with a handsome capital gain when peace arrives. But because the bond is perpetual, the government never actually needs to pay me back - if they want to, they can keep the bond on the books and keep paying me interest indefinitely, and in practice this is what the British government often did. Some British consols issued in the 18th century were only repaid in 2015, when the UK government decided to redeem all outstanding consols. Consols were popular as a form of government borrowing because they were flexible and could be redeemed at the government’s leisure, and were popular among buyers because they were highly liquid (there was a robust secondary market for consols, which were fully transferable) and offered a safe and reliable investment with a reasonable rate of return.
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I was under the impression that the Corsican Jewish community was larger than that.
They are a fifth of Ajaccio and a bit less than 1% of the total population, I'd expected Ajaccio to be a bit bigger and the Corsican Jews being at least 2000 or so. Aren't the Greeks a significantly larger minority by now?
They are a fifth of Ajaccio and a bit less than 1% of the total population, I'd expected Ajaccio to be a bit bigger and the Corsican Jews being at least 2000 or so. Aren't the Greeks a significantly larger minority by now?
Took about a week to read everything but this is my favourite timeline on the site. I'm really happy to have found this just as I picked up an interest in King Thèodore and I will follow its developments assiduously.
Ajaccio's OTL population in the 1780s was not quite 4,000 people. ITTL it's around 5,000 when Morpurgo is making his observations in 1778, and by the time of Itzig's visit in 1783 it's just over 6,000. A good number of those post-1778 immigrants are probably Jews, thanks in part to Morpurgo's publicity; the update mentions that by the end of the century they are a quarter of the population, so presumably 1,500-2,000 by the year 1800 (depending on how large Ajaccio grows in the 1790s). At the time of Morpurgo's visit there are only around 400-500 Greeks in Ajaccio.
It's worth keeping in mind that Ajaccio is little more than a small town by continental standards, and it can't absorb limitless numbers of immigrants. A town of 5-6 thousand people only needs so many cloth merchants, and even one silversmith might struggle to find work. Additionally, in the 1780s the government is actively trying to settle Jews elsewhere because of the strain on Ajaccio's resources, particularly water. Bastia, Calvi, and the Balagnese ports (Algajola and Isola Rossa) are the government's favored alternatives, although after 1783 a few Jews end up settling in Bonifacio as well.
I assume that an aqueduct to ensure Ajaccio has sufficient water is going to be a medium-term priority for Corsica. A strong and growing port city can be an economic engine that makes the rest of the country go.
After some additional reading, I think I may have been slightly too conservative about Ajaccio's potential growth and water supply. Ajaccio really did have water problems owing to its position, which had been chosen more for defensibility than water access. Some work was done under the First Empire, in which channels were constructed to bring local streams and spring water to the city, but the preliminary stages of this project were not complete until 1807 and the Canneto basin was not hooked up until 1812. In 1836 it was observed that the public fountains were only capable of distributing 4 liters per inhabitant per day in the summer, which is not much greater than the average person’s necessary water consumption and doesn't leave much else for cooking, cleaning, laundry, and other uses. Nevertheless, the city continued to grow during this period. Ajaccio’s population was around 4,000 in the 1780s, 6,570 in 1800, and 9,003 in 1836. By the time work on the Gravona Canal began in 1862 under Napoleon III, Ajaccio was a city of 14,000 people.
I assumed that by 1783 the city’s population would be “just over 6,000,” which is probably still reasonable; IOTL, the city didn’t hit that mark until just before the end of the century. My estimate that it would be around 8,000 in 1800, however, is probably too conservative - IOTL the city had 6,570 people by then, and that’s before any of Napoleon’s water projects were undertaken. If we assume that those projects are undertaken earlier, which seems likely to happen in the 1780s (some preliminary work was already done under Theodore I), then there’s probably no reason the city can’t hit 9,000 by the end of the century (36 years ahead of schedule) or even exceed 10,000, albeit at the cost of water shortages every summer.
As mentioned, most of Corsica's senior naval officers sailed for Malta, albeit merely as licensed corsairs rather than actual Knights of Malta. Admiral Lorenzo was himself (historically) one of the most successful Maltese corsairs of the 18th century.