Given what appears to be Theodore's somewhat casual attitude to paying off his personal debts, I suspect his plan (insofar as he has one) is actually to pay off the debt as slowly as he can get away with (after all his private debtors don't have the French army at their disposal to enforce collection) while hoping for a black swan event to come along that will have the effect of voiding part or all of it - another war being the obvious one.
King Theodore's Corsica
- Thread starter Carp
- Start date
Given what appears to be Theodore's somewhat casual attitude to paying off his personal debts, I suspect his plan (insofar as he has one) is actually to pay off the debt as slowly as he can get away with (after all his private debtors don't have the French army at their disposal to enforce collection) while hoping for a black swan event to come along that will have the effect of voiding part or all of it - another war being the obvious one.
Well the Seven Years War is coming soon. But, even if Theodore wants to get out of his debt his other closest relationship is to Austria, who are now in bed with France themselves. Not going to be that easy, unless he wants to join the English.
The Nascent State
The Nascent State
The Conca d'Oro ("Gold Basin"), a valley of rich farmland in the Nebbio
The Conca d'Oro ("Gold Basin"), a valley of rich farmland in the Nebbio
Perhaps the most astonishing thing about the consulta generale of 1750 was just how little the body actually accomplished. Finally awakening to a new era of independence and handed the seals of legislative power, the grand congress of the people had made some clarifications to the existing system of government, elected a new Diet, and then gone home. In fact the assembly had discussed - and occasionally passed - a whole slew of resolutions dealing with all sorts of issues: salt production, the taglia, the long-promised university, the commons, the coral industry, grazing rights, the administration of justice, and so on. But the men that met at Corti in October of 1750 hardly knew each other. The “Corsican nation” was a thing which existed only in rhetoric and theory. Divided by mountains, trackless wastes, and insular clans, lacking any newspapers or other instruments of common culture, even the people of neighboring pievi saw each other as strangers. Many found themselves mingled with people they deeply distrusted: shepherds next to landlords, southerners next to northerners, highland patriots next to city dwellers who had been filogenovesi a few years earlier. Few of them had come to Corti with any plan except to see what independence had brought them. To craft and pass serious legislation in this body, given only a week and shackled by a two-thirds majority requirement to make anything legally binding, was an impossible task.
The challenge faced by King Theodore and his new prime minister Count Gianpietro Gaffori was not merely to rule Corsica, but to make it. Corsica could, in a sense, run itself; its villages had been doing just that for the past twenty years in the absence of anything resembling a functioning government. Isolation and division kept the Corsican people in poverty, but it was a bearable poverty, particularly when unburdened by the Genoese administration. Certainly Theodore’s promises were well-received; all could agree that they would be better off with a university, better agriculture, more trade, and the building of roads, mills, and mines. But achieving these things required labor and resources, and it was unclear whether the people of a nation which existed only in theory would be willing to work - and, if necessary, sacrifice - for the good of that nation.
Certainly Theodore enjoyed immense popularity, particularly among the lower orders of society. The common lavatore could not read the king’s proclamations, nor did his awareness extend far beyond the borders of his pieve, but he knew that Theodore had arrived out of the blue - as if heaven-sent - and had crushed the Genoese oppressors and abolished their exploitative laws. The Corsican priesthood, drawn from peasant stock and strongly royalist by inclination, had served as Theodore’s best propagandists among the people. Their sermons during the Revolution declaring that the king had been divinely appointed to lead the people from bondage were taken very seriously by the common men of the interior; did not his very name mean “God-given?” But a reverent awe for the person of the king did not necessarily extend to his governors, his soldiers, and his tax collectors. Nor was the devotion of the peasants necessarily shared by the notabili, who had not sided with the rebellion out of loyalty to the Corsican nation - a thing which did not exist - but to improve their own fortunes, as the Genoese had held them back politically, socially, and economically. Unfortunately, these ambitions often came at the expense of the lower classes.
In the first years of independence this conflict was most evident in the fate of the "domains," land which had fallen under the notional control of the government. This included the confische (“confiscations”), defined as “all the property of the Genoese and the rebels to the country of the Kingdom” which had been seized over the course of the Revolution. The crown also claimed "wastelands," meaning any territory which was not under permanent cultivation, but this included a great deal of land that actually was in regular use: Seasonal grazing land, as well as semi-arable regions of macchia that were burned and farmed every few years. The domains constituted the greatest material asset of the government, and the ultimate fate of these lands was a politically fraught issue. Much of the land was already subject to claims by those who had used it, officially or unofficially, for many years, but these claims were often poorly documented and frequently conflicted. Theodore expressed a desire to favor the common farmers - his most fervent supporters - but he was also keenly aware of his need to retain the loyalty of the nobility. His desire to help the poor farmers also had to be balanced against his belief that large landowners, with greater capital to spend, would be more able and inclined to grow the cash crops that he believed were the kingdom's economic future. This was an intensely difficult political balancing act, and the process of adjudicating claims and doling out confiscated land would extend beyond Theodore's lifetime.
The process was greatly complicated by the fact that the government really had no idea what it possessed. There was almost no information on the very land it was supposed to be giving out, and few good maps of its extent. To address this, Gaffori organized the Catasto Reale in 1751, the royal land registry, to map and record the lands of the confische. The survey was in effect a joint venture with the French, who loaned a number of trained surveyors to the Corsican government for the project. This was of equal benefit to France, which could not only assess the value of their client state but also accumulate substantial geographical knowledge of military importance. Even with foreign expertise, however, the process took years to complete, during which time the government could not always resist the demands of powerful supporters who had been promised land or desperate farmers who simply squatted on the land they thought rightfully theirs. In the absence of a swift and decisive legal process, land disputes frequently turned into bitter local disputes or recourse to the vendetta. Powerful clans generally won such disputes, leading to more of the land falling into the hands of the (relatively) wealthy and well-connected than Theodore had probably hoped.
Theodore was also playing the system for his own benefit. As he put it, the establishment of royal estates was in the vital national interest. It would not do for Corsica to have an indigent king, nor one dependent on foreign estates (as Theodore, whose only estates were his dowry lands in Lombardy, currently was), and revenues from the "terre della corona" would make the monarchy less dependent on taxation for its upkeep. To this end, Theodore quietly identified some of the best lands of the confische - mostly located in the northeast - and declined to recognize claims on them, in some cases even ejecting squatters and herders. As a consequence, over the next few years the king was able to amass a considerable stretch of choice agricultural territory for himself, most of it around the Bay of San Fiorenzo (chiefly in the Nebbio, Canari, Nonza, and the Agriate).
If the allotment of the domains was one manner in which the state attempted to legitimate itself and preserve its popularity, the other was the establishment of justice. The arbitrariness, venality, and corruption of the Genoese justice system on Corsica had been a key complaint of the revolutionaries, and the establishment of a fairer and more effective system would be a key test of the new government. Some efforts had been made in this direction before, particularly with the creation of the Marcia to attack the culture of the vendetta, but the vendetta was a symptom rather than a cause, the most outrageous manifestation of a broken system. Count Gaffori made the reform of the Corsican judicial system his own pet project.
Traditionally, disputes were handed at the local level by the podesta, who was not merely the political leader of the paese but its chief judge as well. He was not, however, its sole judge, as in most cases he was assisted by two padri del commune who ruled on cases together as a panel. Their remit was mainly what might be called “civil matters” - issues of property, inheritance, and land rights - while serious crimes like murder, assault, and rape fell not to the village authorities but the “court” of the vendetta, where each family was responsible for finding its own justice (although the authorities might in some cases try to step in as arbitrators to calm an ongoing feud). Whatever the imperfections of the local judiciary might have been, Gaffori did not believe it could feasibly be revolutionized or uprooted; it was, after all, the traditional right of the people.
Gaffori’s plan was to impose a judicial superstructure over these local courts. In the main, this would consist of nine tribunali provinciali, one for each lieutenancy, with three auditori (judges) each. These courts would try all crimes rising above the level of the communal courts, including all major crimes, and would hear appeals from the communal courts if there was a credible allegation of corruption or the sums involved exceeded a certain amount (so as not to swamp the tribunali in petty disputes). A tenth criminal tribunal, the tribunale capitale - better known as the Marcia - continued to exist as a “roving court” with island-wide jurisdiction, but it was constrained to a very specific portfolio of cases.[1] Apart from these, the crown also instituted a special kind of commercial court, appropriately called the tribunale commerciale, which was to be set up in every town designated as a port of trade (initially Ajaccio, Bastia, and Isola Rossa). Like the provincial courts, these were three-man panels, but they were purely civil courts intended to deal with matters of property, contract, and mercantile law. All judges were appointed by the minister of justice with the consent of the king.
Above these courts was the tribunale della corona (“crown tribunal”), a five-member supreme court. Technically the crown tribunal did not try cases; rather, it “advised” the sovereign on cases which were appealed to his royal person. In practice, Theodore typically did whatever the court recommended. Generally speaking, appeals to the king occurred when a) a communal court appealed a summary decision of the Marcia, b) a nobleman requested a royal appeal, as was his right, or c) Theodore himself chose to grant an appeal, either on his own initiative or on a recommendation from the minister of justice. The crown tribunal also ruled on matters of jurisdiction between courts (if a conflict ever arose), answered questions of law raised by lower courts, and advised the sovereign and the government on matters of law. The most senior member of this court was the auditore generale.[2]
To execute these judgments, the government had only the “flying companies” of the Bozio consulta. These companies had been a temporary stopgap to deal with the immediate collapse of Genoese authority and had many problems. Being locally raised they were often disinclined to follow royal commands and the government had difficulty regulating or controlling them. The king’s solution was to empower the luogotenenti to raise a corps of “dragoons” who would act as part-time gendarmes in their provinces. Continuing problems with enforcement would eventually lead to the abolition of the “flying companies” in 1754 and the creation of the dragoni reali (“royal dragoons”), a regular military unit with internal law enforcement duties, whereupon the dragoons of the lieutenancies became known as dragoni presidiali (“presidial dragoons”).
The Kingdom possessed one prison, located in the citadel of Bastia, which it had inherited from the Genoese and was designed to hold up to 300 prisoners. The dungeon of Bastia was notorious among the Corsicans, as many patriots and victims of Genoese injustice had been held there (with many subsequently transferred to the state galleys), and not a few had died there. After the first siege of Bastia, much of the Genoese garrison had been imprisoned there by the Corsicans until the capture of the city by the French, most of whom died there from recurrent episodes of typhus. Such was the prison’s ill reputation that the courts tried to avoid imprisonment when possible, relying on fines for most punishments short of death.[3]
Another basic function of government which Gaffori’s government labored to meet was more concrete: the provision of salt. As with justice, the unjust supply of this commodity had been a major complaint of the Corsican rebels. The Genoese had maintained an absolute monopoly over the commodity, going so far as to dismantle existing saltworks on the island, and sold it to the Corsicans at exorbitant prices. They had defended this monopoly with extreme force, exemplified by the notorious “Campoloro Massacre” of 1737 in which Genoese soldiers shot and killed seven women and children who were collecting seawater to make their own salt. A reduction in the price of salt had been a key demand of the Corsicans since the very beginning of the revolt, and a maximum price was written into the royalist constitution.
It was not that the Corsicans demanded the liberalization of the salt trade; the 1736 constitution referred explicitly to “the salt to be supplied by the King to the people.” Indeed, in many countries salt trade liberalization was opposed by the common people, who feared that putting this commodity in the hands of greedy merchants would make prices higher, not lower. In other words, what the Corsicans desired was not “economic freedom,” but fairness - they wanted their king to be a “good father” who provided salt to the people at a reasonable rate, and would neither seek to exploit them nor throw them to the wolves of the free market. Although the constitutionally-mandated maximum price did not allow the state to collect enormous profits (as the King of France enjoyed), maximizing production was desirable not only to fulfill the needs of the population but to create a national surplus that could be traded abroad.
Lake Diana, a brackish lagoon near Aleria
Unlike the Genoese, the Corsican government’s monopoly on salt was not absolute. This was necessary as the state-controlled supply initially could not meet the island’s demand. The private buying and selling of salt was illegal, except for residents of the presidi who could purchase salt from importers, albeit with a tariff that ensured it was never cheaper (and usually more expensive) than the government’s salt. Individual Corsicans could legally produce their own salt for private use, but had to pay a tax on all salt produced, were limited in the amount they could harvest, and could not sell it. Naturally these restrictions invited smuggling, tax evasion, and illicit production, which the government could not altogether prevent. Nevertheless most salt was bought legally from the government on account of the fairly reasonable price, and to the government’s credit those who broke the salt ordinances were generally fined, not shot dead.
Notwithstanding the revenues of the terre della corona and the sale of salt, the government continually struggled to cover its expenses. The taglia, or hearth tax, was reliable but not very lucrative; at the present rate of 1 lira per household it could only yield about 26,000 lire per year even assuming perfect compliance, a paltry sum. The constitution allowed the taglia to be increased to a maximum of 3 lire, but this was not an attractive solution, as it was an exceedingly regressive tax paid in equal amount by rich and poor alike. The tithe, fixed at one-twentieth of gross production, was a fairer tax but could not be relied upon. In theory it was supposed to go to the Church, and although Theodore was “confiscating” most of it at the moment that situation could not go on indefinitely. Moreover, it was a difficult tax to collect as it was easy for farmers to hide or misreport their yields. A handful of other taxes and fees, like wharfage fees at ports and the in-kind levy on coral fishing, padded out the budget, but nevertheless the Corsican government was constantly struggling to make ends meet.
Soon the government found itself squeezed between the dieta, which resisted the imposition of new taxes, and the French, whose demands for Theodore to begin paying interest on the country’s debt were impossible to ignore. Corsica’s inability to service this debt, the increasingly meddlesome behavior of the French, and various political and economic tensions between the two countries steadily eroded an initially promising relationship and would spark a major crisis before the decade was out.
Footnotes
[1] Although the Marcia technically had jurisdiction over all murder even after Gaffori’s reforms, its jurisdiction was discretionary. Typically the tribunal left “ordinary” murders and assaults to the district tribunals and focused on vendetta murder, particularly the vendetta transversa, as well as the related crimes of the rimbeccu and attacar. Nevertheless, the extraordinary power of the Marcia to execute collective punishment (e.g. seizing the property of the family of the accused) meant that notorious fugitives and bandits often ended up in their ambit even if their crimes were not directly related to the vendetta.
[2] Originally the offices of auditore generale and minister of justice were held by the same person, and the dividing line between them was unclear. They were only permanently separated in 1753. Thereafter, the auditore generale was defined as the kingdom’s chief judge and legal authority, while the minister of justice administered the whole judicial system and made appointments but did not take part in any judicial decisions.
[3] Judging the “traditional” Corsican means of execution - the firing squad - to be unsuited for peace, Theodore directed Gaffori to institute hanging, only to find that nobody on the island knew how to hang a man properly. A professional hangman from Rome was eventually hired by the government.
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Fascinating as always! Has there been an effort to codify Corsican law officially?
Corsica gets immediately annexed and the the export of the revolution continues.
I joke, by Corsica doesn't have the luxury of hiding behind the ocean - they're a piece in the great powers' games, like it or not.
Corsica gets immediately annexed and the the export of the revolution continues.
I joke, by Corsica doesn't have the luxury of hiding behind the ocean - they're a piece in the great powers' games, like it or not.
I think the UK would definitely want to move to protect Corsica. Also, keep in mind while a revolution is coming there will be no Napoleon to co-opt it. Even if some other military figure takes over I doubt they would be as successful.
Not really. Genoese law was a “three legged stool,” consisting of a combination of traditional communal law, various modified Roman statutes (introduced by the Genoese), and the proclamations of the Genoese governor (known as the grida). The revolutionary consulte abolished the Genoese grida, but the other two “legs” of the stool, traditional and Roman law, remain in effect. Theodore’s practice has been to modify the law by adding new grida of his own, but he’s made no effort to systematically reform the existing law. It’s probably something that needs to be done, but he has other things on his mind right now.
Corsica actually came very near to being a theater of war in the early SYW. After the French captured Minorca, the British were left without any Mediterranean naval base east of Gibraltar (as Livorno was no longer open to them owing to the Franco-Austrian alliance). The Duke of Newcastle suggested that seizing Corsica, despite the neutral status of Genoa, would provide Britain with a naval and privateering base to substitute for Minorca. Bringing Genoa into the war had given them pause in the WAS, but in the SYW Italy was not a theater of war and Genoa had no strategic value to anyone. But the French anticipated this move, and shortly after the invasion of Minorca they sent several regiments to Corsica (technically this was the “Third French Intervention”) to occupy strategic points and prevent the British from just waltzing in. They succeeded in dissuading the British from trying Newcastle’s scheme, but the French troops were eventually withdrawn a few years later when the growing British naval presence in the Mediterranean made keeping them on Corsica untenable. By this time, however, the British no longer perceived Corsica as a vital position and made no attempt on it.
If a Franco-British war does break out ITTL - and it almost certainly will - Corsica is very likely to enter into the strategic planning of both sides, particularly if the French are able to take Minorca as OTL. The British are fully aware of the island’s value in a naval war against France, while the French certainly remember that the Corsicans and British were “allied” during the WAS, something which is likely to make them uneasy.
Generally, the first time any (living) character appears in a chapter, their name is given in full and bolded. I started doing this back in Sons of the Harlot Empress because it gives you a visual cue when a character first makes an appearance in an update, and in SotHE it also served to help distinguish and identify similarly-named characters (although that’s somewhat less important in KTC, where people actually have last names).
At this point it’s mostly just a habit. If it bothers people, I could certainly stop.
Just out of interest, I calculated the maximum salt price in the 1736 constitution (13⅓ soldi per 22-pound bushel) and converted into French currency and weight, which - if I did my math right - comes out to 4.385 livres per quintal.
The gabelle, or salt duty was one of the most notorious taxes of ancien regime France. Perhaps the most frustrating part of the gabelle was that it was so variable throughout the country. In the Provinces Franches there was no salt duty at all and salt was sold at the market rate, which ranged from 1½ to 9 livres per quintal. In contrast, if you lived in the Pays des Grandes Gabelles - covering about a third of the country - you paid between 54 and 62 livres per quintal. Unsurprisingly, smuggling was extremely common. So although it's higher than the rock-bottom market rate of 1½ livres/quintal, the Corsican maximum rate of 4.385 livres per quintal would have been considered quite reasonable in the Provinces Franches, and an absolute steal anywhere else in France.
Figuring out government profit is a bit harder, in large part because I have no data on Corsican salt consumption. That varied a lot between countries - in France consumption was estimated at between 12 and 20 lbs/person/year, but in parts of Scandinavia at the same time this amount exceeded 100 lbs/person/year (they liked their salt fish up there). It’s possible that the reason the Corsican constitution specified a 22-pound “bushel” (a rather odd measurement, as far as I can tell) is that this was supposed to correspond with “normal” consumption; 22 Genoese pounds would be 14.2 French pounds, which falls within the French estimated range (although on the low side of it). That’s probably a conservative estimate, but let’s roll with it.
Necker estimated that the cost of manual labor in the salt ponds of France was 15 sous (¾ of a livre) per quintal produced. If we assume the same for Corsica, that yields a profit of 3.635 livres per quintal, or a gross margin of 82.9%, yielding 66,320 lira in profit (assuming 120,000 customers buying a bushel per year at 13⅓ soldi each). For a variety of reasons, however, this figure is too high. For one, it assumes everyone will indeed buy government salt, which will never be the case thanks to smuggling and self-production. It also assumes labor cost is the only expense, which is not true - there will also be transportation costs (not inconsiderable in a land with no roads), administrative costs (including the cost of enforcing the salt laws), and the cost of maintaining production facilities.
Obviously there are a lot of guesses here, but I think the clear takeaway is that the constitutionally limited price prevents domestic salt sales from being a gold mine. At the end of the day the government may well clear a profit, but it’s hardly going to be the revenue engine of the state. Foreign sales may be more profitable, but that's an actual competitive market and is very dependent on foreign tariffs.
There are 32 families in the "upper" nobility (counts and marquesses). The number of knightly families is some amount higher than this, perhaps somewhere in the neighborhood of 50. For reference, following the French conquest the French crown recognized 77 Corsican families as noble.
There are many more northern nobles than southern nobles, but that's because there are simply more people in the north (about twice as many as the south); it also has to do with the fact that most of Theodore's early supporters were northerners, not southerners. But the southern nobility is older (all the true "old noble" families with medieval heritage are in the south) and tends to be more "traditional" in the sense of being high-status landowners. The northern nobility is of much younger vintage and is less tied to the land. Contrast Count Gianpietro Gaffori (a northerner), a doctor, with Marquis Luca d'Ornano (a southerner of a medieval house), a landowner who has no fewer than two Marshals of France in his family tree and would never deign to practice a trade.
So while the south has fewer nobles than the north, both in absolute terms and per capita, these nobles tend to have more land and more entrenched social power than nobles in the north.
I don't know a lot about that subject, but I'm not aware of the imposition of Italian in the 1760s causing a major refugee crisis. Moreover, I'm not sure they would accomplish much by fleeing to Corsica, where the official language is... Tuscan Italian.
The gabelle, or salt duty was one of the most notorious taxes of ancien regime France. Perhaps the most frustrating part of the gabelle was that it was so variable throughout the country. In the Provinces Franches there was no salt duty at all and salt was sold at the market rate, which ranged from 1½ to 9 livres per quintal. In contrast, if you lived in the Pays des Grandes Gabelles - covering about a third of the country - you paid between 54 and 62 livres per quintal. Unsurprisingly, smuggling was extremely common. So although it's higher than the rock-bottom market rate of 1½ livres/quintal, the Corsican maximum rate of 4.385 livres per quintal would have been considered quite reasonable in the Provinces Franches, and an absolute steal anywhere else in France.
Figuring out government profit is a bit harder, in large part because I have no data on Corsican salt consumption. That varied a lot between countries - in France consumption was estimated at between 12 and 20 lbs/person/year, but in parts of Scandinavia at the same time this amount exceeded 100 lbs/person/year (they liked their salt fish up there). It’s possible that the reason the Corsican constitution specified a 22-pound “bushel” (a rather odd measurement, as far as I can tell) is that this was supposed to correspond with “normal” consumption; 22 Genoese pounds would be 14.2 French pounds, which falls within the French estimated range (although on the low side of it). That’s probably a conservative estimate, but let’s roll with it.
Necker estimated that the cost of manual labor in the salt ponds of France was 15 sous (¾ of a livre) per quintal produced. If we assume the same for Corsica, that yields a profit of 3.635 livres per quintal, or a gross margin of 82.9%, yielding 66,320 lira in profit (assuming 120,000 customers buying a bushel per year at 13⅓ soldi each). For a variety of reasons, however, this figure is too high. For one, it assumes everyone will indeed buy government salt, which will never be the case thanks to smuggling and self-production. It also assumes labor cost is the only expense, which is not true - there will also be transportation costs (not inconsiderable in a land with no roads), administrative costs (including the cost of enforcing the salt laws), and the cost of maintaining production facilities.
Obviously there are a lot of guesses here, but I think the clear takeaway is that the constitutionally limited price prevents domestic salt sales from being a gold mine. At the end of the day the government may well clear a profit, but it’s hardly going to be the revenue engine of the state. Foreign sales may be more profitable, but that's an actual competitive market and is very dependent on foreign tariffs.
There are 32 families in the "upper" nobility (counts and marquesses). The number of knightly families is some amount higher than this, perhaps somewhere in the neighborhood of 50. For reference, following the French conquest the French crown recognized 77 Corsican families as noble.
There are many more northern nobles than southern nobles, but that's because there are simply more people in the north (about twice as many as the south); it also has to do with the fact that most of Theodore's early supporters were northerners, not southerners. But the southern nobility is older (all the true "old noble" families with medieval heritage are in the south) and tends to be more "traditional" in the sense of being high-status landowners. The northern nobility is of much younger vintage and is less tied to the land. Contrast Count Gianpietro Gaffori (a northerner), a doctor, with Marquis Luca d'Ornano (a southerner of a medieval house), a landowner who has no fewer than two Marshals of France in his family tree and would never deign to practice a trade.
So while the south has fewer nobles than the north, both in absolute terms and per capita, these nobles tend to have more land and more entrenched social power than nobles in the north.
I don't know a lot about that subject, but I'm not aware of the imposition of Italian in the 1760s causing a major refugee crisis. Moreover, I'm not sure they would accomplish much by fleeing to Corsica, where the official language is... Tuscan Italian.
Just a thought, I'm spending to much time on wiki. In the OTL they didn't really have anywhere to go. Here and now they have tales of the successful rebellion a short boat ride away. Also from wiki the rural Sardinians living in the parts of the island closest to Corsica shared a fair bit of culture with Corsicans before this century where it was mostly washed away by the new royal families effort to civilize their subjects.
Speaking of universities, it would interesting to read about Theodore's correspondence with the intelligentsia of the period, particularly now that he is the feted philosopher king of Corsica. Voltaire's latest ban from Paris is in 1754. Perhaps he can take refuge in Corsica for a time?
I suspect that as interesting as Theodore himself may be to intellectuals of the time - and, perhaps, the Corsican government as a concept - actually living on Corsica will not hold much attraction. The isle has no (real) universities, no libraries, no printing presses, no operas, no theaters... it's not exactly a thriving intellectual and cultural center. Moreover, Theodore doesn't really have the cash to offer anyone patronage. It seems more likely to me that Theodore's interaction with the European intellectual world, insofar as it occurs, will mostly be through letters, as Theodore was a rather prolific letter-writer and can converse with essentially any of the intellectuals of his time in their own language. We may see some OTL famous people pay a visit, but the only learned persons who are likely to take refuge on Corsica at this point in time are probably Jews, who have a very good reason to come to Corsica despite its intellectual backwardness.
One of the upcoming chapters will be on the first Jews of Corsica. I say "one of" because the next few planned chapters take place at more or less the same time (about 1750-1755 or so), so I don't really have a precise order for them yet.
Just rereading a little and something jumped out at me, sorry if its a silly question.
Previously with the discussion focused on how there was little unifying community/society on Corsica at the moment. 'No Newspapers' Is this something that would occur to King Theodore? That a newspaper would be a good idea? how widespread are newspapers in this time period?
Previously with the discussion focused on how there was little unifying community/society on Corsica at the moment. 'No Newspapers' Is this something that would occur to King Theodore? That a newspaper would be a good idea? how widespread are newspapers in this time period?