Was Napoleon Bonaparte French or Italian (Genoan)?
On 15 May, 1768, France and Genoa signed a treaty, under the terms of which France was to take possession of Corsica and keep it until Genoa could pay back what it owed to France. In reality, France bought Corsica, spending 40 million livres. Then on 15 August of the same year an edict was passed linking Corsica to France. Some of Napoleon Bonaparte’s detractors declared that he was not French because he was born in 1768 and not 1769, and that his date of birth had been falsified, it being unthinkable that the Emperor of the French not be French himself. However, no serious proof has ever been produced to challenge the accepted date of 1769. It should also be noted that at the time of Napoleon Bonaparte’s birth, the idea of “nationality” did not exist in practical terms: one was simply the subject of the King, and certainly not a citizen of the nation. In 1790, with Corsica becoming a dpartement of France, the island’s inhabitants became “French citizens”.
