Why France’s Mediterranean Paradise Is Mostly Empty

Why France’s Mediterranean Paradise Is Mostly Empty

When you picture a large Mediterranean island, you likely imagine sundrenched beaches, rolling hills of olive groves, and bustling port cities. And when you learn that France’s largest and most prominent island, Corsica, sits in a strategic sweet spot between the populous coasts of France and Italy, you’d expect it to be one of the most developed places in Europe. But Corsica, with just half of 1% of France’s total population, is mostly empty. So why don’t more people live on France’s big, empty Mediterranean island? The first and most powerful clue to Corska’s emptiness isn’t found in its census data or its economy, but in its brutal, staggering, and magnificent geography. [Music] Despite being a relatively large island in one of the most enviable regions on the planet, Corsa is home to just 355,000 people today. To put that in perspective, the nearby Italian island of Sardinia supports nearly 1.5 million people and mainland France itself holds 69 million. This is a geographic and demographic puzzle. Over thousands of years, more people should be living in Corsica. But unlike Sardinia or the French Riviera, Corsica is basically a big mountain range. An immense spine of granite and volcanic rock runs north to south, ripping the island in two halves. And this isn’t a gentle range of hills. More than 120 peaks soar over 2,000 m into the sky. The highest, Monte Cristo, tops out at a staggering 2,76 m, nearly 9,000 ft. This is a higher elevation than any mountain in the British Isles or the entire Appalachin range of North America. This single geographic fact changes everything. This granite fortress dictates where and if people can live. There are few open plains for agriculture. There are no wide gentle river valleys to host sprawling cities. Inside the landscape is a fortress of sharp ridges, sheer cliffs, and deep narrow gorges. Travel, even today, is slow and treacherous. A drive that would take an hour on the mainland can take three on Corsa’s winding, clinging mountain roads. For centuries, it was easier for a village on the west coast to trade by sea with Genoa or Murse than to trade by land with a village just 30 mi inland. This verticality creates an island of extremes. While the coast sizzles in the Mediterranean sun, the high peaks are often capped with snow well into June. This creates a cascade of microclimates from sandy beaches to alpine meadows, but few of them are conducive to large-scale industrial level farming. This land is for goats, chestnut trees, and hardy olive grows terrace into impossibly steep hillsides. But it’s where the mountains meet the sea that the island’s character is truly forged. The coastline is the second great barrier. If you were designing an island for large-scale development, you would give it wide sandy shores and large protected deep water harbors. Corsa has almost none of these. The east coast is the most accommodating. A long straight stretch of coast backed by plains. But for most of history, these planes were malarial swamps seen as places of disease and death, not opportunity. The west coast, by contrast, is a geological masterpiece and a human logistical nightmare. Here, mountains plunge directly into the sea in a dramatic clash of elements. This is home to the famous Kalanka Deiana, a UNESCO World Heritage site where wind and water have carved bright red granite into a forest of fantastical spires and sea caves. It’s breathtakingly beautiful. It’s also completely impossible to build a city on. The few natural harbors are small and tucked into deep fjord-like inlets, forming the basis for small towns like Ajaxio and Ki, but not sprawling metropolises. And then there’s the Maki. You can’t understand the feel of Corsa without understanding the Maki. It is the scent of the island, an aromatic tidal wave that Napoleon Bonapart, its most famous son, claimed he could smell from the sea on his return from exile. But it’s no gentle garden. The Makia is a dense, thorny, and nearly impenetrable layer of scrubland that covers over half the island. It’s a tangled mess of wild olive, myrtle, juniper, and thyme growing several meters high. While it can be beautiful, it’s also very hostile. It’s a landscape that fights back. Try to walk through it and it will tear your clothes and skin. Try to clear it for farming and it will exhaust you. This landscape is a fortress within a fortress. And this untameable wilderness would come to define the island’s people and its history in ways they couldn’t possibly have imagined. That feeling of trying to push your way through a dense, exhausting tangle of brush just to get something done. Honestly, that’s exactly what navigating the health care system is like. 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And there’s no need to call your doctor. Zachdoc does everything online. Basically, they have your back. With ZuckDoc, you can filter for doctors by location, insurance, and specialties and see reviews by verified patients. And when you found the doctor that you actually need, you can see all of their appointment openings. And you can get that appointment fast, typically within 24 to 72 hours of booking with sometimes even same day appointments. So stop waiting and start getting the care that you need. Go to zdoc.com/gbg to find and instantly book a toprated doctor today. Zuck makes it easy to finally take control of your own health. But taking control of Corsica, that was a brutal struggle that lasted for thousands of years. [Music] If the geography of Corsa is a fortress, its history is the story of a fortress under permanent siege. The island’s brutal, fragmented landscape did more than just isolate villages. It forged a people defined by the land’s own untameable character. It’s a story of being owned by everyone and truly belonging to no one. Humans first arrived on Corska at least 9,000 years ago. stone age hunter gatherers who crossed the sea and found a land of mountains and thick forest. But Corsica’s written history begins as it would continue for millennia with foreigners. The ancient Greeks arriving around 565 B.CE were the first to try and colonize. They founded on the flat marshy east coast and called the island Kalista, meaning the most beautiful. They were followed by the Atruscans and the Carthaginians, all scrambling for a strategic foothold in the Mediterranean. But these great powers all made the same discovery. You could hold the port, but you could not hold the island. The interior with its sheer mountains and impenetrable machi scrubland remained the domain of the native tribes. Then came the Romans. They conquered the coastal settlements in 259 B.CE. And like the Greeks stuck to the lowlands. For Rome, Corsa was not a jewel of the empire. It was a backwater, a place of exile and a logging camp. They built a major base atria, but the swamps bred malaria and the mountains bred rebels. The Romans never truly pacified the interior. They simply contained it. This next part is where the Corskin character as we know it today was truly forged. When the Roman Empire collapsed, Corsa descended into a dark age of chaos. The island became a target for any pirate or warlord with a boat. Vandals, Ostrogos, and Sarissens raided the coast relentlessly. For the island’s inhabitants, the only viable survival strategy was to abandon the sea. They fled to the mountains, building their villages like eagle’s nests on high, defensible ridges, invisible from the coast. This was the birth of the clan-based, fiercely insular and honorbound society. Separated by impassible valleys, each village became a mini republic. Trust was given only to family and clan. Defense was a personal duty. This isolation bred a deep suspicion of outsiders and a complex system of personal justice known as the vendetta. The geography and the history were now working in perfect terrible harmony. The land made them isolated and the invasions made them distrustful. This chaotic vacuum was eventually filled by two competing Italian powers, Pisa and Genoa. For centuries, they fought for control. But by 1284, the Republic of Genoa had secured its prize. This was the beginning of a 500-year relationship that would permanently scar the island and its people. You see, Genoa did not rule Corsa as a province. It ruled it as a colony. The Genoies were masters, not partners. They built magnificent citadels and watchtowers on the coast, impressive fortresses like the one at Calvie. But these were not for protecting the Corsacans. They were for controlling them. The Genoies exploited the island, clear-cutting its forests for ship building and imposing ruinous taxes while doing nothing to develop the interior. Any rebellion was crushed with brutal efficiency. For the Corsacans, the Genoies were just the latest, most permanent invaders. Resentment simmerred for centuries, erupting in constant failed rebellions. The Mache became a refuge for bandits and freedom fighters who were often one and the same. But here’s where the story takes a remarkable turn. In 1729, a final islandwide rebellion exploded. This was not another failed peasant uprising. This was a war of liberation. After decades of struggle, a leader emerged who would change everything. Pasoli. Returning from exile in 1755, Pey did more than just lead an army. He united the waring clans and transformed a fractured society into a modern nation. He established the Corsican Republic, a sovereign state with its capital in the mountain heartland of Corte. Pely founded a university, minted his own currency, and wrote a constitution. This document was one of the most democratic in the world at the time, a beacon of the enlightenment that even granted some women the right to vote. Decades before the American or French revolutions, they had achieved the impossible. For 14 years, a free and independent Corsa existed, a testament to Pi’s genius and the people’s relentless desire for liberty. And it was this very success that sealed their fate. The Republic of Genanoa, broke and humiliated, finally admitted it had lost control. But it was not willing to grant Corsa its freedom. Instead, in 1768, Genoa made a cynical deal with the rising power of France. In the Treaty of Versailles, Genoa effectively sold its claim to the island to King Louis X 15th to pay off its debts. The French, eager for a strategic naval base, invaded. The Corsicans, who had just spent 40 years fighting one master, were now faced with a fresh, more powerful one. At the Battle of Pontanov in 1769, Pley’s exhausted army of patriots and mercenaries made their last stand against the professional soldiers of France. They were crushed. The Corsan Republic was over. Pascal Poli fled back into exile and France annexed Corsica as a new province. That single act, a business transaction between two foreign powers would define Corsa’s destiny to this very day. But just a few months later, in the newly French town of Ajaxio, a woman from a minor noble family gave birth to a son, Napoleon Bonopart. He would become the most famous Frenchman of all time. The ultimate irony for an island that had just been conquered. So Corsica did not join France. It was taken. And it’s this history that’s the seed of everything that defines the island today. [Music] We’ve now established two fundamental truths about Corsica. First, its geography is a fortress, a vertical, mountainous, and impenetrable landscape that resists large-scale human settlement. Second, its history is a 2,000-year long siege culminating not in liberation, but in a forced sail to France. This is not the story of a region that naturally grew into a nation. It’s a story of an island conquered. And yet, the question remains, that all happened centuries ago. Today, Corska is a region of France, a modern European country. It’s a place of staggering beauty with a Mediterranean climate and coveted beaches. Why haven’t the 69 million people of mainland France simply flooded in? Why hasn’t this empty island been filled just as the French Riviera or Provence were? The answer is the final and most important piece of the puzzle. It lies in the Corsican people themselves in a culture so distinct and a sense of identity so fierce that it has in effect repelled the mainland. The mainland French never came because in many ways they were never truly welcome. To understand modern Corsa is to understand this. Corsacans are Corsican first and French second. This isn’t a quaint regional quirk like the difference between a Parisian and a proven. It’s a deep foundational divide. The history of conquest, not union, is the single most important fact that you need to know. Corsacans refer to the French mainland not as an extension of Corsica but as a whole separate entity. And this identity is anchored in its own language. Corsu, the Corsican language, is not a dialect of French. It’s an italo Dalmatian language far closer to Tuscan Italian than to the French spoken in Paris. While French is the official language of government and commerce, Corsu is the language of the home, the village, and the culture. To speak it is to draw a line in the sand, separating yourself from the French state and the mainlanders of France itself. This unique culture forged in the isolated mountain valleys is built on a different set of values. For centuries, loyalty was not to a distant king or a faceless government in Genanoa or Paris. Loyalty was to the family and the clan. Justice was not sought from a stateappointed judge. It was taken famously and brutally through the vendetta. While the vendetta is a relic, its legacy is a deep and abiding suspicion of the central state. This created a culture that is famously insular. It’s one thing for a mainlander to visit as a tourist. It’s another thing to move in, open a business, and try to integrate. You will always be an outsider in Corsa. But here’s where this cultural divide becomes a modern political firestorm. This passionate identity has fueled a powerful nationalist movement that has defined the island for the last 50 years. This movement exists on a spectrum. On one end are the moderates who demand greater autonomy from France, official recognition of the Corskin language, more local political control, and most contentiously new laws to restrict who can buy property on the island. This last point is crucial. courts can see their island, their ancestral land, being bought up as second homes by wealthy mainlanders and foreigners they will never meet. This colonization by the checkbook drives up prices, forces young Corskins to move away for work, and threatens to turn the island into a hollowedout seasonal theme park. And then there’s the other end of the spectrum. This is the darker, more violent side of Corskin nationalism. For decades, the National Liberation Front of Corsa waged a bombing campaign. Their targets were symbolic government buildings, police stations, and most often the half-built vacation homes of mainlanders. These attacks were a violent I told you so, a message to Paris and to outsiders that Corska is not just another piece of property. While the violence has waned since 2014 when the group announced a cessation to arms, this shadow of separatism hangs over the island, creating a political instability that is hardly an incentive for mass migration. This brings us back to the original question. Why is Corska so empty? The answer is a perfect storm of all three. The geography made it a difficult place to build a large civilization from the start. The history of invasion and conquest created a fiercely independent and insular culture. And today, that culture is actively fighting back against the very forces of money, migration, and homogenization that would fill it. Today, Corsa is home to just a little more than 355,000 people, a far cry from France’s 69 million. In fact, the single city of Nice along the French Riviera, has just as many people. And Sardinia, the Italian island right next to it, a whopping 1.5 million people. By all metrics, Corsa is practically empty, save for a proud culture that’s determined to remain in their home. Speaking of Corsica, I’m traveling through it right now. In fact, I’m riding Corsa’s tiny little train through its mountains, visiting so many of the places this video talks about. So, if you want to see what Corsa looks like from the ground, head on over to my travel channel. I hope you enjoyed learning all about Corsa. If you did, be sure to check out this video all about why Italy hasn’t built a bridge to its largest island of Sicily. Thanks for watching. See you next time.

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When you picture a large Mediterranean island, you likely imagine sun-drenched beaches, rolling hills of olive groves, and bustling port cities. And when you learn that France’s largest and most prominent island, Corsica, sits in a strategic sweet spot between the populous coasts of France and Italy, you’d expect it to be one of the most developed places in Europe. But Corsica, with just half of 1% of France’s total population, is mostly empty! So why don’t more people live on France’s big, empty Mediterranean island?
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Chapters:
0:00 – A Big, Empty Mediterranean Island
0:37 – It’s One Big Mountain Range
6:24 – Owned By Everyone, Belongs To No One
11:52 – The Paradise With Almost No People
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Stock footage and music acquired from www.envato.com, www.storyblocks.com and videvo.net.

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