Antoine-Marie Graziani is a full professor at the IUFM of Corsica. He wrote several papers and books on the history of the Island and his dignitaries, like Sampieru or King Théodore. Today, Antoine-Marie Graziani is the leading specialist on Pasquale Paoli. He wrote a biography of the Father of our homeland (Tallandier Publishers, 2002). He answers the questions of A Nazione.

What does evoke the current commemoration to you ?

When we see the confusions between tyranny and despotism in the supplementary leaflet of the national commemoration, we can bring this kind of statement together with others already heard: “Paoli did not die at Ponte Novu”, but who said Paoli died at Ponte Novu? And who said that Paoli was a tyrant? Attributing to others statements, which they did not make allows the informer to mask his own feelings, notably on the rank of general or on the Constitution of 1755. In fact, we feel that the nostalgia of the bicentenary of the French Revolution is behind all of this. The problem is that nobody wants to press the same button twice.

That the fall of the Berlin Wall brought an important transformation in the reading of events of the French Revolution, transformation that filters through works of historians favourable to the 1793 period. It is undeniable that in 1789, Paoli wished for a free union with France, but it is also historic that men in 1793 did not want Paoli anymore for some and maybe no more Corsica for others. Then Paoli chose England: didn’t he write in 1795 and in 1796 “ our fleet” speaking of the English fleet? Taking a sentence out of its context is easy; entering the complexity of a person facing the obligation of choosing in particular circumstances is far more difficult.


Another historian asserts in an interview for “Nice-Matin” that Pasquale Paoli would not support today’s political violence. What do you think of this?

Pasquale Paoli was never frightened by violence, nor were the other XVIIIth century revolutionaries. As for knowing what the revolutionaries would think about what is happening today is a surreal question…


Paoli, successor of Théodore…

I read this also. Hyacinthe Paoli must have met Theodore sometime during his life. Hyacinthe was a bigot: Pasquale Paoli wrote that he was making him do his religious exercises each night, and we know how he answered him when he wanted him to be a priest! Then seeing him as the vector of Theodore’s thoughts near his son…


Paoli and the Freemasons?

It has been a long time that Abbot Barruel’s idea making the French Revolution the result of a Masonic plot was abandoned, neither there was a Masonic plot for the Corsican Revolutions. In Paoli’s life, the Freemasons did not count for much before his stay in England. The first mention of the freemasons in Paoli’s background, unpublished to this day, and that I am publishing in the 3rd volume of his Correspondence appears in a letter from an inhabitant of Bastia in 1765, which asserted that Pasquale Paoli looked after his protégés’ business, the freemasons in Bastia. And that is all…


What do you think of the “Letter to Paoli” by Frédéric and recently published?

It is extraordinary to see what hatred for Paoli and for a certain Corsica can do… Few years ago, we had the same thing with the publication of Buonarotti’s pamphlet, a very well known document and already published, but this time without any note… In another word, there is nothing from a historic point of view, while there is army of works on Buonarotti in Italy.

Then, there was a sociologist who published some works on pro-Corsican racism, based on a series of papers taken from “Nice-Matin”, in these “jet setters” last pages: what does Guy Bedos or Karl Zero or Véronique Genest think about Corsica? An anecdotal publication! But this same sociologist gives a lesson to historians, and he publishes a “Letter to Paoli”, another well known text wrongly attributed to the “nephew” or “son” of Theodore and whose author is a Polish adventurer, called Frédéric Vigliawiski who became Theodore’s friend at the end of his life. A worthy text if it is put back into its English context. But, this kind of historical work must be too subtle for our historian in the making…


Influence of Naples or influence of London?

The whole problem is the training of a person. When we will have stated that a person carries on his training throughout his live, and that Paoli improved his thinking in England, what we will have said is nothing more than evidence itself. Without a doubt, he had more time to write his thoughts down and meet very bright people…

But did this truly change his thinking and his aspirations? We can doubt it: in England, among his very close friends there was Edmund Burke who will be the archetypal counter-revolutionary and James Boswell who on the French Revolution question will be closer to Burke than to his friend Paoli, but this did not prevent him taking part in the French Revolution.


Paoli: autonomy or separatism ?

At first, Paoli is the successor of Corsica’s revolutions. In 1755, following Ghjuvan Petru Gaffori, he is clearly the representative of an independent island; with a true sense of what is a state. It is during this period of time that he became known: 90% of his portraits are painted between 1764 and 1769; it is when Europe and the United States start to be interested in him, and not in 1790… The French Revolution, to which he subscribed in 1790, is the only one links of the revolutions. The “French” debate on the specificity of national republicanism would deserve to be aired a bit. Let us stop laughing at the French exception : the Republic was not “invented” ex nihilo in 1792 in Paris: it was borrowed from all those that preceded it as shown in a number of decisions and texts in 1789 (the Declaration of Human Rights was widely inspired by the American Declaration: the geometrical shape of departments was borrowed from the boundary zone of the Appalachians, etc) but in France, the quite often devalued American Revolution is finally very little taught, and as for the English one, which preceded both of them and served for a long time as an intellectual base for the Enlightenment is thrown back in the chapter on “Ancien Régime”.

While Paoli like John Adams can write on the eve of the French Revolution that they consider the English constitution as superior to the American one… and to the French one even though the latter being promoted to a brilliant future (promulgated in 1791, soon abandoned in favour of the An II Constitution, which has the main characteristic to having been never applied!). Paoli who thought he could obtain an important autonomy (between 1790 and 1793) for Corsica within a French frame, then between 1794 and 1795, for the same autonomy and without more success but in the English frame this time, failed to have these states taking into account the particular dimension of his island.

But could he win his case with the inherited traditions of monarchy, we can doubt it. The French revolution, as Alexis de Toqueville noted it borrowed also from the monarchy and I do not understand very well what allows us to see in the celebration of the Federation Day on 14th of July 1790 a demonstration of a “wide decentralization”, which could have offered “new paths” to Paoli.


According to you what is the right approach to Paoli?

It is an approach that takes into account the whole of Paoli’s life: the successor of the revolutions started by others, and we forget too often that many Corsicans shed their blood for Corsica, what I call the “general’s son” in the exhibition ; the General of a Nation committed to and with his fellowmen, the man of Enlightenment, and at last the partisan for independence, failing that a wide autonomy in largely granted union…