Book review : Corse et Sardaigne : îles autonomes? Un regard croisé

Abstract

In this short book, Jean-François Ferrandi, an economist in the employ of the European Commission, sets out both to compare Corsica and Sardinia and to analyze the relationship between them. At its narrowest point, the Strait of Bonifacio that separates the two islands is only eleven kilometres wide, exactly half the shortest distance between New Zealand’s South Island and North Island on the two sides of Cook Strait. And yet, Corsica and Sardinia are never imagined as the archipelago they objectively constitute (together with a few smaller islands that surround them.) Any map of Italy that included Corsica would conjure up suspicions of Italian irredentism (and justifiably so, for Mussolini did occupy the island during World War II), while maps of metropolitan France typically put Corsica in an inset because of its distance from the Hexagon (p. 16), rendering its propinquity to Sardinia irrelevant. Straits may separate islands, but they connect populations, and the Strait of Bonifacio is no exception (pp. 18-20).