County of Nice
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County of Nice Contèa de Niça (Provençal) Contea di Nizza (Italian) Comté de Nice (French) Comitatus Nicaeensis (Medieval Latin) | |||||||||
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| 1388–1860 | |||||||||
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 The county inside modern France | |||||||||
| Status | County within the Savoyard state | ||||||||
| Capital | Nice | ||||||||
| Common languages | Niçard, Ligurian, Italian, French | ||||||||
| Religion | Roman Catholic | ||||||||
| History | |||||||||
• Dedication of Nice to Savoy | 1388 | ||||||||
• part of County of Savoy | 1388–1416 | ||||||||
• part of Duchy of Savoy | 1416–1720 | ||||||||
• part of Sardinia-Piedmont-Savoy | 1720–1796 | ||||||||
| 1796–1814 | |||||||||
• part of Kingdom of Sardinia | 1814–1860 | ||||||||
| 1847 | |||||||||
| 1860 | |||||||||
| Currency | Piedmontese scudo (to 1816) French franc (1800–1814) Sardinian lira (1816–1848) | ||||||||
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| Today part of | Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur, France | ||||||||
The County of Nice (French: Comté de Nice / Pays Niçois, Italian: Contea di Nizza/Paese Nizzardo, Niçard Occitan: Contèa de Niça/País Niçard) is a historical region of France located around the southeastern city of Nice and roughly equivalent to the modern arrondissement of Nice.
History
Its territory lies between the Mediterranean Sea (Côte d'Azur), Var River and the southernmost crest of the Alps.
Ligurian tribes populated the County of Nice prior to its occupation by the Romans. These tribes, conquered by Augustus, had become fully Romanized (according to Theodore Mommsen) by the 4th century, when the barbarian invasions began. In those Roman centuries, the area was part of the Regio IX Liguria of Italy.
The Franks conquered the region after the Fall of the Western Roman Empire, and the local Romance populations became integrated within the County of Provence, with a period of independence as a maritime republic (1108–1176). It was initially a semi-autonomous part of the ancient County of Provence.
Part of Savoy
In 1388, the citizens of Nice decided to hand over the city and its surrounding areas to the count of Savoy. Within Savoy, the region was initially named Terres neuves de Provence. The region received the name County of Nice around 1500, after its integration into the Piedmontese state. County is meant here as an administrative unit rather than as a medieval fief. From 1388 to 1860, the history of the County of Nice was tied to that of Savoy and then Piedmont-Sardinia. Its historical capital city is Nice.
Annexation to France
France annexed the most part of the County of Nice in 1860, during the Italian Wars of Independence. By an 1858 secret agreement concluded at Plombières between Napoleon III of France and Sardinian Prime Minister Count Camillo Benso di Cavour, France agreed to support Piedmont in a war against Austria in order to wrest the provinces of Lombardy and Venetia from Austrian rule. In exchange for French military assistance, Piedmont was to cede the County of Nice and the region of Savoy to France. The annexation was temporarily put in doubt after the Italian war of 1859, during which Napoleon III concluded a separate peace with Austria before Venetia could be captured.
In March 1860, however, as Piedmont was in the process of annexing Parma, Modena and the Marches, Napoleon III agreed to sanction Piedmont's Italian acquisitions in exchange for Nice and Savoy. France annexed the provinces by the provisions of the Treaty of Turin, signed on 24 March 1860. There followed a deeply flawed plebiscite in Nice on 15 and 16 April and in Savoy on 22 and 23 April, in which "apparently and without any doubt" the vast majority of the inhabitants of the two territories voted to approve the treaty and join France. France took formal possession of Nice and Savoy on 12 June 1860. The vote was, however, deeply influenced by the previous agreement between the Savoy-Piedmontese authorities and France, even making the Savoy authorities an active part in promoting a favorable result for France: many Niçards were excluded, for various reasons, from the electoral lists, while there were enrolled many French specially transferred, and the operations took place under the control of the French authorities and with the presence in the city of French troops.[1] where the voting took place freely, the results did not give rise to doubts: for example, 119 sailors from Nice, stationed on the Savoyard ships in the various ports, who could vote freely, expressed themselves as follows: 114 to remain in Italy and 5 to pass to France.[2] This event caused the Niçard exodus, the emigration of a quarter of the Niçard Italians to Italy.[3]
Nevertheless, the Italian patriot leader Giuseppe Garibaldi, who was born in Nice, strongly opposed the cession of his home city to France, arguing that the County of Nice was essentially Italian and should not be given as a "ransom" to French expansionism.
Though not among the most prized territories coveted by Italian nationalists after 1860, some Italian nationalists considered the County of Nice as part of "Italia irredenta", Italy's "unredeemed territories". During World War II, when Italy occupied parts of Southeastern France, it briefly (between 1940–43) included Nice administratively in the Kingdom of Italy.
Creation of Alpes-Maritimes
As the county was too small to form its own department, the Government of France added it to the arrondissement of Grasse, detached from the neighbouring Var department, to create the Alpes-Maritimes department. Since 1926, the county has been largely coterminous with the arrondissement of Nice, one of two arrondissements of the Alpes-Maritimes, in the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region. Nevertheless, the term County of Nice (Countea de Nissa in Niçard dialect) continues in use today to identify the territory as a distinct cultural and historical region, particularly to distinguish it from neighbouring Provence.
The historical language used by inhabitants of the County of Nice was Niçard, though it has been almost entirely supplanted by French since 1860. Since 2010, the statue Neuf Lignes Obliques on the Promenade des Anglais commemorates the 150th year of Nice's annexation.
See also
References
- ^ Vignoli, Giulio (22 July 2011). "Storie e letterature italiane di Nizza e del Nizzardo (e di Briga e di Tenda e del Principato di Monaco)" (PDF). web.archive.org. Archived from the original (PDF) on 22 July 2011. Retrieved 30 September 2022.
- ^ "CittAgora - Periodico del Consiglio Comunale di Torino". web.archive.org. 1 January 2012. Archived from the original on 1 January 2012. Retrieved 30 September 2022.
- ^ ""Un nizzardo su quattro prese la via dell'esilio" in seguito all'unità d'Italia, dice lo scrittore Casalino Pierluigi" (in Italian). Archived from the original on 19 February 2020. Retrieved 14 May 2021.
Sources
- Amicucci, Ermanno. Nizza e l'Italia. Mondadori Editore. Milano, 1939.
- Barelli Hervé, Rocca Roger. Histoire de l'identité niçoise, Nice: Serre, 1995. ISBN 2-86410-223-4
- "County of Nice (Traditional province, France)". flagspot.net. (flag/history).
External links
- (in French) Territorial changes in the history of the County of Nice
- (in English, French, and Occitan) Dances and traditional musics used in the County of Nice
- "Map of the Kingdom of Sardinia". www.antichistati.com.
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