Corsica has a Greek history that most people have never heard of, and it spans over 2,000 years across two completely se...

Corsica has a Greek history that most people have never heard of, and it spans over 2,000 years across two completely separate chapters. The first began in the 6th century BC, when Phocaeans from western Asia Minor founded Alalia, a Greek colony on Corsica's eastern coast, near the modern town of Aleria. For a few decades it flourished, but the city soon found itself caught between two powerful enemies: the Etruscans and the Carthaginians. The clash came to a head in a major naval battle that Herodotus himself described as a "Cadmean victory" for the Phocaeans. They technically won, but their losses were so catastrophic that they effectively lost everything and were forced to abandon the colony. That was chapter one. More than two millennia later, a second Greek community would take root on the same island under completely different circumstances. Maniots from the southern Peloponnese, one of Greece's most historically fiercely independent regions, established a settlement at Cargèse on Corsica's western coast. Their presence there traces back to the late 17th century, when a group of Maniot families fled Ottoman pressure and were eventually granted land on the island by the Genoese Republic. Cargèse survived, and descendants of those Maniot settlers still live there today. The town retains two churches facing each other across the main square, one Greek Orthodox and one Roman Catholic, a physical reminder of the community's origins. The Greek dialect the original settlers spoke faded over the generations, but the identity held on longer than the language. Two Greek communities, two different eras, and one French island connecting them. #Greece #GreekHistory #Corsica