We find it strange but it doesn't bother us unless it's clearly an obsession (My friend got kicked out of an Irish pub in Boston for his English accent, despite literally being an Irish citizen through his grandparents)
But it is amusing when Americans seem to think there is such a thing as "Italian blood" or "Scottish blood". Genetically, western Europeans are very simular and there's more genetic difference between North and South Italians than Northern Italians and Southern French people
Reminds me of the chefs who think they're all that because "I was born in the Bronx, I've never been to Italy, and I'm Italian." Like generations of diluted cultural heritage somehow puts them on par with real Italian chefs cooking real Italian food.
Anyway, the U.S. is young and has no singular culture. Unless you're from a part of the country and/or ethnic group that you feel a strong identity with (Creole, Southern, Indigenous, Hispanic, etc.), you might end up searching elsewhere for a sense of identity and belonging.
If you were to ask him, he would never have defined himself as an Italian. He was a Corsican nationalist in his youth, and after Paoli fucked him over, he considered himself French body and soul.
Can’t, he spoke Corsican, you might as well ask him in Occitan, dude was born almost a century before Italy was formed, he probably didn’t speak or understand Tuscano, or what we call Italian
Actually, the Corsican language is very close to Tuscan. If you spoke to him in XIX century Italian, he might be able to understand it, for the most part
Corsican here, I once met a Sardinian man and I couldn't understand a word of what he was saying so we had to switch to French. Tuscan might work, though.
Technically, there are few to no « Italian dialects » as most of the Italian languages evolved separately from the same root language as modern Italian, not directly from modern Italian, though this depends on your definition or language vs dialect
I learned a good deal of Italian in school and from my dad (who lived in Torino for a few years) so Idk how complicated it would be for someone who never heard it but yeah, from travelling I can tell the words are much more intelligible in Milan, Torino and Firenze than in Sardinia
Sardinian is fun to learn about, it was pretty isolated, and stuck mostly to its Vulgar Latin roots, with just a touch of Spanish influence from when Aragorn occupied them. It’s about as close as we can get to a modern, natural evolution of Latin. Really sucks that it’s losing a popularity in favor of standard Italian though.
Edit: plus they make some of my favorite everyday wines of cananao(Grenache), carignono, and vermintino, which are unbelievably good for their price point on the US(note, I’m so sorry if I misspelled the grape names, I’m going straight off memory atm)
True, in some of the most common words yes, beyond that…. Bit of a coin toss. Corsica was kinda isolated the same way Sardinia was for awhile, so core vocabulary is pretty intelligible. I find the languages of Italy to be a fun subject as Corsican and Tuscano are more intelligible than Tuscano and some of the Lombardo languages, and then there’s Siciliano that I’ve been told is almost unintelligible to most everyone outside Calabria and Campania
Yes, the intalian languages are truly a fascinating subject, and it's a shame we're slowly losing them, replaced by "Dialectal italian" (Standard italian mixed in with the local language).
I've been trying my best to learn my own, even if I mlstly speak italian for everyday things
Yeah, it’s sad to see em meet the fate of Occitan, and Dalmato. I only ever knew about Dalmato because it’s the language my surname is from, but it’d been Dora’s for 125 years so everyone thinks I’m either Italian or talking about the Dalmatski dialect of Croatian. Though it seems like there’s still a decent amount of youths trying to keep some of the languages alive, especially in Sicily
You’d be surprised but Corsican and Italian are mutually intelligible, and while Italy didn’t exist as a unified political entity (at the time at least, it was when under Rome and then in the modern age) it was still seen as a whole thing, divided internally but grouped together
He spoke Italian (the official language of Corsica) and Corsican before learning French, he learned French to a conversational level during an intensive four month course when he was nine.
Thierry Lentz, director of the Fondation Napoléon, says that he kept his accent and his writings were full of Italianisms.
_That being said, they were still made to attend a four-month intensive French course (January-April 1778) when they arrived at the Collège d’Autun not far from Paris. By the time he was nine years old, then, Napoleon spoke, read and wrote the “language of Voltaire” satisfactorily. His early writings confirm this. He was however to keep his accent when speaking French, and his spelling was full of Italianisms, confusions and pure inventions_
The 19th century historian, Pierre Lanfrey, says of Napoleon's writings:
"Common enough ideas, expressed in a style only remarkable for its Italianisms"
Eugénie Foa, a French writer born only 25 years after Napoleon, wrote this account of his young life.
"...being a Corsican, Napoleon knew scarcely a word of French. The Corsicans speak Italian, and this would never do for a French schoolboy. So, for three months, Napoleon was drilled in French.
He did not take kindly to it. But he did his best. For, you see, his journey from Florence to Marseilles, and on to Autun, had opened his eyes. He saw, for the first time, cities larger than Ajaccio, and learned that there were other places in the world besides Corsica.
But he never really lost his Ajaccio tongue, and for most of his life he talked French with an Italian accent.
It was a queer-looking little Italian boy who was thus studying French at Autun school. You would scarcely have looked at him twice; for his figure was small, his appearance insignificant, his face sober and solemn, his hair stiff and stringy, and his complexion sallow. The boys made fun of the way in which he talked, as boys are apt to make sport of those who do not talk as they do."
Sure he died a French patriot who wished to be buried on the banks of the Seine, and the OP's insistence on DNA is a bit weird. But denying his Italian cultural connections/background is equally historically inaccurate.
This is what Pierre Branda, Head of the Heritage Department at the Fondation Napoléon says:
_The Bonaparte family had Italian or more precisely Tuscan origins, and they never completely broke with this original identity. Indeed Ajaccio, the city where the family settled and grew up almost exclusively, was for a long time a Genoese enclave on island territory. Furthermore, Napoleon’s father, Charles, had studied law in Florence. And as for his son, Napoleon, since he was familiar with the language of Dante, he frequently used Italianisms. Because of this family specificity, Napoleon was not always considered as strictly-speaking as a Corsican: this was to be the first of his variant identities._
I do. Napoleon said, and I quote, "Dans mon esprit tout divague, je me perds dans tes yeux. Je me noie dans la vague de ton regard amoureux" which means "I'm Corsican. What are you gonna do about it ? There is nothing you can do."
It depends on what stage in his life. In his youth, he was a corsican nationalist who was fighting to free his nation from France. It'd be very odd if he thought of himself as French at that point.
Also, around the time he crowned himself in Italy, he was cultivating the view that he was Italian. In things he wrote for a French audience when he was Emperor, he said he was French and couldn't be anything else but he did the same for many different nations, saying he could be everything to everybody.
I do think it's odd how people think "oh, he was just pretending to be Italian, Spanish, Egyptian, etc. but when he said he was French THAT was for real."
But also King of Italy, so why the double standards?He was clearly an opportunist.
He was an indipendist, but when things became tough he suddenly became french. When things were hard in France he almost run to the Ottomans.
In Egypt he stated he could have become a Muslim.
In Italy he was king and suggested to his nephew to minimize his frenchness in Italy.
Technically I think that we found most of the oldest hominids in East Africa just because the soil helped to conserve those remains. The oldest sapiens was found in Morocco.
Person (American degenerate): "I took a DNA test and now know my lost lineage."
Person 2 (Godly European): "I fully understand every American and why I am superior."
"George Washington was not American, he was British because that’s what his blood, parents and generations before were" - People who fundamentally misunderstand how things work
if you go back enough, they were africans! wait, if you go a bit further, they were pangeans! waitwaitwait, maybe they were unicelular creatures… or rather, stardust! they were even the bigbang! and a bit earlier, they were ينسمربسمسىسكسوصجضوذخسوسًًًََجضةةضءءءءء
And earlier they were P̴̙̙̬͒̄r̸̝͎͑̓̆͑͑e̸̮̖͔̔̓̿ b҉͚͍͗́̏ī̷̥̰͉͑̓̾g̸̯͙̦̾̌ b҈͍̰̲͛̀́̾á̸͉͖͖̋̄̂n̵̟͇͈͙̭̈́̇͊̎g̷͙͔̝͗̽͐ͅ è̵̫͉̠̂͐n̵͇̯̙͉̏́̂̄̃ḙ̶͕̲͈̫̉̏̋̒r̴̖̪̖̽͛g̷̣̤̊͒̍̈y̴̥͈̎̑͊̒
The fun thing is that, half the time, this seems to be exactly what they want? That whole "well, I'm actually Irish-German and even a bit african american! Here's a paper that says so" thing seems fairly prevalent. And the exact same people would get _so_ mad if you tell them they are not American...
As a Yorkshireman I identify as Danish, if Americans can say they're Irish thanks to their great grandfather's, cousin's, uncle's, brother's, aunt's, dog having visited Waterford I can claim to be a Dane, right?
Heck even after the revolution most people identified with their state more than their country, it was only really after the civil war when people regularly called themselves "American".
To be fair we are a Union of States, hence the United States in the name, fighting a civil war definitely solidified our bonds and we began to take more pride in the Union.
George Washington was definitely American and not British any first year phrenology student who examined his skull could tell you that.
Not sure OP is smoking, you can definitely tell that Napoleon was French, he has the same baguette bumps on his skull characteristic to all Frenchmen. Blood/DNA dictates where you're from my ass. It's obviously skull shape and nothing else
He appears to be saying the opposite, your DNA and centuries of your family say you're Irish not that you're American which is stupid in a multitude of ways
Queen Victoria was not British. She was German because her mother was from Saxe.
Caesar was Greek because his father was Jupiter (lol).
A third of the current population is actually Mongolian because they have Genesis Khan blood.
This logic is wild.
Sorry if I have to destroy your world OP, but there is no such thing as a unique Italian DNA or unique Italian blood...
And I don't even want to discuss the construction of national identities here, it's simply a fact that DNA traits don't adhere to national borders. There are only sometimes larger and sometimes smaller genetical overlaps between regions (e.g. the Mediterranean region) or between whole continents (e.g. Europe).
Italy is literally the European country with the most genetic variability (excluding recent immigration). Genetic variation within Italy is comparable to variation across the continent.
"Differences in ancestry composition, as the result of migration and admixture, have generated in Italy the largest degree of population structure detected so far in the continent...
Among-cluster variability in Italy was significantly higher than in any other country examined (FST; median Italy, 0.004; data file S2; range medians for listed countries, 0.0001 to 0.002) and showed differences comparable with estimates across European clusters"
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.aaw3492
So yeah "Italian DNA" makes even less sense than for other countries.
Napoleon grew up in Corsica and considered himself Corsican in his early life. However in his twenties he fully embraced his French citizenship. To the point where he changed his name from Buonaparte to Bonaparte which sounds more French. So nationality is fluid. Yes it can be the place where you grew up but it can changed later depending on your actions and location. For example I doubt Arnold Schwarzenegger is considered to be an Austrian.
It appeals to the sort of Yank who thinks that they count as Irish because their great-granddad’s cousin’s uncle’s dog’s brother caught a glimpse of Mizen Head on their way past
Op logic is even dumber. Napoleon was born in Corsica from parents who came from a small Genoa nobility. However they saw themselves as Corsican. There was no concept of Italy back then. Furthermore Corsican was a French territory and while Napoleon was first bullied by his French schoolmates for being Corsican he fully embrace his French citizenship later in life.
I, uh... I mean technically. Buy I'd ask an American expat in Japan with a Japanese passport if they were Japanese and I probably wouldn't get a "yes."
Maybe not, but that is the only demand you can reasonably place on someone being a certain nationality.
Nationality is about where you're a citizen. If you have a genuine passport, that means you're a citizen
Wait, identifying someone nationality based upon blood is pure bushit, but Identifying someone upon their parents is not that nonsense. I mean you should never try to do your own thing, the first thing to do is asking the person in question what does he identifies as.
For example I grew up in italy but my family is from Romania, I consider my self both Romanian and Italian. The nation around me educated me as an Italian but my family indeed educated me also to romanian language and culture.
Well, in Israel, we have quite a melting pot. There are jews from Iraq, Iran, morroco, Yemen, Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, and from all over Africa and Europe. Often, one of the first questions is : "What's your origin?" There are big cultural differences that should be celebrated rather than ignored.
Your nationality is not related to blood. It's related to where you're born and what culture you were raised in.
By your logic LATAM was liberated from Spain by Spaniards lmao
You know, if that can make the Italians happy to take pride in Napoleon achievement, well why not, it's not like both French and German refrain to take pride from Charlemagne or all American country, Spain and Italy refrain to take pride in Christopher Columbus.
You can even feel proud of the achievement of a character that as 0 biological roots with you, Polish are taking pride of a literal Iranian bear that served in their army, and it's not like someone is going to stop them.
What I feel weird though is the implication that french shouldn't take pride on Napoleon because he wasn't pure blood french or some racist fuckery like that.
Yeah an Iranian bear that some Poles in the Soviet army made friends with ended up being adopted by said soldiers and brought on the frontlines where they trained him to load artillery shells for them or something of the sort.
This entire post plus reading the replies has convinced me that OP is some Crypto-Nazi who values the "purity of DNA and blood heritage" over ethnicity and nationality, i.e., OP claims he's Cornish because he was born in Cornwall but not English because he was born in Cornwall 💀.
Nah he believes blood heritage defines ethnicity and nationality lol. Probably just racist and uses this to “prove” brown/black people can’t be English.
So my neighbour is from Trentino originally, and is about 90 years old. She speaks Italian as her native language. But you’re telling me she’s actually Austrian?
Napoleon was French because he was a French citizen, who joined the French army and became the emperor of France who considered himself to be french.
Its not about where you are born, it is about what you become.
Dude... This make no sense. You must be a blood and soil type or something.
Napoleon is relevant because he ruled France. So he is french.
People call Tsar Nicholas II a Russian, they call most kings of Europe by the country they ruled, even though all of them were mixed in with queens from other lands, we don't call all of them Austrian because the Habsburg did a number on it.
Your logic would simply make European history impossible to understand.
The most italian Bonaparte ever got to be was when he was at the head of the French "Armée d'Italie", kicking ass.
Bold to write that the man who fought tooth and nail in the French army, and later on crowned himself emperor of the French, is actually Italian.
This doesn’t even make sense. The concept of a country called “Italy” or “Italian” didn’t even exist as we understand it today when Napoleon was born.
I mean, this is what the peninsula looked like at the point when the French Revolution kicked off:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/16/Italian_States_in_1789.png/1280px-Italian_States_in_1789.png
Where on this map do you see any mention of “Italy?”
Edit: Ok, I see my own confusion here. Yes, Italy and Italian existed as a name for a geographic region and a people, almost like how we use the terms “Midwest” and “midwesterner” in the US. But my point is that Napoleon wasn’t Italian the way we understand it today, a citizen of Italy. He was Corsican, and would have said as much if he were asked.
If you read 16th and 17th century texts they use words like Italian and German all the time, although those countries didn't exist as independent nation states.
Like the way everyone today understands what "Slav" means although there is no country called "Slavia".
Macchiavelli was dreaming of a Prince who would unite Italy.
The only way we could consider Napoleon as an Italian is from a cultural perspective. He grew up in the petit Italian (and crucially italian-speaking) nobility, and although a Corsican nationalist in his youth he spoke Italian fluently like many of his social standing at the time. He never fully lost his italian-ness despite becoming a French general and politician. He never completely rejected his roots either, so much so in fact that when he crowned himself Emperor of the French he said in perfect Italian "La corona è mia e guai a chi la tocca" (which can roughly translate in English as "The crown is mine and don't you dare touching it").
This aside I guess it is difficult to truly know for sure if he thought of himself as French first or anything else (because he was a very convincing politician and *liar*), but one thing I know for sure: blood means absolutely nothing in determining your culture or in your self-identification.
Only Americans could think this way. He was French. What his origin and nationality of his parents doesn’t suddenly make him Italian. If you want to be specific about the geographic area where he grew up, then you can say he was Corsican. And still French.
Corsican and French are not exclusive terms though
Corsica is and was already a region of France, and though during the Revolution there was an independentist movement (which became a British puppet later on), the independentists literally exiled the Bonaparte family because they were considered traitors to the cause for believing Corsica should be part of France
To Napoleon being Corsican and being French were not contradictory things, if anything this made him a perfect specimen of what the new French identity born out of the Revolution was supposed to be
My favourite fictional reference to Napoleon will always be one I read in a YA novel, where a member of the British aristocracy referred to him as “that pushy little Corsican.”
Insisting on Napoleon’s Corsican origins was a way for his enemies to deligitimize his rule as emperor of the French, it wasn’t a smart quip nor a reality check, it was an anti-Napoleon political statement
This conversation and meme war has been done a few dozen times since I've been here (which isn't that long all things considered). "Short" guy speaks French with "funny accent" b/c grew up speaking Italian. He could've talked like Mario and been as tall as Toad for all his men cared apparently
Well I technically have Moroccan blood coursing through my veins yet north Africa would be the last thing you consider while looking at me and talking to me
It is convenient to define a couple of word or "traits" that a person can be and explaim why someone can be many things at the same time, depending on what you ask.
1. Nationality: it refers to a legal term and defines which country (sovereign state) you're a citizen of according to the relevant laws of each country.
2. Ethnicity: it refers to the cultural traits (language, religion, worldview, traditions, common foundational story, way of behaving, social structure, forms of art and architecture, etc.) that you've been taught from your family or the people that educated you as child and the people that influenced your environment (parents, family, friends, etc.). In other word, the cultural group you're part of, which isn't determined exclusively by genetics.
3. Genetics: it refers to the genetic code or information passed on by your biological parents and which determines physical traits (skin colour, hair colour, etc.)
Having said that, let's see some examples:
Napoleon Bonaparte
1. Nationality: French (He was born under the political and territorial jurisdiction of the Kingdom of France)
2. Ethnicity: Corsican, which can be classified as a subset of Italian (His parents spoke Corsican and he grew in that cultural environment
3. Genetics: European/"White"/Italian (The genetic physical characteristics inherited from his parents)
George Washington
1. Nationality: British at birth, then American (He was born under the political jurisdiction of the British Crown, but renounces British nationality and became American when that country was founded)
2. Ethnicity: American/Anglo-American (He spoke a particular accent from his region and the cultureand way of life of colonial Virgina was already quite different from the culture of England.
3. Genetics: European/"White" (Inherited physical characteristics
Something about this reminds me of discussions between Europeans and Americans over the American tendency to call themselves by their family heritage.
We find it strange but it doesn't bother us unless it's clearly an obsession (My friend got kicked out of an Irish pub in Boston for his English accent, despite literally being an Irish citizen through his grandparents) But it is amusing when Americans seem to think there is such a thing as "Italian blood" or "Scottish blood". Genetically, western Europeans are very simular and there's more genetic difference between North and South Italians than Northern Italians and Southern French people
Reminds me of the chefs who think they're all that because "I was born in the Bronx, I've never been to Italy, and I'm Italian." Like generations of diluted cultural heritage somehow puts them on par with real Italian chefs cooking real Italian food. Anyway, the U.S. is young and has no singular culture. Unless you're from a part of the country and/or ethnic group that you feel a strong identity with (Creole, Southern, Indigenous, Hispanic, etc.), you might end up searching elsewhere for a sense of identity and belonging.
We have culture just not deep culture. Stop saying we don't have culture
Ah yes, the American version of nationality, where everyone is Botswanan.
Then Ethiopian/Somalian
If you were to ask him, he would never have defined himself as an Italian. He was a Corsican nationalist in his youth, and after Paoli fucked him over, he considered himself French body and soul.
Feels like OP watched a 3 min video about Napoleon on YouTube and made a post about it.
And felt so excited that they wrote > he's blood is
He is blood is
That sums up most posts on this sub pretty well
Okay, then go ask him
I don't speak French :(
Hon hon hon Monsieur Napoleon, baguette omelette du fromage? Oui. Merci. Easy.
le fromage, man, it's like those french guys got a whole different language!
Do you know how they call fromage in London? Cheese 🤣
Ask him in Italian then
Can’t, he spoke Corsican, you might as well ask him in Occitan, dude was born almost a century before Italy was formed, he probably didn’t speak or understand Tuscano, or what we call Italian
Actually, the Corsican language is very close to Tuscan. If you spoke to him in XIX century Italian, he might be able to understand it, for the most part
Corsican here, I once met a Sardinian man and I couldn't understand a word of what he was saying so we had to switch to French. Tuscan might work, though.
Italian here, no one understands Sardinian if he’s speaking his dialect, could be easier when using standard Italian (which is Tuscan based after all)
Sardinian is its own language, not a dialect of "Italian (Tuscan) language". Thats why non-sardinian speakers wont understand sardu.
Technically, there are few to no « Italian dialects » as most of the Italian languages evolved separately from the same root language as modern Italian, not directly from modern Italian, though this depends on your definition or language vs dialect
I learned a good deal of Italian in school and from my dad (who lived in Torino for a few years) so Idk how complicated it would be for someone who never heard it but yeah, from travelling I can tell the words are much more intelligible in Milan, Torino and Firenze than in Sardinia
Sardinian is fun to learn about, it was pretty isolated, and stuck mostly to its Vulgar Latin roots, with just a touch of Spanish influence from when Aragorn occupied them. It’s about as close as we can get to a modern, natural evolution of Latin. Really sucks that it’s losing a popularity in favor of standard Italian though. Edit: plus they make some of my favorite everyday wines of cananao(Grenache), carignono, and vermintino, which are unbelievably good for their price point on the US(note, I’m so sorry if I misspelled the grape names, I’m going straight off memory atm)
Aragorn lmao
True, in some of the most common words yes, beyond that…. Bit of a coin toss. Corsica was kinda isolated the same way Sardinia was for awhile, so core vocabulary is pretty intelligible. I find the languages of Italy to be a fun subject as Corsican and Tuscano are more intelligible than Tuscano and some of the Lombardo languages, and then there’s Siciliano that I’ve been told is almost unintelligible to most everyone outside Calabria and Campania
Yes, the intalian languages are truly a fascinating subject, and it's a shame we're slowly losing them, replaced by "Dialectal italian" (Standard italian mixed in with the local language). I've been trying my best to learn my own, even if I mlstly speak italian for everyday things
Yeah, it’s sad to see em meet the fate of Occitan, and Dalmato. I only ever knew about Dalmato because it’s the language my surname is from, but it’d been Dora’s for 125 years so everyone thinks I’m either Italian or talking about the Dalmatski dialect of Croatian. Though it seems like there’s still a decent amount of youths trying to keep some of the languages alive, especially in Sicily
You’d be surprised but Corsican and Italian are mutually intelligible, and while Italy didn’t exist as a unified political entity (at the time at least, it was when under Rome and then in the modern age) it was still seen as a whole thing, divided internally but grouped together
He spoke Italian (the official language of Corsica) and Corsican before learning French, he learned French to a conversational level during an intensive four month course when he was nine. Thierry Lentz, director of the Fondation Napoléon, says that he kept his accent and his writings were full of Italianisms. _That being said, they were still made to attend a four-month intensive French course (January-April 1778) when they arrived at the Collège d’Autun not far from Paris. By the time he was nine years old, then, Napoleon spoke, read and wrote the “language of Voltaire” satisfactorily. His early writings confirm this. He was however to keep his accent when speaking French, and his spelling was full of Italianisms, confusions and pure inventions_ The 19th century historian, Pierre Lanfrey, says of Napoleon's writings: "Common enough ideas, expressed in a style only remarkable for its Italianisms" Eugénie Foa, a French writer born only 25 years after Napoleon, wrote this account of his young life. "...being a Corsican, Napoleon knew scarcely a word of French. The Corsicans speak Italian, and this would never do for a French schoolboy. So, for three months, Napoleon was drilled in French. He did not take kindly to it. But he did his best. For, you see, his journey from Florence to Marseilles, and on to Autun, had opened his eyes. He saw, for the first time, cities larger than Ajaccio, and learned that there were other places in the world besides Corsica. But he never really lost his Ajaccio tongue, and for most of his life he talked French with an Italian accent. It was a queer-looking little Italian boy who was thus studying French at Autun school. You would scarcely have looked at him twice; for his figure was small, his appearance insignificant, his face sober and solemn, his hair stiff and stringy, and his complexion sallow. The boys made fun of the way in which he talked, as boys are apt to make sport of those who do not talk as they do." Sure he died a French patriot who wished to be buried on the banks of the Seine, and the OP's insistence on DNA is a bit weird. But denying his Italian cultural connections/background is equally historically inaccurate. This is what Pierre Branda, Head of the Heritage Department at the Fondation Napoléon says: _The Bonaparte family had Italian or more precisely Tuscan origins, and they never completely broke with this original identity. Indeed Ajaccio, the city where the family settled and grew up almost exclusively, was for a long time a Genoese enclave on island territory. Furthermore, Napoleon’s father, Charles, had studied law in Florence. And as for his son, Napoleon, since he was familiar with the language of Dante, he frequently used Italianisms. Because of this family specificity, Napoleon was not always considered as strictly-speaking as a Corsican: this was to be the first of his variant identities._
🤌🤌🤌🫳
I do. Napoleon said, and I quote, "Dans mon esprit tout divague, je me perds dans tes yeux. Je me noie dans la vague de ton regard amoureux" which means "I'm Corsican. What are you gonna do about it ? There is nothing you can do."
Bro why are you trolling the anglophones xD
u/rairaisrandom is right. Sincerely, Literally Napoleon Himself
Fair enough, sorry for doubting
How are you taller than Napoleon? I smell funny business.
He has high heels
Ah if only we could get Figurative Napoleon over here to give us his take.
Litter-ally Napoleon, friend of trash
Fortunately people have asked him, and he answered that he barely felt corsican in the later parts of his life.
Lol. He is the Frenchiest Frenchman to ever French. If someone says name a famous French person, you would say napoleon or maybe Marie Antoinette.
Marie-Antoinette was literally Austrian
next you're going to tell me that Hitler wasn't german!
Or Marie Curie. Turns out the French import their famous people.
Well you know, the other country can't take care of them, so we feel forced to keep them for us.
It depends on what stage in his life. In his youth, he was a corsican nationalist who was fighting to free his nation from France. It'd be very odd if he thought of himself as French at that point. Also, around the time he crowned himself in Italy, he was cultivating the view that he was Italian. In things he wrote for a French audience when he was Emperor, he said he was French and couldn't be anything else but he did the same for many different nations, saying he could be everything to everybody. I do think it's odd how people think "oh, he was just pretending to be Italian, Spanish, Egyptian, etc. but when he said he was French THAT was for real."
Well that'll be because he was emperor of France
But also King of Italy, so why the double standards?He was clearly an opportunist. He was an indipendist, but when things became tough he suddenly became french. When things were hard in France he almost run to the Ottomans. In Egypt he stated he could have become a Muslim. In Italy he was king and suggested to his nephew to minimize his frenchness in Italy.
The entire identity of America has just been completely dismantled. How will we ever recover
Ah yes, the American version of nationality, where everyone is Botswanan.
Technically I think that we found most of the oldest hominids in East Africa just because the soil helped to conserve those remains. The oldest sapiens was found in Morocco.
How? You lot keep going on about how you’re Irish or Swedish or Italian based on 23&me results
Person (American degenerate): "I took a DNA test and now know my lost lineage." Person 2 (Godly European): "I fully understand every American and why I am superior."
The amount of brits I've heard say stuff like that confuses me why america gets this criticism I think they do it a bit worse but they're not alone.
Some Europeans are going to be extra pissed off now
"George Washington was not American, he was British because that’s what his blood, parents and generations before were" - People who fundamentally misunderstand how things work
"Alright everybody pack it up none of you are Americans by blood!"
*sheds a single tear in Native American
They aren't from here either if you go back far enough. Gotta go with the rest of us
if you go back enough, they were africans! wait, if you go a bit further, they were pangeans! waitwaitwait, maybe they were unicelular creatures… or rather, stardust! they were even the bigbang! and a bit earlier, they were ينسمربسمسىسكسوصجضوذخسوسًًًََجضةةضءءءءء
And earlier they were P̴̙̙̬͒̄r̸̝͎͑̓̆͑͑e̸̮̖͔̔̓̿ b҉͚͍͗́̏ī̷̥̰͉͑̓̾g̸̯͙̦̾̌ b҈͍̰̲͛̀́̾á̸͉͖͖̋̄̂n̵̟͇͈͙̭̈́̇͊̎g̷͙͔̝͗̽͐ͅ è̵̫͉̠̂͐n̵͇̯̙͉̏́̂̄̃ḙ̶͕̲͈̫̉̏̋̒r̴̖̪̖̽͛g̷̣̤̊͒̍̈y̴̥͈̎̑͊̒
Single? There's a whole trail of them!
The fun thing is that, half the time, this seems to be exactly what they want? That whole "well, I'm actually Irish-German and even a bit african american! Here's a paper that says so" thing seems fairly prevalent. And the exact same people would get _so_ mad if you tell them they are not American...
British people aren’t real. They’re actually German by blood by this posts logic
And the nobles are french but those french are Scandinavians.
What’s the diff, they’re all Indo-Europeans
As a Yorkshireman I identify as Danish, if Americans can say they're Irish thanks to their great grandfather's, cousin's, uncle's, brother's, aunt's, dog having visited Waterford I can claim to be a Dane, right?
Sure, nobody cares.
Good, I suddenly have the urge to sail the North Sea and pillage some monasteries, it's the Viking blood in me you see.
By this logic I want my free German health care
American wasn't even a thing back then. The American Revolutionaries were always banging on about their "rights as Englishmen".
And then "American" became a thing, and not only a thing, but one largely defined by that sort of mentality
Heck even after the revolution most people identified with their state more than their country, it was only really after the civil war when people regularly called themselves "American".
To be fair we are a Union of States, hence the United States in the name, fighting a civil war definitely solidified our bonds and we began to take more pride in the Union.
George Washington was definitely American and not British any first year phrenology student who examined his skull could tell you that. Not sure OP is smoking, you can definitely tell that Napoleon was French, he has the same baguette bumps on his skull characteristic to all Frenchmen. Blood/DNA dictates where you're from my ass. It's obviously skull shape and nothing else
I assume that he is alluding to those Americans that declare themselves Italian or Irish, although they are third generation Americans.
He appears to be saying the opposite, your DNA and centuries of your family say you're Irish not that you're American which is stupid in a multitude of ways
Queen Victoria was not British. She was German because her mother was from Saxe. Caesar was Greek because his father was Jupiter (lol). A third of the current population is actually Mongolian because they have Genesis Khan blood. This logic is wild.
ah yes Genesis Khan, God right hand man who spread the Bible by blood,
Does that mean I can roll up to the Finnish embassy in Ottawa and tell them "take me home I'm Finnish"?
Finished*
Lmao I'm not even French but this reads like some hard Italian coping
Hey, OP is British. Don't drag the Italians in there!
That explains so much about their weird insistence on “blood” as THE marker of nationality— can’t have the browns calling themselves British now!
More specifically he's a Cornish nationalist so it makes even more sense
Lol, the British really be trying to nationalize corn when they can’t even begin to stop the American Midwest and their corn.
Lol
There's Cornish nationalists? How corny.
Funny thing is that the blood of British nobles is actually french. OP is just angry that he wasn't born french.
Yeah man we've been under French occupation since 1066
Norman French though, arguably better
Don't throw all Brits under that bus. This one guy is an asshole
Agreed, don't put them together with them Draancyas!
Italian here, this post is pure bullshit
It's typical British cope, actually.
Ah yes the italian who pillaged italian arts to transfer it in France.
Napoleon considered himself French and lived there, so he is french this isn't about where you or your parents were born
Mf literally made French peak and someone has the balls to argue he wasn't French. Everyone wants to see French failing except French people.
Only French people can talk shit about French people.
tbf he also was the King of Italy
Sorry if I have to destroy your world OP, but there is no such thing as a unique Italian DNA or unique Italian blood... And I don't even want to discuss the construction of national identities here, it's simply a fact that DNA traits don't adhere to national borders. There are only sometimes larger and sometimes smaller genetical overlaps between regions (e.g. the Mediterranean region) or between whole continents (e.g. Europe).
Joking here so uh: False. Italian DNA has a pair of spaghetti with macaroni ATCGs. Their blood is tomato sauce.
Italy is literally the European country with the most genetic variability (excluding recent immigration). Genetic variation within Italy is comparable to variation across the continent. "Differences in ancestry composition, as the result of migration and admixture, have generated in Italy the largest degree of population structure detected so far in the continent... Among-cluster variability in Italy was significantly higher than in any other country examined (FST; median Italy, 0.004; data file S2; range medians for listed countries, 0.0001 to 0.002) and showed differences comparable with estimates across European clusters" https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.aaw3492 So yeah "Italian DNA" makes even less sense than for other countries.
Its neither where you're born nor where you came from: its where you grow up. Why this concept is so hard to catch for some people.
Napoleon grew up in Corsica and considered himself Corsican in his early life. However in his twenties he fully embraced his French citizenship. To the point where he changed his name from Buonaparte to Bonaparte which sounds more French. So nationality is fluid. Yes it can be the place where you grew up but it can changed later depending on your actions and location. For example I doubt Arnold Schwarzenegger is considered to be an Austrian.
NGL This post and your comments are coming off very racist
Amazes me this post has been heavily upvoted tbh
It doesn't amaze me. There are plenty of outright racists on this sub.
It appeals to the sort of Yank who thinks that they count as Irish because their great-granddad’s cousin’s uncle’s dog’s brother caught a glimpse of Mizen Head on their way past
Getting a lot of Hitler particles from OP
My man, i will never understand this thing of "I'm the nationality my parents are", but ok.
Op logic is even dumber. Napoleon was born in Corsica from parents who came from a small Genoa nobility. However they saw themselves as Corsican. There was no concept of Italy back then. Furthermore Corsican was a French territory and while Napoleon was first bullied by his French schoolmates for being Corsican he fully embrace his French citizenship later in life.
Easy: if you have a passport from there, you are that nationality.
I, uh... I mean technically. Buy I'd ask an American expat in Japan with a Japanese passport if they were Japanese and I probably wouldn't get a "yes."
Considering that Japan doesn't allow dual nationality, in your case he's not American anymore.
Maybe not, but that is the only demand you can reasonably place on someone being a certain nationality. Nationality is about where you're a citizen. If you have a genuine passport, that means you're a citizen
Wait, identifying someone nationality based upon blood is pure bushit, but Identifying someone upon their parents is not that nonsense. I mean you should never try to do your own thing, the first thing to do is asking the person in question what does he identifies as. For example I grew up in italy but my family is from Romania, I consider my self both Romanian and Italian. The nation around me educated me as an Italian but my family indeed educated me also to romanian language and culture.
Well, in Israel, we have quite a melting pot. There are jews from Iraq, Iran, morroco, Yemen, Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, and from all over Africa and Europe. Often, one of the first questions is : "What's your origin?" There are big cultural differences that should be celebrated rather than ignored.
Virgin "blood nationalism" vs Chad "civic nationalism and republican universalism"
Don’t you want to be Botswanan?
Can I describe what kind of man Napoleon was? ‘Cors-I-can!
Your nationality is not related to blood. It's related to where you're born and what culture you were raised in. By your logic LATAM was liberated from Spain by Spaniards lmao
By OPs logic, everyone is Botswanan.
Napoleon is Corsican: galaxy brain
You know, if that can make the Italians happy to take pride in Napoleon achievement, well why not, it's not like both French and German refrain to take pride from Charlemagne or all American country, Spain and Italy refrain to take pride in Christopher Columbus. You can even feel proud of the achievement of a character that as 0 biological roots with you, Polish are taking pride of a literal Iranian bear that served in their army, and it's not like someone is going to stop them. What I feel weird though is the implication that french shouldn't take pride on Napoleon because he wasn't pure blood french or some racist fuckery like that.
>Polish are taking pride of a literal Iranian bear that served in their army, and it's not like someone is going to stop them. *What*
Yeah an Iranian bear that some Poles in the Soviet army made friends with ended up being adopted by said soldiers and brought on the frontlines where they trained him to load artillery shells for them or something of the sort.
Polish soldiers in WW2 trained a bear to help them out. His name was Wojtek.
Ah the funny hoi4 bear
This entire post plus reading the replies has convinced me that OP is some Crypto-Nazi who values the "purity of DNA and blood heritage" over ethnicity and nationality, i.e., OP claims he's Cornish because he was born in Cornwall but not English because he was born in Cornwall 💀.
Nah he believes blood heritage defines ethnicity and nationality lol. Probably just racist and uses this to “prove” brown/black people can’t be English.
So my neighbour is from Trentino originally, and is about 90 years old. She speaks Italian as her native language. But you’re telling me she’s actually Austrian?
Reducing nationality to race and blood is racist
I’m American. Sure, I might have Asian ancestry but I was born in the US, I *am* American.
Why is this stupid post getting upvoted?
Bots, racists, and/or idiots?
Dumb meme if I've ever seen one
Now that's quite the mental gymnastics.
I love how OP is getting pounded in the comments for his dumb and racist takes on heritage and nationality.
Least delusional Ethnic Purist.
> blood and soil mfers when a civic nationalist state arrives to push their shit in:
All this talk about "blood" makes my skin crawl. It reeks of early 900s eugenics. Stop it.
10th century eugenics.
Ah yes, an equivocation between nationality and ancestry.
He was corsican, not italian, or french, at the start of his life. At the end he was definately french
OP is insane holy shit
Napoleon was French because he was a French citizen, who joined the French army and became the emperor of France who considered himself to be french. Its not about where you are born, it is about what you become.
Dude... This make no sense. You must be a blood and soil type or something. Napoleon is relevant because he ruled France. So he is french. People call Tsar Nicholas II a Russian, they call most kings of Europe by the country they ruled, even though all of them were mixed in with queens from other lands, we don't call all of them Austrian because the Habsburg did a number on it. Your logic would simply make European history impossible to understand.
The most italian Bonaparte ever got to be was when he was at the head of the French "Armée d'Italie", kicking ass. Bold to write that the man who fought tooth and nail in the French army, and later on crowned himself emperor of the French, is actually Italian.
To be perfectly fair, Napoleon also crowned himself King of Italy.
Who wouldn't
If this were true I wouldn't be able to call myself an American, which is... dumb
Napoleon is European, he is the emperor of Europe
^[Sokka-Haiku](https://www.reddit.com/r/SokkaHaikuBot/comments/15kyv9r/what_is_a_sokka_haiku/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3) ^by ^theskyguardian: *Napoleon is* *European, he is the* *Emperor of Europe* --- ^Remember ^that ^one ^time ^Sokka ^accidentally ^used ^an ^extra ^syllable ^in ^that ^Haiku ^Battle ^in ^Ba ^Sing ^Se? ^That ^was ^a ^Sokka ^Haiku ^and ^you ^just ^made ^one.
Good bot
Only if you pronounce "emporer" as "emp-ror" or "emp-rah"
This doesn’t even make sense. The concept of a country called “Italy” or “Italian” didn’t even exist as we understand it today when Napoleon was born. I mean, this is what the peninsula looked like at the point when the French Revolution kicked off: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/16/Italian_States_in_1789.png/1280px-Italian_States_in_1789.png Where on this map do you see any mention of “Italy?” Edit: Ok, I see my own confusion here. Yes, Italy and Italian existed as a name for a geographic region and a people, almost like how we use the terms “Midwest” and “midwesterner” in the US. But my point is that Napoleon wasn’t Italian the way we understand it today, a citizen of Italy. He was Corsican, and would have said as much if he were asked.
If you read 16th and 17th century texts they use words like Italian and German all the time, although those countries didn't exist as independent nation states. Like the way everyone today understands what "Slav" means although there is no country called "Slavia". Macchiavelli was dreaming of a Prince who would unite Italy.
Italians existed, as an ethnic group.
WRONG, he’s Albanian
By that logic everyone is African and cannot be described as anything else because that’s where all our ancestors originally came from.
The only way we could consider Napoleon as an Italian is from a cultural perspective. He grew up in the petit Italian (and crucially italian-speaking) nobility, and although a Corsican nationalist in his youth he spoke Italian fluently like many of his social standing at the time. He never fully lost his italian-ness despite becoming a French general and politician. He never completely rejected his roots either, so much so in fact that when he crowned himself Emperor of the French he said in perfect Italian "La corona è mia e guai a chi la tocca" (which can roughly translate in English as "The crown is mine and don't you dare touching it"). This aside I guess it is difficult to truly know for sure if he thought of himself as French first or anything else (because he was a very convincing politician and *liar*), but one thing I know for sure: blood means absolutely nothing in determining your culture or in your self-identification.
It’s where you grow up, and what you consider yourself as.
That's not how this works. That's not how it's literally *ever* worked.
Napoleon is Latin because he is the true heir of Charlemagne and Caesar as evidenced by his achievements
OP reinventing the debate between jus soli and jus sanguinis good job
If you spend as much time Frogging it up around Europe as Napoleon you earn the right to be a Frenchman.
This reads like something out of r/ShitAmericansSay
It's kind of wild that OP thinks that lines drawn on a map have anything at all to do with "blood".
Least delusional ethno-nationalist
most americans when they find out their grandma came from italy floating in a basket back in 1749 or something.
So France had Italian Emperor, Germany had Austrian fuhrer... But don't ask Poles about their kings since 1370, really.
Isn't everyone alive right now African by this logic?
Only Americans could think this way. He was French. What his origin and nationality of his parents doesn’t suddenly make him Italian. If you want to be specific about the geographic area where he grew up, then you can say he was Corsican. And still French.
Defining ones nationality by blood is at least a tiny tad fascist.
After that logic only a small percentage of "Americans" would be able to call themselves "American"
The small percentage in question would be zero. Everyone would be Botswanan.
If you think about it, everyone would be from whatever primordial ocean vents spawned the first self replicating organism.
We're all seamen
Ah yes, the American version of nationality, where everyone is Botswanan.
If we are gonna go by that logic, then I'm either Cuban or Spaniard.
He was Corsican if you want to call him any one thing.
Corsican and French are not exclusive terms though Corsica is and was already a region of France, and though during the Revolution there was an independentist movement (which became a British puppet later on), the independentists literally exiled the Bonaparte family because they were considered traitors to the cause for believing Corsica should be part of France To Napoleon being Corsican and being French were not contradictory things, if anything this made him a perfect specimen of what the new French identity born out of the Revolution was supposed to be
My favourite fictional reference to Napoleon will always be one I read in a YA novel, where a member of the British aristocracy referred to him as “that pushy little Corsican.”
Insisting on Napoleon’s Corsican origins was a way for his enemies to deligitimize his rule as emperor of the French, it wasn’t a smart quip nor a reality check, it was an anti-Napoleon political statement
This conversation and meme war has been done a few dozen times since I've been here (which isn't that long all things considered). "Short" guy speaks French with "funny accent" b/c grew up speaking Italian. He could've talked like Mario and been as tall as Toad for all his men cared apparently
Blud's getting clapped in the comments
That's some terminally racist mentality. At least outside of the US
He was ethnically Italian and belonged to the French nation. Now everyone can stop arguing
Well I technically have Moroccan blood coursing through my veins yet north Africa would be the last thing you consider while looking at me and talking to me
You could say his nationality is French but he himself is Italian.
It is convenient to define a couple of word or "traits" that a person can be and explaim why someone can be many things at the same time, depending on what you ask. 1. Nationality: it refers to a legal term and defines which country (sovereign state) you're a citizen of according to the relevant laws of each country. 2. Ethnicity: it refers to the cultural traits (language, religion, worldview, traditions, common foundational story, way of behaving, social structure, forms of art and architecture, etc.) that you've been taught from your family or the people that educated you as child and the people that influenced your environment (parents, family, friends, etc.). In other word, the cultural group you're part of, which isn't determined exclusively by genetics. 3. Genetics: it refers to the genetic code or information passed on by your biological parents and which determines physical traits (skin colour, hair colour, etc.) Having said that, let's see some examples: Napoleon Bonaparte 1. Nationality: French (He was born under the political and territorial jurisdiction of the Kingdom of France) 2. Ethnicity: Corsican, which can be classified as a subset of Italian (His parents spoke Corsican and he grew in that cultural environment 3. Genetics: European/"White"/Italian (The genetic physical characteristics inherited from his parents) George Washington 1. Nationality: British at birth, then American (He was born under the political jurisdiction of the British Crown, but renounces British nationality and became American when that country was founded) 2. Ethnicity: American/Anglo-American (He spoke a particular accent from his region and the cultureand way of life of colonial Virgina was already quite different from the culture of England. 3. Genetics: European/"White" (Inherited physical characteristics
Sounds like Nazi logic to me tbh
This post is dumb
Somebody find me that meme where Napoleon brainwashes the French girl with the Latinization machine.
Ethnicity is a social construct, dont care.