Is history the strongest weapon? Corsica in the Fascist mare nostrum

During the 1930s, historiography in the sector of studies on Corsica grew considerably owing to the efforts of Gioacchino Volpe and his students at the Scuola di Storia Moderna e Contemporanea. Corsica was situated within the Mediterranean political space, and it acquired a geopolitical importance that shifted it outside its circumscribed regional context to the centre of the Mediterranean interests of the great European powers. This article analyses how Gioacchino Volpe and his students at the Scuola configured the question of the ‘Mediterranean political space’ as a matter of historical interest by analysing the case of Corsica. Rather than restricting themselves to a regionalist approach in their research on Corsica, Volpe and his students framed the island's history in the more general context of European and Mediterranean history.