On the early upbringing of Napoleon Bonaparte

1. We are used to think Napoleon was born on Corsica. But he was really born in Ajaccio. A tiny Italian seaport on the wild Corsican coast, connected with Italy with very deep ties, educational, cultural, familial. Originally, of course, he was a child of a peripheral Italian culture.(Decades later, writing to his mother about a fancy aristocratic dinner he had attended in France, he told her he would much rather be eating lasagna and ravioli back home)His family traced its descent to the settlers from Liguria, and Lombardy. His town, lived under the suzerainty of Genoa. His father got his law degree in the university of Pisa. Small island, with the deep, very deep ties to the Northwestern Italy, and historically dominated by the latter. Coastal towns having much better connections with the mainland, than with the rugged mountains in the island’s interiorHe was an Italian boy, raised in a remote Italian town, speaking a rude Italian dialect1. Which he later forgot. After the many…