The County of Nice (french: Comté de Nice / Pays Niçois, it, Contea di Nizza/Paese Nizzardo, Niçard oc, Contèa de Niça/País Niçard) is a historical region of France located around the southeastern city of

Nice Nice ( , ; Niçard: , classical norm, or , nonstandard, ; it, Nizza ; lij, Nissa; grc, Νίκαια; la, Nicaea) is the prefecture of the Alpes-Maritimes department in France. The Nice agglomeration extends far beyond the administrative ...

and roughly equivalent to the modern arrondissement of Nice.

History

Its territory lies between the

Mediterranean Sea The Mediterranean Sea is a sea connected to the Atlantic Ocean, surrounded by the Mediterranean Basin and almost completely enclosed by land: on the north by Western and Southern Europe and Anatolia, on the south by North Africa, and on ...

(

Côte d'Azur The French Riviera (known in French as the ; oc, Còsta d'Azur ; literal translation "Azure Coast") is the Mediterranean coastline of the southeast corner of France. There is no official boundary, but it is usually considered to extend fro ...

), Var River and the southernmost crest of the

Alps The Alps () ; german: Alpen ; it, Alpi ; rm, Alps ; sl, Alpe . are the highest and most extensive mountain range system that lies entirely in Europe, stretching approximately across seven Alpine countries (from west to east): France, Sw ...

. Ligurian tribes populated the County of Nice prior to its occupation by the Romans. These tribes, conquered by

Augustus Caesar Augustus (born Gaius Octavius; 23 September 63 BC – 19 August AD 14), also known as Octavian, was the first Roman emperor; he reigned from 27 BC until his death in AD 14. He is known for being the founder of the Roman Pr ...

, had become fully

Romanized Romanization or romanisation, in linguistics, is the conversion of text from a different writing system to the Roman (Latin) script, or a system for doing so. Methods of romanization include transliteration, for representing written text, and ...

(according to Theodore Mommsen) by the 4th century, when the

barbarian invasions The Migration Period was a period in European history marked by large-scale migrations that saw the fall of the Western Roman Empire and subsequent settlement of its former territories by various tribes, and the establishment of the post-Roman ...

began. In those Roman centuries, the area was part of the ''Regio IX Liguria'' of Italy. The

Franks The Franks ( la, Franci or ) were a group of Germanic peoples whose name was first mentioned in 3rd-century Roman sources, and associated with tribes between the Lower Rhine and the Ems River, on the edge of the Roman Empire.H. Schutz: Tools ...

conquered the region after the

Fall of the Western Roman Empire The fall of the Western Roman Empire (also called the fall of the Roman Empire or the fall of Rome) was the loss of central political control in the Western Roman Empire, a process in which the Empire failed to enforce its rule, and its va ...

, and the local Romance populations became integrated within the County of Provence, with a period of independence as a

maritime republic The maritime republics ( it, repubbliche marinare), also called merchant republics ( it, repubbliche mercantili), were thalassocratic city-states of the Mediterranean Basin during the Middle Ages. Being a significant presence in Italy in the Mid ...

(1108–1176). It was initially a semi-autonomous part of the ancient County of Provence.

Part of Savoy

Lands of Victor Amadeus II, Duke of Savoy

In 1388, the citizens of Nice decided to hand over the city and its surrounding areas to the

count of Savoy The titles of count, then of duke of Savoy are titles of nobility attached to the historical territory of Savoy. Since its creation, in the 11th century, the county was held by the House of Savoy. The County of Savoy was elevated to a duchy at ...

. 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

Annexation to France

France annexed most of the County of Nice in 1860, during the

Italian Wars of Independence The War of Italian Independence, or Italian Wars of Independence, include: *First Italian War of Independence (1848–1849) *Second Italian War of Independence (1859) *Third Italian War of Independence (1866) *Fourth Italian War of Independence I ...

. By an 1858 secret agreement concluded at Plombières between

Napoleon III Napoleon III (Charles Louis Napoléon Bonaparte; 20 April 18089 January 1873) was the first President of France (as Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte) from 1848 to 1852 and the last monarch of France as Emperor of the French from 1852 to 1870. A neph ...

of France and Sardinian Prime Minister

Count Camillo Benso di Cavour Camillo Paolo Filippo Giulio Benso, Count of Cavour, Isolabella and Leri (, 10 August 1810 – 6 June 1861), generally known as Cavour ( , ), was an Italian politician, businessman, economist and noble, and a leading figure in the movement tow ...

, 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 Savoy (; frp, Savouè ; french: Savoie ) is a cultural-historical region in the Western Alps. Situated on the cultural boundary between Occitania and Piedmont, the area extends from Lake Geneva in the north to the Dauphiné in the south. Sa ...

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 A referendum (plural: referendums or less commonly referenda) is a direct vote by the electorate on a proposal, law, or political issue. This is in contrast to an issue being voted on by a representative. This may result in the adoption of ...

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. 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. This event caused the

Niçard exodus The Niçard exodus ( it, esodo nizzardo ; ) was one of the first emigration phenomena that involved the Italian populations in the contemporary age. It was due to the refusal of a quarter of the Niçard Italians to stay in Nice after its ann ...

, the emigration of a quarter of the Niçard Italians to Italy. Nevertheless, the Italian patriot leader

Giuseppe Garibaldi Giuseppe Maria Garibaldi ( , ;In his native Ligurian language, he is known as ''Gioxeppe Gaibado''. In his particular Niçard dialect of Ligurian, he was known as ''Jousé'' or ''Josep''. 4 July 1807 – 2 June 1882) was an Italian general, pa ...

, 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 The Kingdom of Italy ( it, Regno d'Italia) was a state that existed from 1861, when Victor Emmanuel II of Kingdom of Sardinia, Sardinia was proclamation of the Kingdom of Italy, proclaimed King of Italy, until 1946, when civil discontent led to ...

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 The arrondissement of Grasse is an arrondissement of France in the Alpes-Maritimes department in the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region. It has 62 communes. Its population is 561,067 (2016), and its area is . Composition The communes of the arron ...

, detached from the neighbouring Var department, to create the department. Since 1926, the county has been largely coterminous with the arrondissement of Nice, one of two arrondissements of the , in the

region In geography, regions, otherwise referred to as zones, lands or territories, are areas that are broadly divided by physical characteristics ( physical geography), human impact characteristics ( human geography), and the interaction of humanity an ...

. Nevertheless, the term County of Nice ( in

Niçard dialect ( Classical orthography), ( Mistralian orthography, ), ( , ), or () is the dialect that was historically spoken in the city of Nice, in France, and in all the area of the historical County of Nice. The affiliation of Niçard is debated: it is ...

) continues in use today to identify the territory as a distinct cultural and historical region, particularly to distinguish it from neighbouring

Provence Provence (, , , , ; oc, Provença or ''Prouvènço'' , ) is a geographical region and historical province of southeastern France, which extends from the left bank of the lower Rhône to the west to the Italian border to the east; it is bo ...

. 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 on the commemorates the 150th year of Nice's annexation.

References

Sources

* Amicucci, Ermanno. ''Nizza e l'Italia''. Mondadori Editore. Milano, 1939. * Barelli Hervé, Rocca Roger. ''Histoire de l'identité niçoise'', Nice: Serre, 1995. * (flag/history).

External links

*
Territorial changes in the history of the County of Nice
*
Dances and traditional musics used in the County of Nice
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Nice, County of Duchy of Savoy Kingdom of Sardinia Alpes-Maritimes

County of Nice The County of Nice (french: Comté de Nice / Pays Niçois, it, Contea di Nizza/Paese Nizzardo, Niçard oc, Contèa de Niça/País Niçard) is a historical region of France located around the southeastern city of Nice and roughly equivalent t ...

1100s establishments in the Holy Roman Empire 1108 establishments in Europe States and territories established in the 1100s 1860 disestablishments in Europe 1860 disestablishments in Italy