Mediterranean networks, Corsican clans and the transit point Marseille

When the island of Corsica was connected to France's Mediterranean steamship network in the last third of the 19th century, there were dramatic consequences for the island's economy. Corsica was flooded with industrially produced foods from the mainland, mostly from Marseille. "This ruined the island's agricultural industry and led to an exodus of its male youth", says Manuel Borutta, a professor of modern and contemporary history. "Thus, infrastructural connections can also have negative effects on society".

Corsican diasporas in Algeria and Marseille

As a result, many young Corsicans then moved to Algeria and parts of the French colonial empire as well as to the city of Marseille. At these new locations, they created Corsican networks that Borutta describes as "cultural infrastructure" in the French empire. He explains, "In the 1950s, about 100,000 Corsicans lived in Algeria. They were greatly overrepresented in the military, administration and police forces. At the same time, the colonial diaspora remained closely connected to the island of Corsica. They rarely mixed with other French people, but instead organized themselves, for example by setting up associations that represented Corsican interests in large cities and colonies, cultivated Corsican traditions such as language and culinary skills, and maintained ties to the island".

Since early modern times, Marseille has been a destination for emigrating Corsicans. After 1900, the Panier district at the old port became a Corsican village. In the 1930s, Simon Sabiani, a right-wing populist politician with Corsican roots, rose to become a central figure in local politics as vice mayor. His power base was not only comprised of the Corsicans in the city whom he provided with work and homes, but also mobsters such as Paul Carbone, who also hailed from Corsica, and the Italian François Spirito, who used violence to intimidate Sabiani's political opponents.

In exchange, these gangs were given access to the prefecture, where they positioned henchmen to protect themselves from police prosecution and to control the new port of Marseille so they could export prostitutes to Latin America and import opium from Asia and the eastern Mediterranean to be processed into heroin in Marseille. "Cultural networks and concepts were thus used to gain political power and organize crime on a global scale", Manuel Borutta says. "The control of material infrastructures (the new port of Marseille) as well as Carbone's friendly connections to Corsican sailors from ocean liners who worked as smugglers played a key role. Intangible and physical infrastructures complement each other".

The historian is especially interested in the interactions between both forms of infrastructure. Physical infrastructures, in this case canals, steamships and ports, can trigger cultural transformations: processes involving immigration, segregation and mixing as well as the abuse of political power and changes in representation. At the same time, cultural practices and networks can use these physical infrastructures for their own purposes.

Organized crime in Marseille today

Marseille is still considered one of France's trouble spots with extreme levels of drug-related crime. Organized crime can take advantage of existing cultural infrastructures. "So far, the French state has not succeeded in penetrating the neglected quartiers nord along with the area's cultural infrastructures", the historian explains. "Instead, the state has partly withdrawn from this area and left its inhabitants to their own devices and the drug lords, who, for example, set up inflatable swimming pools in the summer, since there are not enough public pools for the many families who cannot afford to travel on vacation. In this case, organized crime takes on the responsibilities of the state, keeps order in the district and allocates resources".

France's President Macron recently launched a five-billion euro plan for Marseille, Marseille en grand. The prerequisite for receiving this massive state support was that neglected quartiers in the north of the city would get better connections to the already partially gentrified city centre. This is a step that, for decades, local politicians avoided taking. Again, material and cultural infrastructures have become a battlefield in the city.

What role can cultural studies play in analyzing such problems? The historian Borutta says: "Infrastructure research involving the fields of anthropology, sociology, history and literary studies can contribute to a better understanding of these conflicts and dynamics. For this, we need a theoretical foundation for the concept of cultural infrastructures, which is a focus of our university's corresponding research priority", he adds.

Read the full interview with Manuel Borutta in the University of Konstanz's online magazine.

Key facts:

• Manuel Borutta is a professor of modern and contemporary history at the University of Konstanz who specializes in the 19th and 20th centuries.
• Since 2018, Manuel Borutta has been coordinating the research network "The Modern Mediterranean: Dynamics of a World Region 1800-2000" funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG). He is currently writing a book on the Mediterranean entanglement between Algeria and France in the (post-)colonial age and is making preparations for an "Oxford Handbook of the Modern Mediterranean" (to be published with Oxford University Press).
• His article "Mediterranean Infrastructures" was published at the end of October 2023 in the book "Rethinking Infrastructure Across the Humanities" (editors: Nora Binder, Fernando Esposito, Aaron Pinnix and Axel Volmar) by the Transkript Verlag publishing house. The book is available online free of charge (open access).