How Monaco Became Monaco
According to an ancient myth, Hercules passed through the Monaco area and turned away the previous gods. As a result, a temple was constructed there. Because this “House” of Hercules was the only temple in the area, the city was called Monoikos. It ended up in the hands of the Holy Roman Empire, which gave it to the Genoese in 1191, in return for cracking down on pirates. By the Early 1200s, the Genoese had built a castle on the rock, and were utilizing the port.
An ousted branch of a Genoese family, the Grimaldi, captured it in 1297 by posing as monks but then had to contest it for a century before gaining official control.
Though the Republic of Genoa would last until the 19th century, it allowed the Grimaldi family to keep Monaco. Likewise, both France and Spain left it alone for hundreds of years due to agreements with either of them, especially for defense.
France annexed it in the French Revolution at the end of the 18th century, but after the defeat of Napoleon it was put under the care of the Kingdom of Sardinia.
In the 19th century, when Sardinia became a part of Italy, the region came under French influence but France allowed it to remain independent and it escaped being incorporated into Italy. However, it shrunk considerably when it traded two nearby towns, in exchange for sovereignty from France. Monaco relied on tourism from the late 19th century to remain financially solvent, and it was at this time the famous casino and hotels were established.
Monaco was overrun by the Axis powers in the 1940s during the Second World War and for a short time was administered by Italy, then Nazi Germany, before being liberated.
Although the occupation lasted for just a short time, it resulted in the deportation of the Jewishpopulation and execution of several French Resistance members from Monaco. Since then Monaco has been independent. It has taken some steps towards integration with the European Union.
Arrival of the Grimaldi family
Following a grant of land from Emperor Henry VI in 1191, Monaco was refounded in 1215 as a colony of Genoa. Monaco was first ruled by a member of the House of Grimaldi in 1297, when Francesco Grimaldi, known as “Malizia” (translated from Italian either as “The Malicious One” or “The Cunning One”), and his men captured the fortress protecting the Rock of Monaco while dressed as Franciscan friars – a monaco in Italian – although this is a coincidence as the area was already known by this name.
Francesco was evicted a few years later by the Genoese forces, and the struggle over “the Rock” continued for another century.The Grimaldi family was Genoese and the struggle was something of a family feud. The Genoese engaged in other conflicts, and in the late 1300s Genoa lost Monaco after fighting the Crown of Aragon over Corsica.Aragon eventually became part of a united Spain, and other parts of the land grant came to be integrated piecemeal into other states. Between 1346 and 1355, Monaco annexed the towns of Menton and Roquebrune, increasing its territory by almost ten times.
1400–1800
In 1419, the Grimaldi family purchased Monaco from the Crown of Aragon and became the official and undisputed rulers of “the Rock of Monaco”. In 1612, Honoré IIbegan to style himself “Prince” of Monaco. In the 1630s, he sought French protection against the Spanish forces and, in 1642, was received at the court of Louis XIIIas a “duc et pair étranger”.
The princes of Monaco became vassals of the French kings while at the same time remaining sovereign princes. Though successive princes and their families spent most of their lives in Paris, and intermarried with French and Italian nobilities, the House of Grimaldi is Italian The principality continued its existence as a protectorate of France until the French Revolution.
19th century
A map of the County of Nice showing the area of the Italian kingdom of Sardinia annexed in 1860 to France (light brown). The area in red had already become part of France before 1860
In 1793, Revolutionary forces captured Monaco and until 1814 it was occupied by the French (in this period much of Europe had been overrun by the French armies under the command of Napoleon Bonaparte). The principality was reestablished in 1814 under the Grimaldis. It was designated a protectorate of the Kingdom of Sardinia by the Congress of Vienna in 1815. Monaco remained in this position until 1860 when, by the Treaty of Turin, the Sardinian forces pulled out of the principality; the surrounding County of Nice(as well as Savoy) was ceded to France.Monaco became a French protectorate once again. Italian was the official language in Monaco until 1860, when it was replaced by French.
Before this time there was unrest in Menton and Roquebrune, where the townspeople had become weary of heavy taxation by the Grimaldi family. They declared their independence as the Free Cities of Menton and Roquebrune, hoping for annexation by Sardinia. France protested. The unrest continued until Charles III of Monaco gave up his claim to the two mainland towns (some 95% of the principality at the time) that had been ruled by the Grimaldi family for over 500 years.
These were ceded to France in return for 4,100,000 francs. The transfer and Monaco’s sovereignty were recognised by the Franco-Monégasque Treaty of 1861. In 1869, the principality stopped collecting income tax from its residents — an indulgence the Grimaldi family could afford to entertain thanks solely to the extraordinary success of the casino. This made Monaco a playground for the rich and a favoured place for them to live.
20th century
Until the Monégasque Revolution of 1910 forced the adoption of the 1911 Constitution of Monaco, the princes of Monaco were absolute rulers. The new constitution slightly reduced the autocratic rule of the Grimaldi family and Prince Albert Isuspended it during the First World War.
In July 1918, a new Franco-Monégasque Treaty was signed, providing for limited French protection over Monaco. The treaty, endorsed in 1919 by the Treaty of Versailles, established that Monégasque international policy would be aligned with French political, military and economic interests. It also resolved the Monaco succession crisis.
WORLD WAR 2
In 1943, the Italian Army invaded and occupied Monaco, forming a fascist administration.In September 1943, after Mussolini’s fall from power, the German Wehrmacht occupied Italy and Monaco, and the Nazi deportation of the Jewish population began. René Blum, the prominent French Jew who founded the Ballet de l’Opéra in Monte Carlo, was arrested in his Paris home and held in the Drancydeportation camp outside the French capital before being transported to Auschwitz, where he was later murdered.] Blum’s colleague Raoul Gunsbourg, the director of the Opéra de Monte-Carlo, helped by the French Resistance, escaped arrest and fled to Switzerland. In August 1944, the Germans executed René Borghini, Joseph-Henri Lajoux and Esther Poggio, who were Resistance leaders.
POST WAR PERIOD
Rainier III, succeeded to the throne on the death of his grandfather, Prince Louis II, in 1949, and ruled until 2005. On 19 April 1956, Prince Rainier married the American actress Grace Kelly, an event that was widely televised and covered in the popular press, focusing the world’s attention on the tiny principality.[50]
A 1962 amendment to the constitution abolished capital punishment, provided for women’s suffrage and established a Supreme Court of Monaco to guarantee fundamental liberties. In 1963, a crisis developed when Charles de Gaulleblockaded Monaco, angered by its status as a tax haven for wealthy French citizens.[51]
In 1993, the Principality of Monaco became a member of the United Nations, with full voting rights.
Content courtesy of Wikipedia
