Le mercredi 10 octobre 2012 11:13:52 UTC+2, Giovanni Drogo a écrit :
On Tue, 9 Oct 2012, Surreyman wrote:

On the contrary the province of Bolzano (aka Alto Adige, aka S�dtirol)

has always been majoritary german-speaking (there were limited italian

communities only in the main towns in the valleys) and was annexed to

Italy after WW I mainly for military reasons.

Giovanni,
One day I was curious enough to see if the limit between italian and german town toponyms was due to a clear geographical barrier in the province of Bolzano/Bolzen in Alto Adige/Südtirol. I didn't find an obvious one between the valleys, the line of alpine summits being a bit northward IMO, at the difference of the limit between French and German languages in south Switzerland.

I agree that these borders anomalies were often motivated for military reasons including the bought of Corsica by Louis XV... or the temporary annexion of Pinerolo! Nowadays these reasons have disappeared and in fact Corsica should never have left Italy... Just imagine, Corsica is even today the reason why the French don't care about the anglo normand islands "anomaly" helped nevertheless by sea separation like St Pierre et Miquelon for Canada.
They don't care neither of the decline of french language in Val d'Aosta because its behind the alpine summit line! They leave this concern to the... Swiss. :+)
The French were happy enough... when they obtained Savoy which is indeed in geographical continuity with Dauphiné, even it was hard to swallow for the Italians from 1790 to 1860 because of the origin of the Italian kings dynasty (Chambery, Hautecombe). A bit like for the Germans with Alsace... where the Vosges mountains or the Rhine river, as best geographical limit, was the subject of a controversy for 3 centuries between both countries.

On the other hand we can now precise better than in the XVIIth century, at the Pyrenees treaty, where is the source of the Garonne and it's a bit "annoying" that the really tiny ONLY WESTERN slope of mountain that the river follows on only few kilometers is in fact in... Spain, because this then most inaccessible part of the Pyrenean mountains and of course the eastern bank of the Garonne declining towards the North... was in fact NEARER from a village whose own valley opens more widely towards the South!

So, no need to say that the French normally (except Napoleon :+)) favours/ed the geographical limits thanks to their miraculously natural hexagone, either by sea, river or mountain, as the best ones. What made them swallow a little easier the lost of Philippeville in FLAT Belgium in 1815. :+)