History
For a long part of the middle ages Cottian Alps have been divided between Duchy of Savoy, which controlled their northern part and the easternmost slopes, and the Dauphiné, at the time independent from France kingdom. The Dauphins held, in addition to the south-western slopes of the range (Briançon and Queyras, nowadays on the French side), also the upper part of some valleys tributaries of the Po River (Valle di Susa, Chisone valley, Varaita valley). The Alpine territory of Dauphiné, known as Escartons, used to have a limited autonomy and to elect his own parliament. This semi-autonomuos status lasted also after the annexion of Dauphiné to France (1349), and was only abolished in 1713 due to the Treaty of Utrecht, which assigned to House of Savoy all the mountain area on the eastern side of the Cottian Alps.
After the treaty annexing Nice and Savoy to France, signed in Turin on March 1860 (Treaty of Turin), the north-western slopes of the range became part of French repubblic.
Two eastern valleys of the Cottian Alps (Pellice and Germanasca) have been for centuries a kind of sanctuary for the Waldensians, a Christian movement founded by Peter Waldo and which was persecuted as heretical from the 12th century onwards.
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“I am ashamed to see what a shallow village tale our so-called History is. How many times must we say Rome, and Paris, and Constantinople! What does Rome know of rat and lizard? What are Olympiads and Consulates to these neighboring systems of being? Nay, what food or experience or succor have they for the Esquimaux seal-hunter, or the Kanaka in his canoe, for the fisherman, the stevedore, the porter?”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
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—Albert Camus (1913–1960)
“This above all makes history useful and desirable: it unfolds before our eyes a glorious record of exemplary actions.”
—Titus Livius (Livy)