Historically the Greek community was composed of merchants, ship-owners, intellectuals and international traders.

The Maniot Greeks were settled on the island and given lands for farming and animal grazing by the then ruling power, Genoa, as part of a Genoese policy to limit the spread and impact of an emergent Corsican nationalism violently opposed to foreign rule.

As a consequence, the pro-Genoese Greeks in Corsica became the targets of sustained attacks by Corsican nationalists and resentful farmers, and so had to be re-settled several times before finally being given territory around Cargese.

Attempts at integrating Greeks into Corsican society involved the establishment of a mixed Greek-Corsican gendermerie.

Many Corsican Greeks subsequently left the island for French-ruled Algeria, in a wave of south European settlement of the North African colony sponsored by the French government, but returned to Corsica and elsewhere in France following Algerian independence.