In a review article published in The Historical Journal in 2008, the American biographer of Napoleon, Steven Englund, spoke of ‘nothing less than a scholarly renaissance’ in the field of Napoleonic studies, and went further, adding that ‘Indeed, the word naissance applies even better,’ because so much of the new literature was mined from primary sources.1 He spoke too soon, for the explosion in Napoleonic studies has, if anything, gained still more pace in the half decade between Englund’s vantage point and the republication of the present volume. At a conference held in Brussels and Lille in October 2011, under the auspices of the Centre for Napoleonic Studies at the latter university, I was struck not just by the number of young scholars present, drawn from all over Europe and from North America, but by the fact that many established experts in the Revolutionary period, and even the ancien régime, had transferred their interests to the study of the Napoleonic regimes, a sign that not only a new generation of researchers were at work in the field, but that senior historians of what might be described with some irony as the ‘annexed’ periods, now saw issues of interest and importance in a field once considered too dull, too sterile to merit serious consideration. The real triumph of the growing awareness of the importance of the Napoleonic era emerged for me as I surveyed my luncheon companions that Saturday in Brussels, in that we who had broken open the path had been followed by those who had made their mark elsewhere. More than the converted had been converted, as it were.
Things were changing when the first edition of this book was published in 1996, or could not have been written, but it rested mainly on a wealth of local and regional studies, mainly by European scholars. Even when Geoffrey Ellis brought out the second edition of his own erudite synthesis, The Napoleonic Empire in 2003 – itself an important work in ‘spreading the word’ to a student audience – he noted that, although there had been an explosion of work in the field, which now embraced Anglo-Saxon as well as European scholars, the basis of this new work was still regional and topical. We were still accumulating the building blocks we need to achieve a wider perspective. Ellis also noted two other trends that laid down markers for the future, however: Those regional studies were dominated by an interest on the non-French parts of the Napoleonic hegemony and, perhaps the most crucial development of all, Ellis noted astutely, that ‘scholars have begun to pay more attention to the institutional legacy, the real long-term impact, of Napoleonic rule in conquered Europe.’2 Geoffrey Ellis put his finger on the pulse of the new Napoleonic history in these words, even if he might find issue with many of its findings and judgements, those at the heart of this book, certainly among them. The plethora of excellent specialised studies from all over the ‘Grand Empire’ of its 130 departments, matched by equally fine studies from many of the ‘satellite states’, allied polities have continued to impress. Most heartening is the emergence of interest in the period by scholars of states beyond the formal Napoleonic state system, but now acknowledged to have been very much in its orbit, perhaps the most emphatic sign of the pivotal position the Napoleonic period has assumed in modern European historiography. Only a handful of these works have found their way onto the much revised bibliography which accompanies this new edition, either because they are in languages other than English or French, or because they deal with a ‘Europe beyond Napoleon’ which this book could not embrace when it was written, for lack of space and of secondary material on which to build. For these very reasons, it seems only fair to acknowledge a handful of these scholars and their contributions, in these pages, although the seminal importance of the new studies of Britain and Russia is of such direct relevance that those with decided European dimensions have found their way onto it, when in English. The recent book by the Danish scholars, Ramus Glenthøj and Morten Nordhagen Ottosen is a model of methodology, in its approach to the chronology of Norwegian-Danish history in a complex period, but also a clear sign of the profound impact of the Napoleonic period on the long-term evolution of Scandinavia, a fact future studies must take into full account.3 The same holds true of the magnum opus of the German-American scholar, Karen Hagemann, whose 600-page study of Prussia after Jena has opened up new horizons, while building on a proud tradition of historiography.4 Ute Planert has given the field fundamental insights and information about the southern German states of the Confederation of the Rhine – surely one of the most vital components of the Napoleonic hegemony – in her profound study published in 2007, a work which combines the regional approach with a commitment to exploring the long-term influence of the Napoleonic period in some detail.5 The regional and topical trends discerned by Ellis find a model of both in the extensive study of popular disorder and resistance by the Dutch scholar, Johan Joor, in his 2000 study of the Netherlands under direct French rule.6 The recent study of the Kingdom of Westphalia by the young French scholar, Nicola-Peter Todorov, is an exemplary local study in itself, which demolishes many assumptions about the character of French rule in central Germany, pointing to a determination to undermine feudalism which an earlier historiography refused to countenance; but it is also a sign of the growing cosmopolitanism of the ‘new Napoleonists’ that is to be rejoiced in.7 The Italian legal historian, Carolina Castellana, has opened up a study of legal reform in the Kingdom of Naples, deploying the few, but interesting surviving archival sources at her disposal, to reach beyond her subject – crucial in itself – to offer new insights into the nature of French imperialism, which should receive wider application.8 Her colleague, Costanza d’Elia, is currently engaged in a project of seminal importance, comparing the impact of the Napoleonic regime on feudalism in the Rhineland and the Kingdom of Naples. The wealth of recent research on the Republic/Kingdom of Italy emerges in the collected acts edited by Adele Robbiati Bianchi, of a conference of rare quality held in Milan in November 2002.9 Regional studies of the period are a flourishing element of the renaissance, all over Europe. They are the life blood of the new Napoleonic history, in all its diversity, and the flow is healthy.
When one stands back from the wealth of local and topical studies discerned by Ellis almost a decade ago, and assesses its continuing growth, the hope cherished by the Franco-Dutch scholar, Annie Jourdan, might now be achieved; that the great comparative projects pioneered by R.R. Palmer and Jacques Godechot in the 1960s – which did not find favour among their peers – might now be realised from a surer base of specific, regional research than Palmer or Godechot could draw upon. She has already taken an interesting step in this direction in her deeply interesting book published ten years ago, which questions, in its very title, the exceptionalism of the French Revolution.10 A way might be found into this, less through the ‘North Atlantic’ route, than by integrating work on Napoleonic Europe more closely with the growing body of scholarship on the relationship between the Latin American revolutions which spilled out from the Napoleonic invasion of Spain, and their relationship with Napoleonic Europe, a path Hispanists are treading well, and from which others might learn. Among them are the constitutional historian, Marta Lorente, and the imperial scholar, José M. Portillo Valdés.11
Many but, sadly, far from all of the scholars on this roll of honour have had distilled versions of their work published in English, thus reaching the wider readership they deserve. That it has become possible is a sign of the heightened interest in Napoleonic history among students and teachers in this country and elsewhere in the Anglophone world: There is a demand for the new Napoleonic history. The most common and effective vehicle for the dissemination of their work has been volumes of collected essays, some with their origins in international conferences, others simply the hard work of editors who have dedicated precious time to ensuring that new work, by non-Anglophone scholars, receives the audience it deserves. The present author has entered this part of the market, with his brothers-in-arms, Peter Hicks and Agustín Guimera, building on the proceedings of a conference held in Madrid in 2008, with the express aim of ensuring that the bicentenary of the outbreak of the Spanish War of Independence contained examples of the new Napoleonic history, with its emphasis on institutions, resistance to them, and the importance of the period for the European longue durée. Three colleagues have done more to ‘spread the word’ through the collective volume of essays than any others, however, as will be clear from the new bibliography of this book: Philip Dwyer, in Australia, Alan Forrest, in the UK, and the German scholar, Karen Hagemann, based at Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Their edited volumes, which have taken precious time from their own, individual research, have brought new names and new ideas, especially from the continent, to a wider world. Dwyer, himself, may have reservations about the wider importance of the period for European history, seeing as grandiose, many of this author’s own the claims to its importance for the future of Europe,12 but this has not prevented him from making a central contribution to its propagation.
In the same review, Dwyer makes the point that the Napoleonic renaissance has not generated new methodologies of its own, but has tended to adapt and absorb the approaches and preoccupations developed in other historical contexts for its own purposes. He is not entirely wrong in this, as the updated bibliography of this volume reveals. Nevertheless, it is about time this happened, and recent historiography has seen the ‘new Napoleonic history’ entering an new phase in its vibrant life. Themes such as war memory and a gendered approach to the experience of war, in particular, are notable in the most recent studies of the period, and they prove how important and welcome the arrival of such preoccupations are in Napoleonic studies. The wealth of contemporary memoirs of the wars has been exploited to the full by a new generation of scholars from many countries, now finding English-language publishers. The French historian Natalie Petiteau has been at the forefront of these advances, and her work on the French veterans of the wars has taken imaginative conceptual form, as well as reaching beyond published memoirs as a source.13 Alan Forrest has placed this genre in the longue durée of modern French political history, stressing its ideological uses.14 Sadly, these interests fall beyond the remit of a book of this kind, given its chronological limits, but they show in the most fundamental human terms, how powerful and lingering was the impact of the Napoleonic wars and the wider experience of empire.
Dwyer has raised a point that strikes at the heart of one of the pillars of the Napoleonic renaissance, that the shift of emphasis from the man, the wars and their transient position in European history is merited because of the central importance of the institutional and, indeed, intellectual foundations laid down under Napoleonic rule. This volume was among the first general surveys to argue this point, and if it has had a continuing relevance, it stems from the consensus it found – as quite distinct to have ‘founded’, which it most certainly did not – that the Napoleonic period was not the end of the French Revolution, whatever Napoleon and his may have wished, but the beginning of a new phase in European history. When the dust of battle settled, things had changed; there was a concept of the state, of political culture, at work over most of the former Napoleonic hegemony, and it would not go away. Nor did the fierce popular resistance to it. If this central tenet of the Napoleonic renaissance is accepted – that the reforms of the period and the reactions to them had a lasting, fundamental influence on the collective European future – then the rise in its popularity becomes essential to explain, as well as readily explicable. It is arguable that its institutional influence has been so basic to most of the original states of the European Union, as well as to later arrivals from Iberia and eastern Europe, as to go unremarked, but it is there to be seen, particularly from a British vantage point where the ‘basics’ form the substance of ‘the other’. Prefects, codes, gendarmeries, public prosecutors and public trials by tribunals, to say nothing of councils of state, abound, and their similarities are more important than their differences, for the practicalities of government. Their differences are remarkably small, given the varied societies they administer and the vicissitudes of the most violent conflicts in history. The Napoleonic era played a central part in the creation of this heritage, and if the present volume has endured, it is because it attempts to speak to this. Popular hatred of this project and the changes it wrought in the daily lives of millions was also part of this process, and this book was among the first to try to give this aspect of the period a pivotal place in its history. To this end, it draws inspiration from one of the richest seams in modern historiography, the postcolonialist approach to the imperial experience, and its author makes no apology for so doing. Inserting the experience of Napoleonic imperialism into the wider context of modern imperialism, with the implications it holds for the emergence of a subaltern Europe in opposition to it, has proved ever more controversial, but it is still a debate central to the period. This approach to the period has been attacked, never more directly than by Steven Englund,15 yet it has also led to the examination of the Napoleonic Empire in the wider context of European imperialism in several significant studies of the subject in recent years, notably those by Fred Cooper and Jane Burbank, and by Timothy Parsons,16 as well in the context of numerous published conferences and collections of essays. It has also found a reception among political scientists and sociologists of modern Europe.17 This is not to say that this author’s particular views are supported by others, rather that the insertion of the Napoleonic imperial experience into wider contexts than had hitherto been considered has come to be regarded as fruitful, in itself. The ‘borrowing’ of a methodology has been returned in other forms, developing as it progresses, into something more original. The future of Napoleonic history no longer belongs solely to Napoleonists or, indeed, to Europeanists, nor should it. It has found yet another longue durée to inhabit, and is the richer for it.
Nevertheless, for all the efforts of those engaged in the new Napoleonic
history, a number of excellent biographies of Napoleon have appeared in
recent years, and all are to be found in the revised bibliography. The
trend should accelerate in the years ahead, and for good reason. The
efforts of the Fondation Napoléon in Paris, under the directorship of
Thierry Lentz, are in the process of publishing an entirely new version
of Napoleon’s correspondence, which will be three and half times
larger than that produced under the auspices of Napoleon III, in
the mid-nineteenth century.18 This will doubtless lead to a major
revival of interest in the prince so many of us had resolutely and
deliberately excluded from our versions of the ‘Hamlet’ of Napoleonic
history. It will provide a fresh, often very different view of the man and
the regime, from the sanitised version available until now, which
historians have had to approach with care and a large degree of cynicism.
Nevertheless, the wheel will never come full circle. The Napoleonic
renaissance, of which this book is a part, will ensure that nothing
will ever be the same again. It is for me to thank those who have
continued the work I entered into here, two decades ago, for enriching the
field, and to thank my editor at I.B.Tauris, Jo Godfrey, for seeing
enough merit in this book, to republish it verbatim. It is an honour to
be resurrected in this way, and to remain part of so flourishing a
field.
Charlbury,
April 2014