Michael Broers

NAPOLEON, CHARLEMAGNE, AND LOTHARINGIA: ACCULTURATION AND THE BOUNDARIES OF NAPOLEONIC EUROPE

This article attempts to redefine the parameters of Napoleonic hegemony by applying two models to the territories of the Napoleonic empire: one developed by Nathan Wachtel, predicated on levels of acculturation and assimilation to the imperial core ; the second, derived from the work of Braudel and Brunet, which detects a European core, based along the Rhine–Rhone axis, a macro-region with a long, if submerged, history. This study concludes that the acceptance of Napoleonic reforms was achieved only in a core region, already predisposed to them.

The Napoleonic empire and the new European political culture

Preface Foreword to the Series Acknowledgements Notes on the Contributors Map Introduction: The Napoleonic Empire & the New European Political Culture: Towards Our Europe M.Broers PART I: FRANCE 1799-1814 Introduction M.Broers Imperial France in 1808 and beyond T.Lentz The Origins of the Napoleonic System of Repression H.Brown Policing, Rural Revolt and Conscription in Napoleonic France A.Forrest Small state, Big Society: The Involvement of Citizens in 19th Century France M.C.Thoral Napoleon as a Politician P.Hicks PART II: THE LOW COUNTRIES, THE RHINELAND AND SWITZERLAND, 1792-1814 Introduction M.Broers The Napoleonic Civil Code: The Belgian Case M.Rapport The Dutch Case: the Kingdom of Holland and the Imperial Departments M.Lok & M.van der Berg Resistance against Napoleon in the Kingdom of Holland J.Joor A Tale of Two Cities: Aachen & Cologne in Napoleonic Europe M.Rowe The Swiss Case in the Napoleonic Empire G.Clemens PART III: CENTRAL AND EASTERN EUROPE Introduction M.Broers Resistance to Napoleonic Reform in the Grand Duchy of Berg, the Kingdom of the Westphalia and the South German states U.Planert Napoleonic Rule in German Central Europe: Compliance and Resistance K.Aaslestad The Napoleonic Administrative System in the Kingdom of Westphalia N.P.Todorov The Prussian Era of Reforms K.Hagemann PART IV: THE ITALIAN PENINSULAR & THE ILLYRIAN PROVINCES Introduction: M.Broers The Napoleonic Kingdom of Italy: State Administration A.Grab The Imperial Departments of Napoleonic Italy: Resistance and Collaboration M.Broers The Feudal Question in the Kingdom of Naples A.M.Rao The Illyrian Provinces R.Stauber PART V: SPAIN AND PORTUGAL 1800-1814 Introduction M.Broers The Monarchy at Bayonne and the Constitution of Cadiz E.La Parra Popular Resistance in Spain J.R.Aymes Imperial Spain J.M.Portillo The New Spanish Councils M.Lorente Napoleonic Paradoxes in Europe: The Portuguese Case F.D.Costa Conclusion: The Napoleonic Empire in the Age of Revolutions: The Contrast of Two National Representations A.Jourdan Index

Noble Romans and Regenerated Citizens: The Morality of Conscription in Napoleonic Italy, 1800-1814

Conscription in the history of Napoleonic Europe has been well studied in recent years, particularly in terms of resistance to it, and its place in the process of the creation and modernization of state bureaucracies. This article approaches the subject from the rather different angle of ideology and cultural history. Drawing on archival research, it centres on the subjective aims and prejudices that influenced French officials in the Kingdom of Italy and the imperial departments of Italy. It traces French attempts to coerce the Italian upper classes into military service, and the impact of this on the policy of ralliement.

The Napoleonic Empire

Few periods of modern European history entail so much paradox or, perhaps more correctly, evoke such perplexed reactions from historians, as the rise and fall of Napoleon. A challenging overview by the Franco-Dutch scholar, Annie Jourdan, typifies this in her opening sentences. Her L’Empire de Napoleon begins with a series of questions, in a tone that recalls the introduction of Alexis de Tocqueville’s canonical work, L’ancien regime et la Revolution: Napoleon: assassin or saviour of the Revolution? Hero or charlatan? Manager or despot? Warmonger or pacifist? These are the questions French and foreign historians have tried to answer over the last two centuries.1 With great candour, she declares that these questions are her own ‘red thread’, too. In his seminal work of 1990, Napoleon’s Integration of Europe, Stuart Woolf challenged this whole approach to the period. Woolf sought, in many ways justifiably, to relocate the emphasis from ‘the man and the career’ to the machine he shaped, drove and, perhaps most significantly for the future of Europe, left behind him in working order. Woolf has had his stern critics, Geoffrey Ellis among the most eloquent and well-informed, who continue to insist on the omnipresence of the man and the decisive influence of his direct interventions in shaping the character of the regime.2

The Police and the Padroni: Italian Notabili, French Gendarmes and the Origins of the Centralized State in Napoleonic Italy

The impact of Napoleonic rule on the Italian peninsula has long occupied a complex and problematic position in Italian historiography, but it has been generally regarded as formative for the later process of Risorgimento, and its central importance to the character of the unitary state created in 1861 has never been denied. Consequently, although the epoca francese has been the focal point for many ahistorical, ideologically coloured interpretations, it has never become a pariah of historical writing, thus avoiding the fate suffered by the Napoleonic period in the context of other national histories.’ A major theme of the historiography of the epoca francese has been the interaction between the Italian elites and the institutions of the Napoleonic state.2 The reasons for this concentration of interest are twofold. Marxist historians have sought to locate in this relationship the emergence of a bourgeoisie reinforced in its economic power by French legislation, and have seen the essence of the relationship as a process in which the bourgeoisie adapted its position to the interests of a revolutionary state forged in its interests.’ The other major school of historiography, with its political origins in the Destra Storica, has looked to this period in its search for the origins of the public institutions of the unitary state, and for the formative experiences which would influence a later nationalism among the ruling elites.&dquo; Both schools have started from the supposition that the Italian propertied classes embraced the Napoleonic state as the embodiment of their cultural, political and ideological hopes, and of their material interests. Perhaps the next stage in the study of the epoca francese should involve less a challenge to their empirical findings, or even a

Review Article: The Permanent Revolution: An Anglo-Saxon Revival of the French Revolution, 1789—1815

Malcolm Crook, ed., Revolutionary France (Short Oxford History of France), Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2002; xii + 250 pp.; 0198731876 Peter McPhee, The French Revolution 1789–1799, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2002; vi + 234 pp.; 0199244146 Isser Woloch, Napoleon and His Collaborators. The Making of a Dictatorship, New York and London, W.W. Norton, 2001; xvi + 281 pp.; 0393050092; £22.50