School of War - Ep. 17: Alexander Mikaberidze on Napoleon

Episode Date: February 15, 2022

Alexander Mikaberidze, Professor of History and the Ruth Herring Noel Endowed Chair at Louisiana State University-Shreveport, joins the show to discuss the Napoleonic Wars. Times 01:12 - Introduction 07:38 - How did European attitudes toward Napoleon change over his life? 13:34 - Nuances of nationalist sentiment Napoleon inspired 15:13 - Napoleonic wars, French hegemony, and geopolitics 20:23 - Napoleon's youth and the French Revolution 24:49 - Napoleon's early campaigns and his rise to power 29:16 - What is the Napoleonic way of war? 33:43 - What is Combined Arms and what are its advantages? 37:42 - What is the Eastern Question to Napoleon?  45:55 - How did Napoleon think about the Western Hemisphere?  53:46 - What remains of Napoleon's legacy after the Congress of Vienna? Link Book: The Napoleonic Wars: A Global History

A megalomaniac bent first on the domination of Europe and then the world, the mass mobilization of national armies, innovations in military tactics and techniques that would change warfare forever, a conflict that was truly global and in so many ways truly modern. No, not the first or second world wars, but the wars of Napoleon Bonaparte. But as much as the 19th century dawned confronting a kind of warfare that was in some ways genuinely new, long-standing patterns of 18th century European conflicts still dominated. Let's look at the period and see what's relevant for us, confronting a new era of European war. It is a prescription for war, this Iraqi invasion of Hawaii.

December 7, 1941, a date which will live in infamous. The bloody experience of Vietnam is to end in a statement. We continue to face a grave situation in Iran. and the people who not see buildings there. We shall fight on the beaches. We shall fight on the landing grounds. We shall fight in the fields and in the streets. We shall never surrender.

Hi, I'm Aaron McLean. Thanks for joining the School of War. I'm joined today by Alexander Bica Barice. He is Professor of History and the Ruth Harry Noel endowed chair at the Louisiana State University in Shreveport. Alex, thanks so much for joining. Good morning. How are yours?

I'm great. You are joining us today to discuss Napoleon and your fascinating new book about the Napoleonic Wars, a global history. Before we get into the book and to Napoleon in history, you talk about how you grew up in Tbilisi. And now you're teaching in Louisiana, a scholar of Napoleon in the Napoleonic period. How did this happen? Oh, you know, Napoleon changed my life. So as a little kid, you, you, you. you know, I think most kids like history.

There is a certain passage, a turning point sometime in a high school when they turned away from it for the right of your reason. But of course, we all love past and especially, you start with kind of in a passion for the heroic moments. And Napoleon, in that sense, this kind of romantic vision of a man, self-made man, who drags himself to the top of the world only to dash, right,

and be chained like Prometheus to a volcanic rock in the middle of Atlantic. Of course, that is an irresistible story. And I tell my students, it draws you in like a siren, right? You get into the story because of the romanticism. And so Napoleon was something I remember as a little kid, you know, eight, nine, ten years old, kind of be fascinated with. But I never thought it will be my career. I actually started as a lawyer.

I went to the law school, finished it, practiced law, and then at one point I realized, I actually like history more. So off I go. A lawyer who did not enjoy practicing law, shocking. I've never, never heard of such a thing. No, I don't, I do still, I have a, now I have this kind romantic memories of practicing law. There are moments when I think about it. I were like, maybe I made a mistake. But then I love my students. I love fact that I can spend the day reading and writing and exploring the past.

So your youthful interest in the romantic vision of Napoleon, and this reminds me, you know, Prince Andre and War in Peace has the same sort of view. and as he grows older, he doesn't get to grow that old. His view changes. Has your view changed as you sit before me a mature professional? Does Napoleon still have the same romance, or how has it evolved for you? Oh, that's a great way to put it, my friend. I think like Andre, I got shot on the field.

I've seen the reality, right? In the book, I have a passage where I kind of lay out this thing, and I might take on it. And one is that it is hard to resist the romantic allure. It is very hard to fight against the Napoleonic legend, which is a thing the great victory in Napoleon achieved over all of his opponents. Anyone who goes to the battlefield of Waterloo and visits a local souvenir store will be pleasantly or maybe not surprised to see that two-thirds of artifacts there

is about the loser, about Napoleon, and there's only a small corner about actually victor's. And it's even then, for a bloomer, the Prussian commander, is actually almost none and non-present. So I still have kind of grudging respect and admiration for what this man was able to accomplish, how talented he was. It is impossible to read through his correspondence, to read his letters, reports, and not be a, by his ability to work for 14, 16 hours, his ability to retain level of detail that is simply astounding. In my own books, I discuss things like when he is stuck in Moscow

in late September, early October of 1812, waiting for Russians to respond. And he has to deal with a military situation, but also run the empire that stretches from Madrid to Warsaw from, right, Copenhagen to Naples. And while running this empire, he also writes the statute of the French theater. And he reviews long, long reports of promotions. In fact, I've seen these kind of originals where he handpicks people who needs to be promoted.

it and he pays attention to wear small units, units on the level of company. There is a letter that came across where he's chewing out the governor in Italy for sending 200 men in the wrong road. It's astonishing. But that's one side of the men. There are also sides to him that are very unpleasant to contemplate. He was very ruthless. He is ambitious.

He is arrogant. So it's methods that he used. Quite unpleasant to contemplate from the modern point of me. So you have to reconcile these two sides of the men. But to me, it makes, you know, I always tell students that history is never about simplicity. It's always about complexity. It's about diversity. It's about looking at events in the past through this kaleidoscope that we used.

to do as a kid, right? Caledascopes were about looking through the tube and seeing new shapes emerging that are multiple, you know, colorful, but also with many different angles. You don't look through kaleidoscope to look, you know, just expecting one color or one shape. And that's how I look at history and look at people like Napoleon.

Yeah. Stepping out from the personal for a second, how did European attitudes towards Napoleon change over the course of his career? I mean, obviously early on or even towards the middle of his performance, you have, you know, Hegel discussing him as the embodiment of history itself. He is somehow a revolutionary force. And then he's not. But how does that process proceed?

It actually happened in terms of his process itself, it's quite interesting how rapidly it changed the perception of it. And not just of him, but of revolution. and what it stood for. And I think one of the best examples of it is from the places like Rhineland or northern Italy, where the news of revolution are welcomed by the locals in Italy, they would be known as patriots who would like to see changes and creation of a new society that is based on equality before the law and equality of opportunity and, you know, merit and all that. And we see both in southern Germany and Italy when the revolutionary armies arrive,

in Italian case led by this young General Bonaparte, quite a few Italians welcomed them as liberators as people who are promising them something different and new and fresh. But then literally months later, in some cases weeks later, harsh reality sets in that this man come as occupying force. Napoleon, he talks about emancipation, but he also talks about confiscation of art, heavier taxes, war indemnities. And then you have to reconcile that. Is it this new reality?

Is it good for you? And that only is is going to exacerbating as we go off. forward because once Napoleon consolidates his power, he starts building a new imperial system. And in the book, I talk about this Napoleonic settlement, that he essentially brings to every territory that French army occupied the next decade. And in practice, it meant things like centralization of authority, bureaucratization of. of governance and making sure that bureaucracy is run efficiently and smoothly.

It entailed reforming tax system and making more efficient. And in my own classes, I asked, are such reforms good or bad? And you always have a response that some people say, hey, efficient government is a good thing, right? Having a reform tax system is a good thing. But there is also a downside to it is that if the efficiency of the government means that also intrusiveness of authority. So if you live in places like Italy or German states or Spain and you see this guy coming and says,

hey, I'm going to get to set up and more efficient government for you, that government is also efficient in controlling you, in extracting resources from you, in dictating the pace of life, which meant that quite very often all across Europe, the response to the changes in Napoleon abroad was resistance. resistance because it was perceived as too intrusive, the pace of a lot too fast of a change, but also because it would perceive this foreign. We talk about French style reforms, French style changes in places like this failure, which Napoleon in Western Germany creates a new kingdom, completely new kingdom, as a modern state of what French reforms are about. Well, he brings about Constitution. He brings about tax reform. He brings about a new administrative military reform.

But it's all done with the French, French king, French ministers, French military officers. So if you are an average, the fallacious, right? Is it a good thing? When do you look at it as a cultural imperialism? It runs strongly against the grain of the sort of nationalism, right, that's typically associated with the French Revolution and the idea of liberty that comes from it, that you would then have essentially imposing foreign rule on a local population of a different, you know, ethnicity speaking a different language. Quite the wake-up call from the 17-90s. Exactly.

And the French Revolution is crucial in really awakening this force of nationalism in a sense that within France, it fostered that idea of unity of a nation and mobilization of resources of the nation for the cause. So we see in 93 Levea en masse, right, a total mobilization of national resources. But that same kind of revolutionary process of which

Napoleon is a manifestation it also provoke the counter reaction to it. It places like Spain, in places like Prussia, in places like in the southern Germany where the notion was, well, we don't like what the

French are doing in our territory. And if you don't like it, right, you have to define what is it that you want instead. And part of that defining it is coming up with your own sense, you know, what makes our seniors as opposed to French, what are making sense of Prussia as a German as opposed to, to the occupiers. And that becomes in itself, right, this national nation building process. That's interesting because, of course, you know, we'll, I think talk about the 18th century here in a second.

But in the 18th century, before, of course, I mean, even to an extent after, I mean, it's not at all unusual in European history to have, you know, ruling cliques that are a different nationality than the population for which they are, they are responsible, though even that language for which they are responsible probably betrays some modern prejudices. And so it's fascinating dynamic. So you go through, you know, this nationalistic fervor unlocked by the revolution. Then Napoleon behaving in actually a very traditional manner, a pre-revolutionary manner, which then further stokes the nationalistic sentiment. That's interesting. Yeah. And then actually, you touched up on a very important issue, Aaron, is that in the book, I try to make this argument that Napoleon is the byproduct of revolution, but the way

he behaves is pro-revolutionary. And in that sense, I looked at him not necessarily as a child of revolution because we have quite a few instances where he is not a revolutionary at all, right? His instincts are actually to control the people and to control the freedom, which is under abolition. Instead, I look at him as the last of the enlightened best threats, this long-headed series of rational, right, reform-minded individuals who were about changing and, you know, kind of bringing a change by change that is controlled, with a focus on increasing the efficiency and power of the state. And foreign affairs, Napoleonic wars, in many respects, are the continuations.

of pre-revolutionary struggles rather than the ideological struggles that revolution left. Yeah, to me, was one of the most striking points of the book, and it's one of those points that it's so simple. You wonder why you don't see it until somebody points it out, but that the Napoleonic Wars rather than being, and I may mingle, feel free to correct my specific articulation of this, but rather than being a continuation of the revolutionary wars, they are, as you just said, a continuation of the patterns of the 18th century,

or the long 18th century and specifically within that of these recurring French bids for hegemony resisted by you know varying coalitions of which the key is typically Britain well why don't we talk for a minute about that world world system is a slightly um it's not quite the right way of describing it that that pattern that pattern that persists in European politics from what the 17th century through Napoleon. What are the major what are the major issues there? Here, I think, and in the book, I try to lay out the system, you know, kind of give the reader a crash course on international system. It was beginning through the 18th century. And what we see is the multi-tiered system.

We have powers that are primarily land powers and interested in, you know, focused on affairs in Europe, on the continent of Europe. So places like Prussia, places like Austria, these are strong powers, certainly Prussia in the wake of seven years of war, or just as a premier power. But the Prussian and Austrian interests are landlocked. So neither of them have Navy, neither of them have colonies. And of course, their interests would be very different from places like France or countries like Spain or Britain whose interests are both in Europe but also elsewhere. So of course if you're a Spanish king, you are probably more concerned about what's happening in your colony's places like Mexico or in New Spain where your massive

silver mines are sustaining your budget and your military in the field. Or if you're French, you'll be of course concerned about maintaining your control of the lucrative plantation-based systems in new colonies in the Caribbean, of course, places like Sandomang. So, Friends, therefore, is like a generous, right? It both looks to the land and it maintains a massive army, but it also looks to the sea and tries to keep up there as well. And then you have British, an island nation, which by its very geography, it's focused, primarily on its naval force. The British Army is famously quite small in size.

In fact, that's one of the great kind of impacts of Napoleonic wars, is the vast expansion of the British land, army size, in order to confront the French threat. But the fact that Britain has that an island, geography to its advantage meant that it's, it's largely safe from the predatory activities of continental powers. One cannot but wonder what would have happened, right?

If there was this kind of narrow connective strip of land that Napoleon could have walked over to London. Yeah. Because he had a great run there from, what, 1800, about 1809. Well, no, that question, that question could be asked at various points about British history. in some ways it could be asked about the United States and the Atlantic and Pacific oceans today. Absolutely, exactly. I mean, that's the destiny of the geography

kind of puts on the countries. Geography is a destiny because you're bound by it and it's not something you control and gives you the advantages or disadvantages that you have to make the best off. And in this case, of course, Britain and France I think sets up a strong.

that in the book I compared to much later, well, much earlier, kind of struggle between Sparta and Athens. So it's not, you know, Athens being this superb naval power, Sparta being this superb land power, right? And I cite the society's this is this famous expression about the rise of, right, the one nation, one power that causes the concern and threat.

and fear of another. And that's precisely what we see in Europe at the result of a revolution in Napoleon. It's by 1802, France is hegemonic power. There is no other country that comes close to it on the continent and that is of tremendous concern to Britain. So let's see the start of that rivalry. Let's step back a couple years from that. So you know, you just described this, this recurring pattern of European competition, say, that goes on for over 100 years. And then the French Revolution sort of, it kind of detonates like a bomb in the midst of this. And French society starts to tear itself apart, probably betraying some of my own political prejudices in the way that I phrased that. And Napoleon somehow, this remarkable man emerges from that. Let's talk about

him in his youth for a second. So he's an artillery officer, but, you know, not, I think, a prominent member of French society in terms of where he emerges from. How does he come to prominence? He is an outsider. And I think that's an important point to make because for much of his youth, he felt like an outsider. We have to remember that he's born on the island of Corsica, not a Frenchman. His mother tongue is Italian. For the rest of his life, he spoke with a heavy Italian accent. And if you read the letters he actually wrote himself. They're full of mistakes, you know, the French letters, and him kind of using words in improper sense.

So he always had that. And in fact, the, you know, what we can call like French intelligentsia, right? The French writers, intellectuals always snubbed him for that, you know, that he was never kind of fluent and polished in his deluge. But Napoleon was lucky in many respects that he was born just three months. He was born in August of 1769. He was born just three months after the French defeated the local Corsica resistance in occupied the island.

The disaster battle was in May at Pontinova, which meant that when he was born, he was born as a subject of the French king. And his father was smart enough to jump the French band. and to secure recognition from the French monarchy of the family's nobility, which meant that even though they were poor, even though they were from the periphery, even though they spoke that funny French, Napoleon was able to go to royal schools, military schools, on the royal scholarship. So if he received superb education in that sense, he was able to score high enough grace to be accepted in a superb regiment, La Fére regiment, which was among the oldest and

most efficient artillery regiments. But if not for the revolution, just like for that entire generation of man who would come to prominence, if not for revolution, Napoleon would have picked probably maybe captain. That would probably would have been the extent of his career, because, again, the poor nobleman with no connections would not have been able to advance beyond that. That's why Napoleon rallies to the cause of revolution because he sees the benefit to himself. It's revolution. One of the core promises was careers open to talents. You are not being promoted or raised or appointed because you're related to somebody and, you know, a pedigree of money, but because you're talented and smart guy.

And of course, revolutionary wars only promoted this process because revolution had a very, you know, zero tolerance for incompetence. I remind listeners of people like General Alexander de Boarnet, who would you failed to achieve a military goal and was executed. Or General Costan, right, failed to achieve the military goal set to him to be by the government. He was recalled and condemned and executed. So there was this kind of natural process by which many of the incompetent officers were weeded out and those who were talented rose to the top. And Napoleon is one of them. And certainly he was the brightest in this constellation of remarkable officers that France

produced in 1790s. And so early in his rise to power, you have these two great campaign. of the revolutionary period. You have Italy and then Egypt, one broadly successful, the other somewhat less so, but they both advance his career. Talk to us a bit about those. Both of them, as you mentioned, are crucial to Napoleon's rise to power, but for different reasons. Italian campaign is, of course, the campaign that makes his career. It is the campaign without which Napoleon would never have made it. And it is still stunning to look at this campaign

and to realize that here you have, right, the campaign, just to remind listeners, the campaign started in April of 1796. Napoleon has a small army. He's facing much larger coalition force of Piedmontese, which is the, northwestern Italian state and Austrian, which united, as a whole, were outnumbering him by T2-1. And of course, they had significant military resources in Italy, not the list of which was

this famous quadrilateral fortresses, center that Mantua. And yet, the campaign starts in April, and in the span of less than a year, Napoleon out maneuvers his opponent. he inflicts decisive defeats onto them. He knocks Tiedmont Peace out of war within the first four weeks of the war and then mobs up the Austrians in the next several months, taking control of Northern Italy. It's the pace of it, the flexibility of it, the ability of Napoleon to shift the directions

and to come up with what we now, in factually referred to as, this Napoleonic way of conductive warfare is still is stunning. Egypt, by comparison, is very different there. And in the book, I argue that Napoleon's invasion of Egypt, which starts in the summer of 1998, the French army leaves the French shores in May, but they reached Egypt, the Egyptian shores only in July. Well, this invasion to me is the first instance of liberal imperialism. And I think that's again this reflection of French Revolution.

It's kind of a moment when you realize how quickly revolution transcended the borders of France and goes as far as Egypt. And what I mean by liberal imperialism is that it is the first attempt to incorporate a problem, and especially the province of the Islamic world within European fold on the promise of bringing freedom. We are here to free you, but we are also here to control you. Here you see kind of this key elements of oriental discourse that we'll see in later decades,

coming all, kind of converging with Napoleon, ostensibly coming to modernized and free Egyptian society, ostensibly it introduces the basic elements, the basic principles of French Revolution, but all done within the context of military occupation, which then engenders resistance, vociferous resistance, from the population that looks at these principles as too radical and too foreign. In that sense, it kind of foreshadows our own experiences where we see places like Afghanistan, We spent two decades now fighting in Afghanistan trying to bring what we think are the liberal and kind of progressive reforms and yet facing efferves resistance from the local population. And that Egypt is a very important case study for that.

And of course, Napoleon was able to sell what ultimately is a military defeat. But he is a brilliant propagandist. He's able to sell it as a victory. So when he comes back, abandoning his army in Egypt, but personally returning to France, he's welcomed as a national hero, which allows them to seize power just one month later. You talk about a Napoleonic way of war. And in the book, you have an interesting observation that he's a kind of synthesis of insights or advances in the art of war that precede him.

What does that mean? What does he learn? And how does he apply it in a way that's unique to him? He is fortunate in many respects that he came at the crucial moment, I think, in time. This is a moment when in the wake of seven years' war, there is a tremendous attempt going underway in France, especially, of reassessing military efficiency, reassessing military capacity, capacity. Your readers remember that seven years' war was a disaster, an unqualified disaster for France. And so there is no surprising that after 1763, the French military theories like Giber, like Bursay, like many others, sat down and said, okay, what didn't work? And they reassessed

how to wage the war. So, for example, Bursas' famous. writings talked about conducting, right, the fast-paced warfare, dividing the forces in multiple columns, all the things that Napoleon, we know, learned. He read Bursa and he read Bébert and we read others, learned as a young officer, and then practiced them in places like Italy. The revolution only made this possible. because again, as I mentioned, if this was without revolution, if only would have been a junior officer.

Stock in that ranks, never given, never given a chance to try any of those ideas that he did. But the revolution made it possible for a person like him. Just to go back to 1796. If we look at his appointment in 1796 as the commander in chief of the army of Italy, and then look what was his prior experience then you'll be surprised to see that he never commanded in previous years anything

anything comparable to the army size in fact maximum he came was what we can I think safely call a brigade but the powers to be right in the government of France in the directory appreciated his skills and they trusted him with an army this would have been unthinkable in the older way, on the Anciar regime. And so what he did, therefore, is he looked at

what works in practice during Revolutionary War. So when the wars ended in 1802, and Napoleon can now has this breathing space for about two years, two and a half years, what he did is he set up military camps, massive military camps. Sometimes I refer in as camps of Boulon, but although Boulon was just one of the places, along the northwestern coastline of France. And there, he trained his troops. He practiced with them. He, for example, realized that one of the innovations of the Revolutionary War, not done necessarily by Napoleon because his campaigns in Italy and Egypt were still division-based. But one of the things he realized in places like Rhineland, French generals, were already practicing combined arms on a core level. And so Napoleon borrows that idea.

It's not his, but he borrows and he brings it to perfection. It creates this classical core system around which what will be known as the great army, La Grande Armée, is coalescing by 1805, seven major cores, each having a little bit of cavalry, infantry, artillery, auxiliary, capable of functioning as a separate unit. One of Napoleon's great innovations was to keep this permanent and to have same commanders, same headquarters governing it. And that system will take Europe by storm over the next five years.

A really simple question, but maybe I think listeners will benefit from it. What is the advantage of combined arms? Why is it so important? What is the innovation of? establishing it at the core level. How does it actually work? So if we look at other armies, let's say a Russian army or, you know, Prussian army. So you will have, of course, cavalry and infantry and artillery, but there will be separate units on the separate orders, the orders of commander or general.

The commander-in-chief, of course, will have an overarching authority over them, but effectively there will be, you know, it will be up to that individual content. to make sure that they are deployed in one place or the other. And besides, when you want to achieve an operational goal, right, so you'll have to figure out which of these units go where, do the commanders work with each other, do they know each other because these personality conflicts, we all know, right, play a important role. The French system gives them much greater efficiency

because Napoleon actually deals on the core level. He has generals who are in charge of the corps. These scores are permanent. These officers work together for years. They together, they jive, they understand, especially after that two years, almost two years that they spent training at Boulon, where they practice tactical deployments, movements, right?

This would have been a remarkably smoothed military machine by 1806, 1806, which means that Napoleon then can set objectives for a core and be certain that this unit, which has all the ingredients in place, will be able to achieve this object. And if we look at the way Napoleon conducts the campaigns, he oftentimes employs a grand tactic, the kind of operational system that is known as Batayong Kare.

So you'll have this four or more cohorts moving in a diamond formation. So if the reader can imagine the kind of diamond shape with the 20 to 40,000 men's strong cores at each of the corners. And what it allowed them is to move on separate roads. So they can spread out for much larger distance, which makes it easier to provide logistics for them farther, right, the positioning within a larger area. But these individual cores are also strong enough that if enemy confronted them, if enemy threatened them, that they will be able to resist for 24 to 36 hours, which is exactly the amount of time that Napoleon needed to strengthen the actions operation and bring the rest

of the army to bear on the enemy. We see that in places like 1805, right, in Urum campaign, or in 1806 in Yenna campaign to destructive results against the Prussia, or 1807 campaign against the Russians when in place it like Friedland, right? A single course, Russian observed near the town of Friedland. They decided to take advantage of it and destroy it. But the core was strong enough since it had all the ingredients to hold the ground for 12 hours, allow the rest of the French army to swoop in, resulting in the decisive victory for the French. That is the system.

And by 1807, 1808, it is so efficient and so clearly delivering the results that other countries have to adjust to it. So you see develop a core system in Russia, core system in Austria, right? Because they have to contend with his enemy. And the best way is to beat him is to borrow some of the things that makes him so efficient. Yeah. That's an interesting point, which we should come back. to in a minute but i like your your book is called a global history and this is um you know a major contribution that you make to the discussion of all this is focusing on affairs beyond europe and i

you know it hits home with me this is this is relevant to the seven years war not the napoleonic wars but i i grew up in northern virginia not that far from braddock road um where of course as you as you know the braddock general braddock took his british and colonial troops up you know through the through the through the mountains over to the, close to the source of the Ohio to fight the French, with poor results, at least for him personally. But you know, these, you know, you wouldn't necessarily think about it running around playing in the woods, but I was a nerdy kid and I did. And, you know, these patterns, these impacts of what are really European great power

struggles are all around us in North America and Asia and India and everywhere else. So what are the, you know, the important, this is an enormous question, but what are the, What are the global dimensions of the Napoleon? Of course, maybe we can break that down into pieces. You talk about, for example, you talk about the Eastern question from Napoleon's perspective. Well, let's start there. What is the Eastern question? How does he think about the Ottomans and beyond?

Thank you. I think before I respond to it, I do want to point out, as you alluded to in your comment, is that the European powers and the squabbles that had a tendency to spill over on the, a much larger scale before Napoleonic wars, a war of Spanish succession, war of Austrian succession, and of course most famously seven years war, French and Indian War in American, right, understanding of it. They all had this kind of global dimension of it. What made Napoleonic wars different is the scale intensity and the duration of it. So like seven years war, the Napoleonic war is for the North America, is further in the Caribbean, but the intensity of it

and the consequences of it are far greater, I think, in the Napoleonic context, not the least of it is Napoleon losing the empire in the Caribbean, selling Louisiana, or even to me, of far greater importance will be the issue of Spain losing its empire as a result of the Polyanic wars in the Western hemisphere. And same applies to the Eastern question. Now, let's say seven years war was never played out in the context of Middle East, but Napoleonic wars did. And that's where Napoleon's invasion of Egypt in 1798 is such an important moment in time,

both because it brings the French, you know, boots on the ground with this kind of new ideology to a region that was clearly not receptive to it or not interested in it, but also because of the response by, from other European powers. In the book, I try to emphasize that it is not as much what Napoleon tried to do in Egypt that matters, because ultimately the French lost and they were kicked out. It is what other powers, especially the British perceived they might do that really is crucial. Looking at the correspondence through 1798, 79, you see that the senior British government officials were concerned that the French will march out of Egypt,

will go to places like Arabia, Iraq, and Iran, and then will either take ships across the Arabian Sea or march all across Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and modern states, of course, to India and then threatened the British interests there. And the men like Richard Wellesley, who are oftentimes ignored in these kind of popular discussions of Napoleonic era. In academic circles, we know of him and we've paid close attention to him. But we often forget that William, you know, Richard Wellesley, sorry, were very Napoleonic in their mindset, right? Wellesley was the Governor General of British East India Company.

It happened so that he was appointed to lead this company in 1798, and he is on the way to India Justice Napoleon lands in Egypt. And what Wellesley does is he looks at this as the French threat, quote, right? French threat, that everything he does from 98 to 1805 well sleep couches in this context that this is a national security issue. It's not about British necessarily securing markets, which is an important issue. But it's about security. It's about national security. And so he goes on a remarkable rampage between 1798 and 1805, where the result of his, direct or indirect methods, the British presence in India doubles in size. So your listeners might remember the Anglo-Missauian War of 1799.

Well, that war was fought on that exact premise. The Sultan of Mysore, Tipu Sultan, was accused of having pro-French sentiments and conspiring with the French against the British presence in India. So the British forces invaded his state, besieged his capital of setting up by them, and had the Sultan killed. And we see emergence of that, you know, a subsidiary, indirect relationship that Wilson then imposes on other Indian states that creates what later on will be the British Raj. That is, to me, the direct reality of that Napoleon's invasion of Egypt. Even more, all-encompassing is, of course, the issue of what might happen if the Ottoman Empire collapse. Because that was a worry among many European statesmen who were concerned of the great pressure that Russia was exerting on the Ottomans.

I remind you that in the 18th century, Russians fought the Ottomans almost every decade, from 17th teens, from 1730s, 50s, 60s, of course, 60s from 67, 74 was the great campaign that the Russian commanders like remandest to conduct against the church, which results in enormous gates for Russia. So there was this perception that the Ottomans will teach right on the verge of collapse what will happen to this vast territory. And Napoleon was very keen, very keen on getting involved. And he, he had a very duplicitous, I would say, depletious diplomacy. Maybe it's part of the phlegic, right?

The nature of the beast. But he would promise one thing to one side and the very other thing to the others. So a good example of it will be his policy in caucuses, my own homeland, where in spring of 1807, he promises to recognize Iran's control of Georgia, my own land and Caucasus, especially Eastern Caucasus,

within the Iranian sphere of influence. And then just months later in July, he sits down with the emperor of Russia and recognizes Russian control of Georgia, Russian control of Caucasus because he needs Russians more than Iranians. So it's all part of that longer issue of Eastern question that will reverberate through the 19th century. And shifting out to the Western Hemisphere, you gave us a preview that it's really the end of Spanish control that is the headline there.

So talk to us about that. And also talk to us about my impression has always been that the Napoleonic Wars create a kind of space for the United States to come into its own and in a sort of unmolested fashion that may not have existed without them. So we'll get to that too. But how does Napoleon think about the Western Hemisphere and what are the consequences of the period out there? Napoleon has early in his reign. He has, I think, great ambitions for the Western Hemisphere. Of course, France had historical presence here through the colonies, such as San Doming, President Haiti, of course, Guadeloupe, San Lucia and the different islands in the Caribbean.

And of course, on the mainland, especially in Northern America, right, we have the presence of Louisiana, the existence of Louisiana, where I reside nowadays, which was established in the French outpost. Of course, revolution poses great challenge to the survival of the French colonial presence because a revolution, of course, promised freedom. If we read Article 1 of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen, it simply states, men are born free and remain equal in their rights. When documents like this, of course, reached the colonies with a promise of freedom and equality

in the harsh reality of slavery. The inevitable outcome was the start of the slave revolts, which in 1791 starts in Haiti and will rage with ferocious intensity for next 13 years. Napoleon, and that's where we see his kind of anti-revolutionary nature. So Napoleon looks at events in Haiti as direct threat to French imperial colonial interests.

And instead of embracing, let's say, the men like to sound liver too, right, the leader of the Haitian slaves, he actually sends punitive expeditions that wreak havoc on the island. And that's one of the most kind of issues that came to. to four, especially last year, when France and British and Americans were commemorating, I don't want to use this kind of celebration one, but commemorating bicentennial of Napoleon's death. And certainly in France, there was the first debate about does he deserve that, right? Because of things that the French did under his leadership in Haiti. It's atrocious,

right? Vering on the mass murder campaigns. In many cases, the French used gas chambers using sulfur gas to exterminate the Haitians. But the loss

of Haiti, which is finalized by 1803, the loss of it meant that Napoleon understood that these dreams of empire in the West essentially over. And that becomes huge in determining the future of Louisiana. And again, for listeners, this is not just the state of Louisiana, right? We talk about a massive territory that stretches a stretch back then from New Orleans, almost to Vancouver, right? Certainly from New Orleans all the

way to Canada. That was sold to United States and it's overnight doubled the size of this of fledgling American Republic. Now, there is a gap then, right, from 1804 to about 1808, for four years when the western hemisphere is more or less quiet. There are isolated kind of expeditions here and there. There are British, for example, trying to suppress slave revolts on the islands of Caribbean. There are British expeditions to open up Spanish colonies to British trade in places like Boyna's Is.

where the British invaded in 1806. But to me, the turning, really the turning point is Napoleon's decision to invade Spain in the spring of 1808. Once that decision is made in French troops, poor into Spain, take over a Spanish monarchy, detain the king and his family, and then force him to abdicate their rights to Napoleon and his brother, well, the colonies, this massive colony, Spanish colonies in the Western Hemisphere, sphere are really facing three choices. One is to accept this resignation, this abdication, and pledge homage to the Bonaparte regime,

right, and recognize Jose. Napoleon's brother Joseph, right? Recognize him as Jose, king of Spain. Or say no, and we are still loyal to the old regime, to the Bourbons. We still recognize Carlos or in most cases it will be Ferdinand, his son. Or a third option, which increasingly will be embraced by many of the colonies would say, do we really need Spain? Now, especially in places like Rio de la Plata, right, most of the Argentina.

If you are, if you're living in Buenos Aires and the British tried to invade your region in 1806, actually they tried twice, 186, and then once again, 187, and twice you defeat them, right? This is premier power, and you humiliate. Wouldn't you ask, do we really need the Spanish king who made, who did nothing to help us in this? I mean, we clearly can stand on our two feet. And so Napoleon's decision to invade Spain, therefore, unleashes a centrifugal force of of colonial struggle for independence. Of course, revolution provides a lot of ideological underpinning to it.

So many of the patriots in places like Chile and Colombia and Argentina were indeed inspired by the French revolutionary rhetoric. So you can read the writing, so let's say, Simone Bolivar or others who borrow key elements of revolutionary rhetoric and then fit it within the colonial reality in South America. But the end result of it is, even though it's a long and bloody process, the end result of it is that by 1820s, early 1820s, there will be no Spanish empire. Instead, you'll see the emergence of, in many respects, modern Latin America. So you'll see emergence of independent Mexico, emergence of Argentina as a separate state, Chile, right? Colombia, Venezuela, creation of the new state of Bolivia. All these are the direct result of all the process of Napoleon inadvertently, right, unleashed in 1808. There's a lot more to discuss here, of course, but we are short on time.

So I'll take us to the Congress of Vienna, which is sort of a natural place to finish a discussion of this period. And, you know, having spoken to you the last hour, I'm struck by the fact that, you know, I think the sort of stereotypical vision of the Congress is, you know, the French revolutionary fever has finally been broken. The genie is back in the bottle and we're going to return to the old ways. And I guess in a way, there's something to that. There's something modern about Napoleon that is innovative and does have to be returned. But as you, I think, pretty persuasively show in the book and in what you, which you've said here. Napoleon in so many ways is a continuity with the with the 18th century

system and in that way the Congress is less a change of pace and more just a resolution of a specific question, right? The French hegemonic, you know, the Napoleon question specifically. But what, what, you know, in 1815 and beyond, what remains of Napoleon's legacy? What is, what is it that never returns to normal given the fact that he has, you know, stood astride Europe and done so much around the world in the period in which he was in power. That's a great question. And I would say that when, you know, I mentioned this in the beginning kind of of our conversation that that Napoleonic settlement, right, the issue of centralization of the authority, the idea of rational government, the idea of effective government, right,

bureaucracy, national conscription and tax system, all this provoked a lot of animosity and resistance. But what we see is that once Napoleon was removed from equation, the governments, local governments, understood the importance of Napoleonic changes. So they kept a lot of it in place. places like Bavaria, right? Napoleon's changes were beneficial to the king of Bavaria, so a lot of that state. Or think about the restructuring that Napoleon did in Europe. He finds Germany, and I'm using Germany as geographic term, really. He finds this Germany divided into over 300 different political entities organized in this

archaic Holy Roman imperial structure, which he destroys 1806 Holy Roman Empire, and Napoleon replaces it with a far different entity, the Confederation of the Rhine, which reduces these hundreds of states to just three dozen. They're from 39. So 39 states. Congress of Vienna, for all the things that they complained about, Napoleon kept that structure. They changed the name from Ryan Confederation to German Confederation, but the union that Napoleon creates survives. In fact, that's why it becomes kind of, Napoleon becomes inadvertently the,

the men who laid the foundation for the German unification down just a few decades later. It also is that in France, within France, when the Bourbon dynasty was restored, And we look at what they did in Louis 18, the new king granted the charter of 1814, this constitutional document, that the charter effectively consolidated and enshrined all the key achievements of Napoleonic. Administrative system is Napoleonic, legal system, is Napoleonic, tax systems, Napoleonic financial systems, Napoleonic. And it is in that sense, Napoleon is the founder of the modern French state, right? It survives for decades to come.

There are, of course, something to be said about other parts of Europe. And here, in the book, I argue that here, the impact of Napoleon, it depends on the duration of the system. So places like Belgium, Netherlands, southern Germany, northern Italy that were conquered by the French early on and that stayed on Napoleon's control for better part of 15 years would have been much great, would have been impacted far greater than places like Poland or Dutch view of Warsaw, which Napoleon came into control of in 1808 only to lose it in 1813, so barely five years. or think about Dalmatia in modern-day Croatia, where Napoleonic system is established in 1809, reforms introduced 10 and 11, and then they kicked out 1813. So there is only literally four years of the French presence. The vestiges of their impact will still survive, but nonetheless, the core impact of Napoleon is alone in Western Europe and parts of Central Europe. There is another important one.

And in fact, your listeners can see, can see, but I have this wonderful book here. It's part of this kind of new scholarship that is coming out on the security system, the security system that comes out in the wake of Napoleon. How do we control population? How do we control down the road the outbreaks of revolutionary violence like this? and I'm holding Adams and Moist's Phantom Terror. I love that name, Phantom Terror, because here what you will see is that the government's having this kind of paranoia

of fear of conspiracies, fear of revolutionary activities that will facilitate the expensive, significant expansion of the state's power. So in the wake of Napoleon, you see, for example, development of systems like passport controls. actually transnational databases of people who are suspected of revolutionary activity, coordinating government response to revolutionary threats. That is a huge legacy because it is this system that will try to keep the liberal aspirations of generations of Europeans under control.

In 1820s, when you see the new wave of revolution, they are crushed by the coordinated response of the of the conservative powers. Ironic on a number of levels among in this telling it, Napoleon's key legacies are, you know, Metternich's system of domestic control and, you know, Bismarck's quest for German unity. That's an unusual ending to the story. Alex McAberidze, author of the Napoleonic Wars of Global History. This has been a fascinating discussion. Thank you so much for joining us.

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