Napoleon and Hitler

This essay discusses the question: is Napoleon Bonaparte in any significant sense the predecessor of Adolf Hitler? Is this simile a good heuristic device for bringing out hidden qualities or dimensions which we would not otherwise perceive in Napoleon? Or, at the end of the day, was Hannah Arendt right in explicitly repudiating the notion that Napoleon was comparable to Hitler? And the essay concludes that for a host of reasons—structure, politics, ideology, personality, posterity—she is correct. It argues that the simile should be withdrawn from serious conversation.     

Napoleon and Europe revisited

This article outlines the main themes of my book Napoleon's Integration of Europe (1991). Napoleonic France and Europe constituted an inseparable whole, through the ambitions of the French political class to impose an administrative prism of rational, modernising reforms on what were perceived as less developed societies. Such a study implied a dual dimension: the ideals and practices of the Imperial administration, and their impact on the subject populations. Criticisms of the book are grouped into four categories which are addressed in turn: the importance attached to Napoleon's personality and role; the implications, for analysis and interpretation, of the choice of archival sources-prefectoral and civil administration rather than police or judicial records; the influence of the Napoleonic model of administration beyond France, particularly in Germany; the possibility of treating the Grand Empire with its dependent states as a single phenomenon. Finally, it is worth noting that in the decade since publication of the book the deeper legacies of the Napoleonic model have barely attracted the attention of historians.     

The Shadow of Napoleon

A number of critics have drawn attention to the increased number of violent women in film, media and literature and to the apparent collusion between women and violence in women's own fiction. This article examines three autofictional works by Duras, Hyvrard and Cixous to see to what extent, and in what ways, these ‘textes de sang’ rewrite and rework incidents of violence in the individual and the family, of self-mutilation and imperialism, and of illness, grief and mourning. In each case, a variety of narrative techniques is employed which enable the writer to engage with, and emerge from, identities affected by violence. In all three cases, the violent fracturing of identity into ‘je/s' and ‘elles' is co-opted into a strengthened authorial voice and a new, uncollusive persona.     

Review Article: Napoleon Bonaparte

J. M. THOMPSON. Napoleon Bonaparte. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1988. Pp. xiv, 418. £20.00. Reviewed by Paul W. Schroeder     

Citizen Emperor. Napoleon in Power

Abstract

The recent Italian elections have taken place under a new proportional system, but have confirmed and even strengthened the main trends already at work since the beginning of Italy's political transition. The center-left coalition has won by the slightest margin, thus ensuring the third alternation in power since 1994. The system's extreme competitiveness underscores its full-fledged bipolar format, the eclipse of center parties, and the continuing electoral stagnation and political integration of extreme left and right. These trends coexist with a party system fragmentation whose level is within the standard of other European systems of moderate pluralism and this fragmentation is, moreover, kept at bay by the coordination ensured by the majority bonus seats provided through the electoral law. At the same time, the main parties show persistently low levels of structural consolidation, that tend to hinder the stability and effectiveness of coalition cabinets. This problem might paradoxically have been sharpened by systemic competitiveness through a negative impact on coalitional discipline and the maximization of destabilizing effects of the smallest changes in electoral and parliamentary behavior.     

Napoleon,Jefferson, and the Louisiana Purchase

Why did Napoleon sell Louisiana to the United States? Unfortunately, he left very few written traces of his Louisiana policy and, therefore, historians disagree. Their explanations tend to emphasise one of three factors: the diplomacy of President Thomas Jefferson; France's coming war with Britain; or the impact of the black rebels of the French colony of Saint-Domingue (present-day Haiti). The most heated disagreements revolve around the differing assessments of the role played by Jefferson. This article argues that Jefferson played no role in Napoleon's decision to sell the colony. It acknowledges that the British were crucial, because war with Britain meant that Louisiana would be lost to France. But why was Louisiana undefended? The troops Napoleon wanted to send there never arrived. They went instead to Haiti. And they remained there. If black resistance in Haiti had collapsed quickly, as Napoleon expected, there would have been thousands of French soldiers in Louisiana by the spring of 1803, when the French war with Britain began. By defeating Napoleon, the men whom Jefferson deemed ‘cannibals’ made it possible for him to acquire Louisiana and achieve what an eminent US historian has called his ‘greatest triumph’.