Napoleon's Integration of Europe - Softcover

Woolf, Stuart

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0415755530 ISBN 13: 9780415755535

Publisher: Routledge, 2015

Synopsis

Histories of the Napoleonic period are almost exclusively biographies of the man, or political-military accounts of his wars. But such wars were only the first stage in a far more ambitious programme; the establishment of a rational state which would force the pace of modernising society. Through an examination of the experiences of French domination, Napoleon's Integration of Europe explores the implications of such a project for France and its relationship with the rest of Europe. It examines the problems of ruling a progressively expanding empire, as seen through the eyes of a trained corps of bureaucrates who were convinced that their scientific methods would enable them to understand and govern the mechanisms of society. However it also looks at the populations subjected to French rule, at the nature of their resistance and adaptation to the principles of the Napoleonic project. This book is the first overall comparative study of Europe in the Napoleonic years. It is a study not only of an early exercise in imperialism, but of the conflict that is aroused between the rationalising tendencies of the modern state and the spatial and cultural heterogeneity of individual societies. As well as a history of France, it is also a history of Italy, Germany, Belgium, Holland, Switzerland, Poland and Spain at a crucial moment in the history of each nation state.

About this title

About the Author

Stuart J. Woolf (University of Essex) (Author)

Edition details

• Publisher: Routledge
• Publication date: 2015
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0415755530
• ISBN 13: 9780415755535
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 330