Page 33 - Encyclopedia Of World History Vol IV

1334 berkshire encyclopedia of world history

A national debt, if not excessive, will be to us a national blessing... It will be a
powerful cement to our union. • Alexander Hamilton (1755–1804)

much of Africa and Indochina in the late nineteenth cen- at Valmy did so with the cry “Vive la nation!”Whether or
tury. The legacy of the Napoleonic empire in European not the victory was the result of nationalist fervor or
and imperial history is less in Napoleon’s transient mil- effective artillery is a moot point. However, there is little
itary exploits than in the durability of his civil reforms. doubt that the mass mobilization with which the Revo-
lution met its enemies, the administrative and cultural
Michael Broers
centralization begun by the Republic and continued
See also Napoleon under the Empire, and the belief in France’s destiny
inspired by Napoleon prefigured many of the themes of
later nationalism. So too did the response that France’s
Further Reading victories evoked. Resistance to French armies was carried
Alexander, R. S. (2001). Napoleon. London: Arnold. out in the name of the nation, even when—as in the case
Bergeron, L. (1981). France under Napoleon. (R. R. Palmer, Trans.).
Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. of the patchwork of states, principalities, and imperial
Broers, M. (1996). Europe under Napoleon, 1799–1815. London: possessions which was to become Germany—no politi-
Arnold.
Broers, M. (2001). Napoleon, Charlemagne, and Lotharingia: Accultur- cal entity corresponded to that name. Indeed, it was in
ation and the boundaries of Napoleonic Europe. The Historical Jour- the German language that the nation received its first
nal, 44(1), 135–154. explicit philosophical articulation, in the writings of
Dwyer, P. (Ed.). (2001). Napoleon and Europe. London: Longman.
Ellis, G. (2000). Napoleon. London and New York: Longman. Johann Gottfried von Herder and Johann Gottlieb
Ellis, G. (2003). The Napoleonic empire (2nd ed.). Basingstoke and New Fichte. Once it found expression, the rhetoric of nation-
York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Emsley, C. (1993). The Longman companion to Napoleonic Europe. Lon- alism was taken up with great enthusiasm in the nine-
don: Longman. teenth and early twentieth centuries. Wars were fought,
Englund, S. (2004). Napoleon. A political life. New York: Scribner. dynasties overthrown, empires challenged, and borders
Esdaile, C. (1995). The wars of Napoleon. London: Longman.
Geyl, P. (1949). Napoleon: For and against. London: Bradford & Dickens. redrawn in the name of national self-determination.
Grab, A. (2003). Napoleon and the transformation of Europe. New York: The conventional wisdom has been subject to criti-
Palgrave Macmillan.
Laven, D., & Riall, L. (Eds.). (2000). Napoleon’s legacy: Problems of gov- cism on many fronts. Some have argued that nationalism
ernment in restoration Europe. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. had very little presence in the consciousness of ordinary
Lefebvre, G. (1969–1974). Napoleon (Vols. 1–2). New York: Columbia people until well into the nineteenth century and perhaps
University Press.
Schroeder, P.W. (1994). The transformation of European politics, 1763– even later. Eugen Weber (1976) has shown that most
1848. Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press. French peasants in the late nineteenth century had little
Tulard, J. (1984). Napoleon: The myth of the saviour. London: Weiden-
field & Nicolson. sense of being French. John Breuilly (1982) has argued
Woolf, S. J. (1991). Napoleon’s integration of Europe. New York: that nationalism was initially a political project designed
Routledge.
to further the interests of elites, and only engaged popu-
lar sentiment as a result of the administrative and edu-
cational policies of the state. If this line of criticism en-
courages us to think of nationalism as emerging rather
Nationalism later than the end of the eighteenth century, a second line
of criticism locates nationalism earlier. Linda Colley’s
ntil recently, it was the conventional wisdom that (1992) account of eighteenth-century Great Britain tracks
Unationalism arrived on the world stage in Western the development of a sense of British national identity
Europe around the end of the eighteenth century. Its over that period. Colley’s argument is not inconsistent
birth was sometimes dated more precisely: 20 September with, and indeed it presupposes the existence of, an Eng-
1792, when the French revolutionary troops who turned lish and perhaps even a Scottish sense of national iden-
back the invading Prussian and Austrian coalition forces tity before that. Liah Greenfeld (1992) and Anthony W.