Napoleonic Empire Research Articles

Сущность национализма. (По стенограмме доклада 10.04.1919, Красноярсрск)

This is the Russian translation from the German original of Hans Kohn's lecture "The Essence of Nationalism," which was delivered on April 10, 1919, at a makeshift university for Austrian prisoners of war in Krasnoyarsk, Russia. In the lecture Kohn turns to the writings of the German philosopher Fichte to offer his vision of Zionism as an integral nationalism. According to Kohn, Jews in the years of World War I faced questions similar to those faced by the Germans at the time of the Napoleonic empire. Kohn sees parallels between Fichte and Herzl in how both saw volition as a condition for the emergence of nationhood. For Kohn, nation is a com­munity founded on common consciousness and common origin. He sees nationhood as a fact of life and a phenomenon that is not entirely intelligible by science. He objects to the idea of "cultural Zionism," arguing that it does not reflect the fullness of the national ideal. Kohn refers to Hasidism as an example of a holistic lifestyle and worldview that is useful for nationalists. In the spirit of integral nationalism, Kohn appealed to his listeners to become Jews, and to participate in the common search for a national ideal.

Bibliography of Books and Articles Published in English on Colonialism and Imperialism in 2010

Bibliography of Books and Articles Published in English on Colonialism and Imperialism in 2010 Marcella Fultz, MLS, Librarian Books Abbott, Peter. Rivals of the Raj: Non-British Colonial Armies in Asia 1497-1941. Nottingham: Foundry, 2010. Abugideiri, Hibba. Gender and the Making of Modern Medicine in Colonial Egypt. Farnham: Ashgate, 2010. Adams, Catherine and Elizabeth Hafkin Pleck. Love of Freedom: Black Women in Colonial and Revolutionary New England. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2010. Al-Enazy, Askar H. The Creation of Saudi Arabia: Ibn Saud and British Imperial Policy, 1914-1927. New York: Routledge, 2010. Almeida, Joselyn M., ed. Romanticism and the Anglo-Hispanic Imaginary. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2010. Aoudjit, Abdelkader. The Algerian Novel and Colonial Discourse: Witnessing to a Différend. New York: Lang, 2010. Archer, Richard. As if an Enemy's Country: The British Occupation of Boston and the Origins of Revolution. New York: Oxford UP, 2010. Armitage, David and Sanjay Subrahmanyam, eds. The Age of Revolutions in Global Context, c. 1760-1840. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010. Arthur, Paige. Unfinished Projects: Decolonization and the Philosophy of Jean-Paul Sartre. London: Verso, 2010. Ashby, Ralph. Napoleon against Great Odds: The Emperor and the Defenders of France, 1814. Santa Barbara: Praeger, 2010. Atkins, E. Taylor. Primitive Selves: Koreana in the Japanese Colonial Gaze, 1910-1945. Berkeley: U of California P, 2010. Attar, Samar. Debunking the Myths of Colonization: The Arabs and Europe. Lanham: UP of America, 2010. Atwood, Paul L. War and Empire: The American Way of Life. London: Pluto P, 2010. Aung-Thwin, Maitrii. The Return of the Galon King: History, Law, and Rebellion in Colonial Burma. Athens: Ohio UP, 2010. Avrutin, Eugene M. Jews and the Imperial State: Identification Politics in Tsarist Russia. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 2010. Bagchi, Amiya Kumar. Colonialism and the Indian Economy. New Delhi: Oxford UP, 2010. Bailey, Gauvin Alexander. The Andean Hybrid Baroque: Convergent Cultures in the Churches of Colonial Peru. Notre Dame: U of Notre Dame P, 2010. Baker, Samuel. Written on the Water: British Romanticism and the Maritime Empire of Culture. Charlottesville: U of Virginia P, 2010. Bakewell, P. J. and Jacqueline Zuzann Holler. A History of Latin America to 1825. 3rd ed. Malden: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010. Banerjee, Sukanya. Becoming Imperial Citizens: Indians in the Late-Victorian Empire. Durham: Duke UP, 2010. Baratieri, Daniela. Memories and Silences Haunted by Fascism: Italian Colonialism, MCMXXX-MCMLX. New York: Lang, 2010. Belaubre, Christophe, Jordana Dym and John Savage, eds. Napoleon's Atlantic: The Impact of Napoleonic Empire in the Atlantic World. Leiden: Brill, 2010. Benjamin, Russell and Gregory Otha Hall, eds. Eternal Colonialism. Lanham: UP of America, 2010. Bennett, Tony and Patrick Joyce, eds. Material Powers: Cultural Studies, History and the Material Turn. London: Routledge, 2010. Benton, Lauren A. A Search for Sovereignty: Law and Geography in European Empires, 1400-1900. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2010. Bessel, Richard, Nicholas Guyatt and Jane Rendall, eds. War, Empire and Slavery, 1770-830. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010. Best, Antony, ed. Imperial Japan and the World, 1931-1945. New York: Routledge, 2010. Biccum, April. Global Citizenship and the Legacy of Empire: Marketing Development. New York: Routledge, 2010. Blackburn, Anne M. Locations of Buddhism: Colonialism and Modernity in Sri Lanka. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2010. Boggs, Carl. The Crimes of Empire: Rogue Superpower and World Domination. London: Pluto P, 2010. Bogues, Anthony. Empire of Liberty: Power, Desire, and Freedom. Hanover: Dartmouth College P, 2010. Boittin, Jennifer Anne. Colonial Metropolis: The Urban Grounds of Anti-Imperialism and Feminism in Interwar Paris. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 2010. Bradley, Mark, ed. Classics and Imperialism in the British Empire. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2010. Braziel, Jana Evans. Duvalier's Ghosts: Race, Diaspora, and U.S. Imperialism in Haitian Literatures. Gainesville: UP of Florida, 2010. Breen, T. H. American Insurgents, American Patriots: The Revolution of the People. New York: Hill & Wang, 2010. Brody, David. Visualizing American Empire: Orientalism and Imperialism in the Philippines. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2010. Brook, Timothy. The Troubled Empire: China in the Yuan and Ming Dynasties. Cambridge: Belknap P of Harvard UP, 2010. Burbank, Jane and Frederick Cooper. Empires in World History: Power and the Politics of Difference. Princeton: Princeton UP, 2010. Burkholder, Mark A. and Lyman L. Johnson. Colonial Latin America...

Book Review: The Zodiac of Dendera: The Zodiac of Paris: How an Improbable Controversy over an Ancient Egyptian Artifact Provoked a Modern Debate between Religion and Science

THE ZODIAC OF DENDERA The Zodiac of Paris: How an Improbable Controversy over an Ancient Egyptian Artifact Provoked a Modern Debate between Religion and Science. Jed Z. Buchwald and Diane Greco Josef owicz (Princeton University Press, Princeton, 2010). Pp. viii + 428 + 8 colour plates. $35. ISBN 978-0-691-14576-1.On the ceiling high above my desk is a large framed print from the 1817 vol. iv of the Description de l'Egypte showing the so-called zodiac of Dendera. Like a planispheric sky chart it shows the antique Egyptian constellations plus the familiar band of twelve zodiacal signs, and a border with 36 decans. I have been fascinated by this artifact from ancient Egypt ever since O. Neugebauer pointed out to me that the planets are placed within the zodiac according to their astrological exaltations and not according to a historical configuration. He also mentioned that the French savants dated the sky map several thousands of years b.c., whereas we now know that it dates from around 50 b.c. In the decades since that conversation my mind made a completely bogus link between the two statements, and in mind's eye I believed that those hapless scholars had tried to date the stone based on the positions of the planets. Nothing could be farther from the truth, especially because in the early 1 800s the hieroglyphics and the planet's names hadn't yet been deciphered.In The zodiac of Paris, Jed Buchwald and his former student Diane Greco Josefowicz set me straight on such matters, bringing to life in immense detail the fraught French political and intellectual scene in the opening decades of the nineteenth century and the almost forgotten role of the Egyptian zodiacs. France was still reeling from the Revolution, followed by the Republic, the Napoleonic Empire, and the Restoration. In the course of this rapidly evolving scene came the ultimately abortive but interesting Napoleonic campaign in Egypt, 1798-99. The scholarly team that accompanied him included archaeologists who investigated the partly-buried temples at Esna (Esneh) and Dendera. To cut to the chase, the ceilings of these temples included among their mysterious inscriptions several that were clearly zodiacs: a rectangular one at Esna, and another, longer one at Dendera, as well as the circular zodiac, which plays the title role in the book. Since very little was then known of the sweep of Egyptian history, such astronomical artifacts offered a possibility of dating this enigmatic civilization.The savants went to work with what in retrospect was a wildly speculative dating attempt, and already in 1799 a young geographer, Jean-Baptiste Coraboeuf, proposed a date in a letter to the astronomer Lalande. In the rectangular zodiac at Dendera, the constellation Leo was at one end. Could this constellation have represented the summer solstice? …

Emilio Ocampo, The Emperor's Last Campaign: A Napoleonic Empire in America

Emilio Ocampo, The Emperor's Last Campaign: A Napoleonic Empire in America

The Muslims in France and the French Model of Integration

:Local seasonal migrations have long been common in France, and the migrations can be throughout the whole Europe. The identification and assessment of such migration in European countries trace back to 1805 under the Napoleonic Empire regime, when nationality was based on jus sanguinis (Latin, right of blood) with the ultimate purpose of ensuring sufficient recruits in the Napoleonic armies, which is unlike the Republican France today that defines nationality on the basis of jus soli (Latin, right of the soil, also known as birthright citizenship). At the beginning of the 21st century, immigration has become a major challenge to the French domestic policy, and is closely linked to the issues of public safety, national identity, labor market, development of the European Union public policy, and the integration of the second generation by the secular, republican French model. The migration within and outside of the Europe demonstrates four conceptual issues: European residents’ country of origin, French nationality, the exercising of French citizenship, and the construction of a personal identity in the context of a more and more complex family ethnic composition after the restructuring.

The Emperor’s Last Campaign: A Napoleonic Empire in America

The first few chapters of this volume appear to promise a fast-moving, multifacted adventure story, combining Napoleonic history with that of Spanish American independence and thus having potential appeal to two different sets of specialists. For Latin American studies it has the merit of doing justice to the contributions of a large contingent of French military veterans and adventurers who took part in the independence struggle even if, as sometimes happened, it was for them a sideshow or stepping-stone in (they hoped) a larger project to rescue Napoleon from his imprisonment on St. Helena. Some of these men are familiar names, but as a group they tend to be overlooked amid the attention devoted to Simón Bolívar’s “British Legion,” which of course was far from strictly British. Unfortunately, the story soon bogs down in an almost excruciating mass of detail, much of it repetitious, concerning ambitious plans and conspiracies, most of which never came to fruition and in fact may have been quite imaginary in the first place — as the author himself occasionally, but perhaps not often enough, frankly recognizes.Emilio Ocampo is an Argentine “financial adviser” and professor of banking, not of history, and he takes a very traditional narrative approach to his topic. Year by year up to Napoleon’s death in 1821, and jumping back and forth from continent to continent or island to island, he chronicles the life of Napoleon and his jailers and the involvement of his sympathizers (of whom a surprising number turn out to be British) in plans to spring him loose from his prison and/or to work for the independence of Spanish America. It was naturally assumed that Napoleon himself, if released, would somehow aid the latter struggle. Naturally, any reader will lose the thread from time to time. But Ocampo must be given credit for a truly impressive amount of research, combing archives on both sides of the Atlantic and reading widely in often obscure secondary sources. To be sure, there is no bibliography of books and articles, only 80 pages of endnotes giving both published and manuscript sources. For a “detailed bibliography” one is referred to the Spanish version published in Buenos Aires in 2007, which is described as “expanded,” though it has an only slightly greater page count (I confess I have not actually seen it).Anyone who has studied the independence period will probably conclude that the author tends, understandably, to exaggerate the role of the Napoleonic veterans. For example, in his treatment of the abortive República de las Floridas of 1817 he greatly overplays Napoleonic at the expense of Bolivarian connections (not that Bolívar himself accepted responsibility for the project). The treatment is also Plata-centric, as might be expected from an Argentine author: thus the greatest patriot success during the first five years of revolution is not Bolívar’s Campaña Admirable in 1813 but the taking of Mon-tevideo by Buenos Aires forces in 1815. Ocampo’s grasp of northern South American geography is shaky too, for he places Cartagena and Ríohacha in Venezuela rather than Colombia. Yet he portrays the Argentine Liberator José de San Martín in quite unfavor able light: too much of an Anglophile, his relations with the Napoleonic diaspora and its creole collaborators were cool at best. Ocampo decidedly prefers Martín’s rivals Carlos de Alvear and José Miguel Carrera. For the Latin Americanist the concurrent story of goings-on at St. Helena and the constant stream of real or alleged projects to rescue or release the famous prisoner has the particular attraction of sheer novelty: most of us surely have given little thought to anything that may have happened to the ex-emperor after Waterloo. And apparently not much that was substantial did happen, despite the obsessive fears of his principal British keeper. But St. Helena was an ideal breeding ground for paranoia all around, and most readers will surely end up sharing some of Ocampo’s sympathy for the great man.Of course not many readers can be expected to plow through the entire book, but a sense of what was going on can easily be gained by browsing, and in the long run Ocampo has provided all students of the period with an invaluable reference tool. Most index entries consist simply of page numbers, without topical subheadings, but still all the Napoleonic veterans are there, as are scores of participants not just in the St. Helena story but in Spanish American independence, including quite a few whose involvement, however marginal, in schemes of the Napoleonists will come as a surprise. Or at least it was a surprise to me.

The emperor's last campaign: a Napoleonic empire in America

Napoleon's last campaign didn't end at Waterloo. After that fateful day on June 1815, hundreds if not thousands of veterans of Napoleon's army emigrated to America. Many went farther south and joined the rebels fighting for independence in the Spanish colonies, from Mexico to Buenos Aires. Bonapartists roiled the Western World as they sought fortune, fame, and glory in the expanding United States and in the tumultuous Spanish Americas suffering from repression and civil disorder, and even in the states of Europe.Among them were Lord Thomas Cochrane, Sir Robert Wilson, Charles Lallemand, and Michel Brayer, some of the most interesting characters of the Napoleonic era. This is the first full-length examination of the Bonapartists who emigrated from France after Napoleon's defeat and exile, who formed a loose confederation with adventurers and romantics, and who contemplated a new empire in the Western Hemisphere. scheme had the support and encouragement of the fallen emperor himself and his brother Joseph, former King of Spain. Emilio Ocampo has examined archives on three continents and sources in several languages to ferret out the evidence - a monumental task considering that conspirators tried to leave no evidence of their plans, and that a failed plot, like failure in general, leaves few claimants.Ocampo reinterprets Latin American independence as an international event that drew in all the states of the Atlantic basin. By illuminating the complex connections between the shattered France of the Bourbon restoration; new radicals in a Britain inspired by the French Revolution; Napoleon in exile at St. Helena; the United States, where home-grown adventurers and French emigres alike saw opportunity; and, the collapsing Spanish colonial empire, where revolutionaries were allying themselves with the veterans of Napoleon's Grande Armee, Ocampo brings together two bodies of scholarship: Napoleonic history and Latin American independence. The Emperor's Last Campaign is a fascinating story, well told, and peopled with all sorts of improbable individuals and schemes that perhaps just missed coming to full fruition.

Between Napoleon and Tsar Alexander: The Polish Question at Tilsit, 1807

The defeat of Prussia by Napoleon in 1806 and the resulting insurrection in Prussian Poland re-opened the complex ‘Polish Question’. The former Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth had been wiped off the map only eleven years earlier. The large size and the civic traditions of the Polish ‘political nation’ meant that the three partitioning powers (Austria, Prussia, Russia) were bound to be alarmed by the developments in Prussian Poland. Napoleon’s attitude to the Poles was cautious, but, as the campaign against Russia (Prussia’s new ally) continued into 1807, he authorized the creation of a Polish army and of a quasi-government in Warsaw. The article examines the negotiations over the future of Prussia’s Polish lands held between Napoleon and Tsar Alexander I at Tilsit in June–July 1807. Hard geopolitical considerations influenced the negotiations which eventually produced a compromise solution in the form of a so-called ‘Duchy of Warsaw’ under the King of Saxony. Although the Poles had no direct influence on the negotiations, the Polish military effort on the side of France was an important factor in the outcome of the settlement. The Russians remained deeply wary of the new duchy, especially after its enlargement in 1809. With the collapse of the Napoleonic Empire in 1814–15, Tsar Alexander acquired most of the duchy which was to survive for many years under Russian rule as the so-called ‘Congress’ Kingdom of Poland.

Kings, Clients and Satellites in the Napoleonic Imperium

Napoleon shaped his Empire with the expansion of dynastic possessions, the cultivation of princely clientele and the establishment of satellite and allied states. He built his imperium on the foundation of historic French relationships. This expansion began with the Revolutionary Republic and achieved its fullest extent under the Empire. Expansion was not pursued as a universal principle, but instead, each state became a part of a grand strategic objective related to respective enemies. In some cases, states served as buffers between France and their immediate enemies, but shortly thereafter served a dual role as offensive and defensive components of the Republic, and later Napoleonic Empire.

MONSTRE SACRÉ:THE QUESTION OF CULTURAL IMPERIALISM AND THE NAPOLEONIC EMPIRE

ABSTRACTThis review considers, first, current work on the Napoleonic Empire dealing with Switzerland, the three parts of ‘Germany’ (the Rhineland, the ‘Third Germany’, Prussia), Spain, and the so-called ‘national’ question(s) in these countries and regions. It next focuses on recent work on the three parts of ‘Italy’ (the Kingdom of Italy, the départements réunis, and the Kingdom of Naples). But the main body of the review concentrates on the work of Michael Broers: not only his new and remarkable conceptualization of the Empire as containing ‘inner’, ‘outer’, and ‘intermediate’ zones, but also his creative if controversial application of post-modern colonial theory to an analysis of the French in Italy. The review suggests that Broers, for all his brilliance and mastery, has perhaps pressed his arguments and conclusion beyond his evidence base. The latter, while extensive, is too limited to just French perceptions of Italians before 1815, and does not extensively consider Italian reactions to the French presence; nor does it provide significant evidence to buttress Broers's far-reaching conclusions about nineteenth- and twentieth-century Italy.

French Attitudes toward Poland in the Napoleonic Period

The period 1806–1815 in Franco-Polish relations was marked by more French influence on Polish soil than ever before or since. Nonetheless, French attitudes toward Poland and the Poles during the Napoleonic period were molded not by personal experience but rather by stereotypes established earlier by a discourse created during the Enlightenment, positing Poland as Other. Despite the resulting negative view of Poles held by most French generals and statesmen, Napoleon was not captured by this treatment of Poland for he had need of the Poles and would not allow any construct to impede his path. Napoleon’s views were decided by events and the Poles—despite French apprehensions— and fulfilled Napoleon’s expectations. Napoleon looked to the Poles as a means to an end: the extension of French power and the Napoleonic Empire. Napoleon’s relationship with the Poles was thus based on an imperial discourse, based on the unequal status of French and Poles. French influence and power in Poland became a self-justifying argument for continuing control of Polish affairs.

Napoleon Bonaparte, Political Prodigy

AbstractThe multiple roles, images and interpretations of Napoleon make it difficult to develop a scholarly consensus about the nature of his rule. The essence of Napoleonic rule derives from a triangular relationship between Napoleon Bonaparte, the post‐revolutionary French state and the Napoleonic Empire. Recent scholarship highlights the nature of the post‐revolutionary French state and the impact of the Grand Empire on Europe. Even so, Napoleon remains central. His relentless warmongering required massive conscription, the cutting edge of the modern state, and produced the main contradictions of the Empire. No wonder the nature of his rule remains controversial.

Constitutional thought under the Union of the Netherlands: The ‘Fundamental Law’ of 1814–15 in the political and intellectual context of the Restoration

SUMMARY In 1814, after the defeat of the Napoleonic Empire, the Allied states decided to unite the former Dutch Republic and the former Habsburg Netherlands (the later Belgium), as part of their attempt to elaborate a balanced system of European states. As the age of nationalism was arriving, the chances of this unification succeeding depended upon the gradual integration of the two parts into one Netherlandish nation. Stefaan Marteel argues that the eventual failure of this project, which abruptly came to an end with the Belgian Revolution of 1830, can to a large extent be ascribed to the differences in the political and intellectual history of the two countries, differences that found expression in the development of irreconcilable political languages during the constitutional debates of 1815 and thereafter. In the Northern Netherlands, despite the experiments with radical constitutionalism since the Patriot Revolution, the republican past proved a major obstacle to the construction of a functional constitutional monarchy. The paradoxical result was the enforcement of monarchical authority within a political model that was clearly designed to be constitutionalist. In the Southern Netherlands, on the contrary, the rupture that occurred in its political history owing to the annexation of France allowed, in 1814, for certain innovations in political thought. These innovations were further inspired by the idea that the new political order lacked historical legitimization. Consequently, when social issues arose, such as problems concerning education, religion and public freedom, the government and the political opposition in the Belgian provinces would persistently draw on different interpretations of the constitution. This, in turn, reinforced the impression of a fundamental national division, and created the conditions, should a popular revolt occur, for a rapid radicalization in a nationalist direction.

Nineteenth-Century French Women, the Home, and the Colonial Vision: Les Sauvages de la Mer Pacifique Wallpaper

Nineteenth-Century French Women, the Home, and the Colonial Vision:Les Sauvages de la Mer Pacifique Wallpaper Christin J. Mamiya (bio) Early scholarship on the history of European colonialism was predicated on the assumption of male agency—that men were responsible for constructing the premises and methods of colonialism and for implementing those imperatives (i.e., colonizing other lands). In recent years, scholars have increasingly turned their attention to women's engagement with the sites, rhetoric, and premises of colonization. These gender-specific studies have dealt primarily with the presence of Western women in the various colonies.1 But what of Western women who remained at home? What was their engagement with colonialism? Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 1. Les Sauvages de la Mer Pacifique. Joseph Dufour (printer), Jean Gabriel-Charvet (designer), ca. 1805. Block print on paper. Overall size: 6'2" x 34'11". Honolulu Academy of Art. Gift of Anna Rice Cooke, 1928 (2692), Conservation treatment supported by Mr. and Mrs. Christian H. Aall. This essay investigates these questions by focusing on a popular panoramic wallpaper produced by Joseph Dufour et Cie. in 1804 titled Les Sauvages de la Mer Pacifique (Savages of the Pacific Ocean) (Fig. 1). Depicting a wide range of Oceanic peoples and marketed in the years immediately following French expansion into the Pacific, this wallpaper raises the intriguing question, how [End Page 100] might this particular wallpaper have contributed to early-nineteenth-century French women's understanding of colonial practices? This question is predicated on the notion that wallpaper, as an element of interior décor, can serve as a social agent. Relatively few substantive social histories of interior decoration exist; most publications on furniture and wall treatment focus on issues of style, taste, and production. Recently, scholars have begun to produce in-depth social histories that serve as models in exploring the question of how interior décor functioned socially and historically.2 These histories are based on the belief that in addition to the dynamics of use, the various elements that constituted interior decoration were part of the visual rhetoric that helped to convey class and identity. As literary scholar Andrea Kaston Tange notes, the cultural meaning of home depended "heavily on the visual as both a tangible image and a metaphor."3 Although her study focuses on the Victorian middle-class home, Tange's central concept—that decorating a home involved the management of social signifiers—applies to homes of the emerging middle class in early nineteenth-century France as well. Especially in light of the social upheaval caused by the French Revolution just two decades earlier and the establishment of the Napoleonic empire in 1804 (concurrently with the production of this wallpaper), social identity around the turn of the century in France was a fragile and no doubt carefully negotiated entity. Anything (e.g., clothing, social circles, professions, home décor) that contributed to that identity would have been chosen with care and deliberation. Further, as the middle-class home became increasingly delimited as private domestic space (in contrast to the workplace), women spent more time there than did males, who left during the day for work or school. Therefore, it seems reasonable to conclude that although this wallpaper was not designed for a [End Page 101] female audience, middle- and upper-class women would have been among its primary viewers. Dufour acknowledged this in a published brochure that accompanied Les Sauvages, suggesting the uses to which this wallpaper could be put: "A mother will give effortless lessons in history and geography to her eager, inquisitive and intelligent daughter."4 Answering this question of how Les Sauvages contributed to nineteenth-century French women's understanding of colonialism thus entails consideration of a number of factors: European incursions into the Pacific at the end of the eighteenth century, notions of domesticity and the home, and the physical viewing dynamic (i.e., the nature of spectatorship and how viewers interacted with the wallpaper) that was encouraged by this panoramic wallpaper. It is my contention that Les Sauvages de la Mer Pacifique visually duplicated the incipient colonial rhetoric, thereby presenting visual justification for the colonial imperative to middle- and upper...

1806 and Its Aftermath: Revisiting the Period of the Napoleonic Wars in German Central European Historiography

If the French faced the 200th anniversary of the Napoleonic Empire with some trepidation about how to commemorate the infamous Corsican, the British celebrated the Battle of Trafalgar as an enduring national victory. A grand exhibit in the National Maritime Museum in London, “Nelson and Napoleon,” observed this event in 2005. In contemporary Germany, however, the commemoration of 1806 has occurred mainly among small circles of specialists and remained largely absent from popular historical consciousness. In recent times, besides the exhibition on the Holy Roman Empire in the German Historical Museum in Berlin, only small local exhibits and substantial articles in magazines like Die Zeit and Der Spiegel recall 1806. Past momentous occasions such as 1848, 1914–1919, 1933–1945, and 1949 clearly overshadow in contemporary historical memory the tumultuous decades that surrounded the Napoleonic Wars. This tendency to overlook and underestimate the significance of the early nineteenth century also remains evident among scholars who work on later periods of German history. In the shadow of World Wars and the Holocaust, the period of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars between 1792 and 1815 seems distant to the contemporary audience. But why do historians also tend to disregard the importance of this era of warfare and domestic, social, and economic transformation—a period so rich in complexity—and its enduring consequences for nineteenth- and twentieth-century Europe?

L'influence de la mémoire de la Révolution française et de l'Empire napoléonien dans l'opinion publique française face à la guerre d'Espagne de 1823

Kôbô Seigan, Memories of the French Revolution and Napoleonic Empire and their Impact on French Public Opinion at the Time of the Spanish War of 1823 The war against revolutionary Spain enthralled the French press under the Restoration. The liberal newspaper Le Constitutionnel was hostile to the war, while the ultra La Quotidienne was in favour. Both discussed the issue by referring to official texts, private letters, English newspapers and even papers from the opposite camp. Moreover, the war rekindled memories of the French Revolution and the Empire. The Constitutionnels version, however, was ambivalent. It separated the Revolution from the Terror and favoured the former to the detriment of Napoleon, thus doing nothing to encourage Bonapartism. It also dwelt on the importance of forgetting the past. For La Quotidienne, the Napoleonic period was subsumed in the Revolution. Its logic was simple but powerful. Besides, it succeeded in becoming a "mouthpiece" for those who had fallen for the nation and criticized the liberals for being unpatriotic.

Influences de la symphonie concertante sur la musique de la Cour parisienne sous l'Empire et la Restauration (1800-1830)

[fr] La vogue du concert public à Paris, à la fin du XVIIIe siècle, fut à l'origine de l'essor phénoménal que connut la symphonie concertante. Le répertoire de la musique de la Cour - entre 1800 et 1830 - est particulièrement représentatif de cette mode : il révèle une place encore insoupçonnée laissée à la virtuosité. Agrémentant les messes de la Chapelle ou les bals donnés lors de fastueuses soirées, ce « style concertant décoratif » devint un élément constitutif de l'apparat gouvernemental sous l'Empire et la Restauration. Une sorte d'académisme officiel que les événements politiques de 1830 et l'essor du romantisme musical feront définitivement disparaître.

Les membres du Comité Central de Vaccine, une poignée d’hommes qui ont bien mérité de leur patrie, et même de l’humanité

Two hundred years ago, in May 1800, a private initiative set up a "Central Committee of Vaccine" in Paris. A handful of men launched an extraordinary research: how to implement a still recent and little-known discovery, a method to protect people against small pox. The news came from England, with which France was on bad terms. Smallpox was a fearsome disease killing one tenth of the population and disfiguring or maiming as many again. After several failed attempts, success was reached and the value of the method demonstrated. The committee played a major role in spreading the vaccine (thanks to Jenner) not only in France but also in the whole of the Napoleonic Empire. His remarkable experiments were published and made known to the whole western world. The Committee was made official en 1804 and operated until the foundation of the Academy of medicine, which took over its duties and responsibilities. The French owe a lot to this Central Committee of Vaccine, which greatly contributed to fighting small pox and eradicating the disease finally.

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.

Madness and Military History in Balzac's "Adieu"

The distinctiveness of Honore de Balzac's Comedie humaine has often been linked to its representation of contemporary society. For both Erich Auerbach and Georg Lukacs, for instance, Balzac inaugurates a new style of by portraying the present. Auerbach maintains that Balzac is one of the founders of modern realism for having seized upon the representation of contemporary life as his own particular task (468). And Lukacs writes that Balzac transcends the historical novel of Walter Scott by passing the portrayal of past to the portrayal of the present as history (83). While Balzac does abandon the overtly historical mode of his romans de jeunesse in La Comedie humaine, certain works, such as the I830 short story Adieu, continue to grapple with the past. Through its use of historical reference, Adieu problematizes the representation of and the integration of the past into the present. Balzac reworks historiography in the nouvelle, and transforms it, with an eye, perhaps, to competing in La comedie humaine with the rival genre of history. In Adieu this preoccupation with history, specifically figured as an episode from Napoleonic Empire, belies the idea that Balzac has moved beyond the past and that its representation is no longer of compelling interest to him. On the most basic level, Balzac uses historical material to construct the plot. But the historical events go beyond mere backdrop or catalyst for the story since Balzac raises issues that the historians of the period themselves are confronting: what kind of relation does the Restoration have to the past, and how can the past be represented, with all the attendant horrors of the Revolutionary and Imperial period? Adieu presents the story of a veteran of Napoleon's Russian Campaign, Philippe de Sucy, who happens upon his beloved Stephanie de Vandieres after having given her up for dead at the crossing of the Berezina years before. She has gone mad, is incapable of recognizing her lover, and unable to utter anything other than a blank and meaningless adieu. The text describes Philippe de Sucy's attempt to get her to recognize him and the ambiguity of his eventual success. In telling this story, Balzac presents a historical narrative, Le Passage de la Beresina, as the traumatic scene at the source of the plot. The account of the crossing of the Berezina River by the remnants of the Grande Armee in 1812 comprises 25 pages of this 65-page text, set off as a separate chapter. This section is striking for the way in which Balzac molds it into a historical set-piece. Balzac's narrative technique recalls historiographical accounts of the event, suggesting that Adieu is explicitly commenting on the genre of history. For example, Balzac oddly shifts the tale into the third person. The story of Philippe's attempt to cross the river with Stephanie is told by Stephanie's uncle and doctor who has heard the tale from someone else. This third-person perspective seems out of place since Philippe is in fact in the best position to tell the tale. It is also curious that the tale is told by Stephanie's uncle as her story, while the narrative is focalized through the character of Philippe. The personal character of the tale becomes further reduced by the Balzacian narrator's elimination of dialogue and digression in the presentation of the narrative: [L'oncle de Stephanie raconta longuement au magistrat l'aventure suivante, dont le recit a ete coordonne et degage des nombreuses digressions que firent le narrateur et le conseiller [d'Albon]. (162) Here, the Balzacian narrator highlights the fact that the situating marks of the discourse have been excised and the narrative has been taken out of the realm of casual storytelling. The opening of the aventure emphasizes as well a wide-angle, distanced view of the episode by describing the movements of the troops and giving an overview of the encampment on the banks of the Berezina. …