Napoleonic State Research Articles

Mass Pilgrimage and the Usable Empire in a Napoleonic Borderland

AbstractThis article analyses the biggest pilgrimage event of the Napoleonic era, showing how Catholics used imperial opportunities and imperial loopholes to progress on their path toward religious revival. In September 1810, more than 200,000 pilgrims rushed to the small provincial city of Trier to venerate one of Christianity's most important relics, the Holy Coat of Jesus. This pilgrimage could take place and grow to such gigantic dimensions because both clerical elites and laypeople deftly navigated territorial frameworks created by the Napoleonic state. In the Rhenish borderlands to which Trier belonged, French hegemony enabled the return of the relic to the city in the first place, but pilgrims subsequently exploited the malleability of public order that also characterized imperial governance. The great pilgrimage of 1810 represented neither a form of exclusively top-down mobilization orchestrated by the church and controlled by the state, nor an act of overt, politicized opposition – even as state officials, in turn, proved undeniably hostile to pilgrim mobility and ‘superstition’. The article therefore argues that, in the more peaceful parts of Napoleon's empire, pilgrims and pilgrimage organizers accelerated post-revolutionary Catholic renewal by using that empire rather than either resisting or collaborating with it.

Policy responses to the Eurozone crisis: A comparative analysis of southern European administrations

The Eurozone crisis has worked as a forceful external factor for activating a series of fiscal and structural adjustments in the countries of the EU periphery. Public administration was a key reform area and has undergone notable transformations under the fiscal consolidation programmes. This paper aims at identifying the impact of the crisis on public administration with a focus on southern Europe. It reviews and compares the goals and the outcomes of the administrative reform programmes that were implemented in Greece, Italy, Portugal and Spain during the crisis. This cluster forms a distinct administrative paradigm emanating from the Napoleonic state tradition. The relationship between administrative tradition and administrative change or persistence is explored in a historical institutionalist perspective. The findings identify similarities, divergences and variations across and within the Southern countries, also suggesting that while certain changes occurred, the Napoleonic features of the southern administrations remained largely untouched by the reform programmes.

Improving useful species: a public policy of the Directoire regime and Napoleonic Empire in Europe (1795-1815)

When the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Armies conquered most of Europe, they found unknown or hardly known plant and animal species. French naturalists, particularly the so-called agronomists led by botanists and zoologists, supported by the financial and political backing of the State, shaped an ambitious “Nature Policy”. They imported new species of plants and animals from the occupied territories to introduce them into France. The biological regeneration of French herds and agriculture was the main goal of this public policy. A unidirectional circulation from throughout the European continent towards France occurred from 1799 to 1815. But the continental blockade in 1806 cut off the supply of certain products and raw materials such as sugar, indigo and cotton. On a continental scale, in the most adapted parts of its Empire the Napoleonic State implemented an impressive policy of introducing and acclimatizing exotic plant species from many regions of the world. Many questions arise from this unprecedented circulation of plant and animal species within “French Europe”: How was it organised? On which circuits and networks did it rely? What was the role of the French state in that biological challenge? Finally, why were the results of that biological policy so disappointing?

Quo vadis? The local government in Turkey after public management reforms

In the 2000s, Turkey has reformed its public administration system in line with New Public Management (NPM) principles towards a more decentralized system. Although the initial aim of the reform process is set to achieve a decentralized and more efficient public management system, the empirical data and official statistics cast doubt on whether this outcome will ever be achieved. Analyzing local government legislation, the discretion of central government in local governance, and the changes in the status of local government in public governance, the article presents the evolution of the local government system in Turkey during the Justice and Development Party government. Points for practitioners The public management reform experience of Turkey resembles the NPM reform patterns in countries with Napoleonic state tradition. Similar to these countries, the emphasis on managerial practices over participatory elements has been prevalent in improving the efficiency and effectiveness of public services. Yet, the findings in the Turkish case challenge the proposition that managerial reforms alone, without improving local democratic governance, can enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of public services.

Local Administration in the Napoleonic Empire: The Case of Napoleon’s Third Capital

L’extension de l’Empire napoleonien en Europe a entraine l’exportation de la legislation administrative francaise, telle que la loi du 28 pluviose an VIII (17 fevrier 1800) qui a reforme l’administration locale. Amsterdam, la troisieme capitale imperiale, est un cas d’espece. Les departements neerlandais ont ete integres dans le systeme hierarchique de la gouvernance de l’Empire francais entre 1810-1813, mais ce processus etait tout sauf simple. Cet article traite de l’administration locale d’Amsterdam, et plus particulierement de la figure du maire. Comme on le verra, l’integration problematique de la troisieme capitale dans l’Empire etait en partie le resultat de conflits internes au sein de l’appareil d’Etat napoleonien. Les conflits a l’œuvre pendant des annees en France se sont transposes aux Pays-Bas ; mais les animosites locales se sont aussi revelees resistantes. Volontairement ou non, le maire d’Amsterdam Van Brienen s’est trouve implique dans ces conflits. Cet article entend montrer comment les institutions uniformes imposees ont interagi avec la culture et les traditions locales.

The napoleonic state and public health policies: smallpox vaccination in napoleonic Italy (1800-1814)

Il vaiolo ha costituto nell’Europa d’antico regime una terribile malattia che ha ucciso annualmente decine di miglia di persone. Nel 1796 Edward Jenner scopri un vaccino antivaioloso. La vaccinazione antivaiolosa fu una delle piu rilevanti innovazioni mediche nella transizione tra XVIII e XIX secolo e una dei fattori piu importanti del declino della mortalita infantile. Questo articolo indaga la politica di vaccinazione antivaiolosa, la sua implementazione e le sue conseguenze nella Repubblica e nel Regno d’Italia (1802-1814), il piu longevo degli Stati satellite napoleonici. L’articolo indaga la politica di vaccinazione sia dal vertice che dalla base, includendo normative e regolamenti, la loro applicazione da parte di ufficiali e medici, la loro efficacia, il ruolo giocato dal clero nel fare applicare le disposizioni governative, la ricezione da parte dell’opinione pubblica e le difficolta incontrate dal governo. Lo studio dimostra come lo incredibilmente razionale ed efficace in grado di immunizzare ogni anni decine di migliaia di persone. Infatti piu di un milione di persone, in prevalenza bambini, vennero immunizzati nei territori settentrionali della Penisola sotto il controllo delle autorita napoleoniche. Analizzando la politica di vaccinazione e le operazioni a cui diede luogo, l’articolo accresce la nostra conoscenza sul crescente potere centralizzatore dello Stato napoleonico e sui metodi utilizzati dal suo apparato amministrativo per realizzare la sua politica e imporla alla societa civile.

France after revolution: urban life, gender, and the new social order

Introduction I. Political Festivals 1. Staging the Napoleonic State 2. Renewing Ties with the Bourbon Monarchy II. Theaters 3. Melodramatic Spectatorship on the Parisian Boulevard 4. Sex and Politics in Provincial Theaters III. Social Life 5. Building Solidarity: Cercles, Salons, and Charities 6. Drinking, Dancing, and the Moral Order Conclusion Abbreviations Notes Bibliography Index

State reform in Greece: responding to old and new challenges

PurposeThe paper attempts to assess the impact of reforms of the last 25 years on Greek administration and more specifically on its Napoleonic features. Given that those have been reshaped by country specific socio‐political dynamics, the analysis starts by pointing out the Napoleonic features but also specific features its Greek variant. These form the context of reforms undertaken and determine their trajectories as well as their limitations.Design/methodology/approachThis paper examines four basic reform areas linked to important features of Napoleonic states: centrality of the state, centralised bureaucratic structures, labour relations in the public sector, and citizens‐administration relations. The rationale of reforms is discussed in relation to NPM trends but also to domestic challenges and priorities.FindingsThe significance of reforms undertaken varies. The state's presence in the economy has been significantly reduced and decentralisation reforms are more important politically than administratively. Citizens' rights and service delivery have been conceived rather as forms of democratisation and modernisation than as managerial reforms. Only recently labour relations in the public sector have been partly challenged while other reform aspects such as “agencification”, systematically by‐passing existing bureaucratic structures start to be part of the picture. Change has been incremental and followed pre‐established paths. The “Napoleonic” features of the state have not been seriously affected and reforms have hardly been reshaped by the new managerial paradigm. While the state remains the main reform actor and the law a typical policy instrument, a distinctive reform path emerges in Greece, as defined by the apparently contradictory rationale of a number of initiatives responding to old as much to new challenges.Originality/valueProvides a brief account of important aspects of the Greek variant of the Napoleonic state and the context of recent reforms. Features and limits of reforms are also discussed. Finally, a tentative assessment answers the central question of the paper.

NAPOLEON AND THE ‘CITY OF SMUGGLERS’, 1810–1814

In the final years of the Napoleonic Wars, Napoleon allowed English smugglers entry into the French ports of Dunkirk and Gravelines, encouraging them to run contraband back and forth across the Channel. Gravelines catered for up to 300 English smugglers, housed in a specially constructed compound known as the ‘city of smugglers’. Napoleon used the smugglers in the war against Britain. The smugglers arrived on the French coast with escaped French prisoners of war, gold guineas, and English newspapers; and returned to England laden with French textiles, brandy, and gin. Smuggling remains a neglected historical subject, and this episode in particular – the relationship between English smugglers and the Napoleonic state between 1810 and 1814 – has attracted little scholarly interest. Yet it provides a rich historical source, illuminating not only the history of Anglo-French Channel smuggling during the early nineteenth century, but offering insights into the economic, social, and maritime history of the Napoleonic Wars.

Liberty and locality in revolutionary France: six villages compared, 1760-1820

This book examines the interface between the old and the new France in the period 1760–1820. It adopts an unusual 'comparative micro-historical' approach in order to illuminate the manner in which country dwellers cut themselves loose from the congeries of local societies that made up the Ancien Regime, and attached themselves to the wider polity of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic state. The apprehensions and ambitions of six groups of villagers located in different parts of the kingdom are explored in close-up across the span of a single adult lifetime. Contrasting experiences form a large part of the analysis, but the story is ultimately one of fusion around a set of values that no individual villager could possibly have anticipated, whether in 1750 or 1789. The book is at once an institutional, a social and a political history of life in the village in an epoch of momentous change.

The Myth and Reality of Italian Regionalism: A Historical Geography of Napoleonic Italy, 1801–1814

The Myth and Reality of Italian Regionalism: A Historical Geography of Napoleonic Italy, 1801–1814 Get access Michael Broers Michael Broers Michael Broers is a reader in the Department of History, King's College, University of Aberdeen, Scotland. Among his books are Europe under Napoleon, 1799–1815 (1996) and The Politics of Religion in Napoleonic Italy: the War against God, 1801–1814 (2002). He has also published in Past and Present, the English Historical Review, and The Historical Journal on Piedmontese, Italian, and wider European themes in the Napoleonic and Restoration periods. He is currently writing an archival monograph on the Napoleonic state in Italy for Palgrave-Macmillan (provisionally for 2005). Broers is especially interested in relating interdisciplinary and extra-European fields to Napoleonic history. He will be a visiting member at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, in the fall of 2003. Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The American Historical Review, Volume 108, Issue 3, June 2003, Pages 688–709, https://doi.org/10.1086/ahr/108.3.688 Published: 01 June 2003

Resisting the cartographic imperative: Giuseppe Bagetti's landscapes of war

This paper documents the attempts of a relatively minor but talented lanscape artist to negotiate with and resist the Napoleonic technocratic state. It briefly explores the social and intellectual context of the Piedmontese Giuseppe Bagetti and the importance of text, statistics and imagery to the Napoleonic state before looking in detail at the artist's working conditions and strategies for resistance. His resistance took many forms and is visible in his art. Most interesting is his determination to distinguish landscape painting from cartography and its concerns with mathematical and geometric accuracy and empirical data collection. Bagetti's consistent aim seems to have been to carve out a realm of creativity and peace for representational art.

Napoleon's 'mayoral problem': Aspects of state‐community relations in post-revolutionary France

Overawed by the image of Napoleon's juggernaut state, historians have tended to gloss over a potentially critical weakness in its armoury. For its linkage with rural society it depended largely on 40,000 unpaid mayors, many of whom, according to both contemporaries and historians, were simply not up to the job. In an effort to gain a fresh perspective on the Napoleonic state, this article examines the problem of mayoral personnel in the countryside and official responses to it. It argues that the problem resulted not simply from their personal shortcomings but also from a conflict between their roles as state agent and representative of the village community. One way the regime responded was increasingly to appoint to mairies landlords or their clients, who often existed outside the village community. This may have helped to increase its purchase over the countryside but it implied a degree of local power-sharing at odds with Napoleon's alleged centralising vision.

Divided loyalties: Sovereignty, politics and public service in the Rhineland under French occupation, 1792–1801

In April 1792 the French Legislative Assembly declared war on the Habsburg Emperor Francis II. Within three years the forces of the Republic conquered the German‐speaking region to the west of the Rhine. Native public officials in the occupied areas faced the dilemma of whether or not to ‘collaborate’ with the invader. They confronted incompatible demands on their loyalties from the exiled Rhenish governments, the French, and the Rhineland's one‐and‐a‐half million inhabitants. The continuation of the revolutionary wars, and failure to reach an international settlement, placed public officials in the occupied areas in a state of limbo. Lacking any legal framework as a point of reference for their actions, and buffeted by the changing fortunes of war abroad and ideological conflict at home, Rhenish communities and the local officials who became their representatives were instead forced to rely on their own resources and strengths. Public officials in particular lived with the possibility of a return of the old regime and the threat of future investigation into their actions under occupation. These fears were only removed with the Treaty of Lunéville in 1801 and subsequent legal annexation of the left bank of the Rhine to the French Republic. Later attempts at assimilating the ‘New Frenchmen’ into the fabric of the Napoleonic state were nevertheless obstructed by continuing ties that bound former public officials to the German powers across the Rhine. The sovereign state's demand for an exclusive monopoly on the loyalty of all its subjects conflicted fundamentally with the Rhenish tradition of employment in the civil and military services of the major German dynasties and other European powers.

The politics of finance in Napoleonic Italy (1802‐1814)

The Republic and Kingdom of Italy (1802‐14) served as an important source of revenues for Napoleonic France. Most importantly, the authorities had to pay for a growing Italian army and for the French troops in northern Italy. To satisfy the Emperor's increasing financial pressure, Prina, the Finance Minister, increased the tax burden and reorganized the financial administration and tax collection. Prina kept a moderate property tax to secure the support of the landowners and raised indirect taxes, thereby increasing the burden on the poor. His reforms in the financial administration made it more orderly, uniform and efficient, thus strengthening the central state. While Prina modernized the financial machinery and expanded the state's resources, the fiscal pressure contributed to growing hostility from the population to the Napoleonic state. Following the fall of the Kingdom of Italy, the Austrians left the Napoleonic financial system intact, a demonstration of Prina's effective reforms and long‐term impact.

German civil administrators and the politics of the Napoleonic State in the Department of the Roer, 1798-1815

German civil administrators and the politics of the Napoleonic State in the Department of the Roer, 1798-1815

German Civil Administrators and the Politics of the Napoleonic State in the Department of the Roer, 1798-1815

German Civil Administrators and the Politics of the Napoleonic State in the Department of the Roer, 1798-1815

Private Money for Company Trade: The Role of the Bills of Exchange in Financing the Return Cargoes of the VOC

‘One does not write history with value judgements.’ Van Leur made this remark, countering the ‘Dutch refrain’ sung by Godée Molsbergen, which indicted the corruption of the VOC-servants as a cause of the Company's downfall. Van Leur explained that the standard for a modern officialdom was only created with the Napoleonic state and ‘it was therefore anachronistic to apply this standard to the 18th century’. Criticism of the integrity of the Company servants in this century is a post facto criticism. But if history cannot be written with value judgements, it cannot do without any judgements at all. Van Leur judged ‘the achievements of a Hartingh, a Von Hohendorff, a Mossel, a Van der Parra, and, on the Indonesian side, of a Mangkubumi, a Mas Sahid, a Cakraningrat certainly on par with those of Speelman, a Van Goens, and a Aru Palakka’.

Echoes of the French Revolution in the Rhineland, 1830–1849

Of all the regions of Central Europe, the Rhineland was the one most affected by the French Revolution. The area on the left bank of the Rhine belonged for almost two full decades to the First French Republic and the Napoleonic Empire; parts of the right bank were, for a shorter period, under the rule of the Napoleonic satellite state, the Grand Duchy of Berg. In studying these unusual circumstances, historians have sometimes focused on short-term political implications, asking how the Rhenish population of the 1790s responded to the Jacobin regime. They have also studied the long-term social and economic effects of the revolutionary legislation and the secularization of church lands.