This book explores imperial entanglements to reassess the Napoleonic Empire as a missing link—or at least an important chain—in the global and longue durée history of Empires. In recent years Napoleonic studies have, belatedly but resolutely, embraced the transnational historiographical turn, vastly expanding the field’s geographical scope. Its canonical chronological boundaries, on the other hand, appear increasingly narrow against this wider backdrop, giving the impression of a parenthetical, almost anachronistic aside from 1799 to 1815. What connects, and what doesn’t connect, the Napoleonic Empire to the Age of Empire, remains by and large an open question. Put another way, this book attempts to locate the Napoleonic empire in World History.
Author(s): Thomas Dodman, Aurélien Lignereux
Series: War, Culture and Society, 1750–1850
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Year: 2023
Language: English
Pages: 344
City: Cham
Series Editors’ Preface
Contents
Notes on Contributors
List of Figures
List of Maps
List of Tables
Introduction: Opening up the Napoleonic Empire
Finding a New Historiographical Frame for a New Historical Object
Setting Sail on the Napoleonic Empire: New Directions
Part I: The Napoleonic Empire, Between Imperialisms
Joseph Eschassériaux: From New Colonisation to Imperial Diplomacy—Hypotheses as to a Reconversion (1797–1803)
The “Eschassériaux Moment”: 1797
Colonisation, Civilisation and Nation: A Project for Europe
Permanence and Change
Conclusion
Napoleon of Arabia? Piracy in the Persian Gulf, the French Threat to India, and British Imperial Responses
A Quiet Backwater? The East India Company and Gulf Piracy at the End of the Eighteenth Century
A Great Fear? The French Expedition in Egypt and Napoleon’s Endeavours in Arabia
A Persisting French Threat on India? Franco-British Encroachments in Persia
The Jacobin and the Mameluke: Islam, Race and Political Culture at the End of Empire
The Making of the Mameluke as a Political Category
Mamelukes in Political Transition
Chateaubriand’s Mamelukes
The Restoration Mameluke
Korais’s Greece and Napoleon’s Empire: The Egyptian Campaign, Race Science, and the Europeanization an Idea
Korais and France, Korais in France
The Egyptian Campaign, Civilization, and Race Science
After Empire: Korais’s Greece and the Greek War of Independence
Conclusion
The Scientific Appropriation of the World: The Imperial Legacy in Naval Officer Training
Officer Training: The True Napoleonic Legacy for the Navy
Reappropriating an Imperial Education
Enhancing Scientific Capabilities
Scientific Abilities in the Service of Objectives of French Power
Diplomacy, Prospecting, Military Campaigns
Aimable Constant Jehenne: A “Poster Boy” for the ESM
Conclusion
Free Ports, Free Trade, Freedom: Napoleon’s Manifold Legacy in Institutions and Images
Unfulfilled Dreams: Napoleon and a Global System of Free Ports
Unimaginable Entanglements between the Atlantic and the Mediterranean
Unexpected Legacies: By Way of Conclusion
Part II: Individual Trajectories and Imperial Conversions
Tracing the Colonial Careers of Two Former Napoleonic Officials: Godert van der Capellen and Bernard Besier
The van der Capellen and Besier Families
Napoleonic Period in the Netherlands
Indonesian Imperial Careers
The Java War (1825–1830)
Conclusions: Traces of Napoleonic Empire-Building?
French Colonial Governors in the First Half of the Nineteenth Century: Miniature Emperors?
More of a Napoleonic than an Imperial Crucible
A Napoleonic Officer?
Napoleonic or Imperial Officials in Colonial Action?
From New Départements to the New World: The Colonial Itinerary of an Imperial Agent
An Imperial Agent’s Conversion
Becoming a Person of Note
A Dignitary of Masonic Universalism
The Colonial Obsession
The Guyandotte Company
A Civilizing View
“Contriving to Pick Up Some Sailors”: The Royal Navy and Foreign Manpower, 1815–1865
Foreigners’ Percentages and Rating during the Algiers Expedition, 1816
Foreigners’ Percentages and Rating during the Crimean War, 1855
Continuous Service and the 1860s
Conclusion
Indian Horizons: Four Officers of the Empire in the Sikh Kingdom of the Punjab (North-West India), 1822–1849
From Egypt to Algeria: General Pierre Boyer’s Counter-Insurgent and Imperial Career
From the Egypt of Bonaparte to the Egypt of Muhammad Ali
The “Law of the Sabre”
Holding Oran Against a Rebellious Surrounding Countryside
Part III: New Beginnings Overseas
Algiers, the Last Napoleonic Conquest
The Napoleonic Conquest of Algiers Did Not Take Place
Algiers in Napoleon’s Great Game in the Mediterranean
The Boutin Report
The French Faced with the Algiers Option
From the Napoleonic Conquest to the Total Conquest
Towards a New Territorial Union?
A Napoleonic Legacy: The Algiers Government Commission
The Colonial Split
Algeria as a New Imperial Construction: Between a Search for Abilities and a Place to Politically Relegate Foreign Veterans
An Army for Conquering Algeria: Political Transition in France, Revolutionary Upheavals in Europe and Foreign Refugees
Consolidating the July Monarchy by Taking Account of the Potential for Sedition
The Foreign Legion: New Foreigners in the Service of French Imperialism
Foreigners: Military Capabilities for a New French Imperial Construction?
Identifying Napoleonic Veterans: A Search for Tested Military Abilities…
… Although Disrupted by Recruiting Difficulties that Were Underestimated
An Empire on the Opposite Shore of the Mediterranean: A Double Logic of Downgrading and Budget Savings
The Political Concerns of a Recently Established Regime: Keeping Troublemakers at a Distance
In the Depots in France and then Algeria, the Legion as a Space of the “Outer Empire”?
Budgetary Ulterior Motives
The Empire of Laws After the Emperor: French Legal Domination in Nineteenth-Century Egypt
The Origins of French Legal Dominance in Egypt
The Informal Mechanisms of French Legal Domination
Limits and Downfall of the French Empire of Laws in Egypt
Index
