napoleon foreign policy essay

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Not So Criminal: New Understandings of Napoléon’s Foreign Policy in the East

2007, French Historical Studies

This article proposes a revision to the historiographical consensus that Napoleon's foreign policy was a boorish and uncompromising, even "criminal," enterprise. the east lured Napoleon all his life, not least because of the mania for the East and the heroes of classical antiquity during the enlightenment and because of the connected belief that victory in the east was the most glorious of military achievements. Strangely, however, after his failed campaign in Egypt in 1798 - 99 Napoleon never mounted any of the grand projects he continued to envisage for the East, most notably his various schemes to attack British India. Whereas historians tend, erroneously, to dismiss these ventures as unfeasible dreams, a close examination of Napoleon's diplomatic relations with the Ottoman Empire, Persia, and Russia reveals a self-restraint and a more conventional approach to his relations with these states, both attitudes of which Napoleon was supposedly incapable.

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Much is written about Napoleon Bonaparte and Napoleonic France. However this is for the most part about his life, his career and campaigns. This tells a lot about what he did but what the actual idea was behind the action is something which still raises a lot of questions. This essay intends to find Napoleon’s vision on Europe. What plans did he have in mind for the continent? Some historians even claim that there was no “Great Masterplan” and that Napoleon was more of a pragmatist then a man with a clear vision. He just did what best suited his interests every time a new situation arose. This essay will try to answer the question of Napoleon’s Vision by looking for mentions of his ideas and plans. In addition, his actions will be investigated in order to see if these can tell us something about his vision.

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From Publisher: Austerlitz, Wagram, Borodino, Trafalgar, Leipzig, Waterloo: these are the places most closely associated with the era of the Napoleonic Wars. But how did this period of nearly continuous conflict affect the world beyond Europe? The immensity of the fighting waged by France against England, Prussia, Austria, and Russia, and the immediate consequences of the tremors that spread throughout the world. In this ambitious and far-ranging work, Alexander Mikaberidze argues that the Napoleonic Wars can only be fully understood in an international perspective. France struggled for dominance not only on the plains of Europe but also in the Americas, West and South Africa, Ottoman Empire, Iran, India, Indonesia, the Philippines, Mediterranean Sea, and the Atlantic and Indian Oceans. Taking specific regions in turn, Mikaberidze discusses major political-military events around the world and situates geopolitical decision-making within its long- and short-term contexts. From the British expeditions to Argentina and South Africa to the Franco-Russian maneuvering in the Ottoman Empire, the effects of the French Revolution and Napoleonic Wars would shape international affairs well into the next century. In Egypt, the wars led to the rise of Mehmed Ali and the emergence of a powerful state; in North America, the period transformed and enlarged the newly established United States; and in South America, the Spanish colonial empire witnessed the start of national-liberation movements that ultimately ended imperial control. Skillfully narrated and deeply researched, here at last is the global history of the period, one that expands our view of the Napoleonic Wars and their role in laying the foundations of the modern world.

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This history paper examines the formative years of Napoleon's life, particularly his relationships with his father and mother, that transformed a young boy to the most powerful and transformative figure in Europe.

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Napoleon’s Foreign Policy: a Criminal Enterprise

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• Paul W. Schroeder  

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N apol eon’s decision to invade Russia against the almost unanimous advice of his closest counselors presents an intriguing and important puzzle to which Harold Parker provides a persuasive psychological explanation. 1 I would propose not a different causal explanation of Napoleon’s decision, but instead a different characterization and understanding of Napoleon’s foreign policy in the context of the international system.

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Harold T. Parker, “Why Did Napoleon Invade Russia? A Study in Motivation and the Interrelations of Personality and Social Structure,” fournal of Military History , 52, 2 (April 1990), 131–46.

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Schroeder, P.W. (2004). Napoleon’s Foreign Policy: a Criminal Enterprise. In: Wetzel, D., Jervis, R., Levy, J.S. (eds) Systems, Stability, and Statecraft: Essays on the International History of Modern Europe. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-137-06138-6_2

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• The Impact of Napoleon

The Impact of Napoleon

Prussian high politics, foreign policy and the crisis of the executive, 1797–1806.

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This book examines Prussia's response to Napoleon and Napoleonic expansionism in the years before the crushing defeats of Auerstadt and Jena, a period of German history as untypical as it was dramatic. Between the years 1797 and 1806 the main fear of Prussian statesmen was French power, rather than revolution from below. This threat spawned a foreign-policy debate characterised by geopolitical thinking: the belief that Prussian policy was conditioned by her unique geographic situation at the heart of Europe. The book breaks new ground both methodologically and empirically. By combining high-political and geopolitical analysis, it is able to present a more comprehensive and nuanced picture than earlier interpretations. The book also draws on a very wide range of sources, official and unofficial, many previously unused.

‘ … a most valuable contribution to the field of Napoleonic studies, and to modern German history in English‘.

Source: English Historical Review

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Frontmatter pp i-vi

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Contents pp vii-ix

List of maps pp x-x, acknowledgments pp xi-xii, list of abbreviations pp xiii-xiii, map 1 - geography and politics: prussia and her neighbours in 1792 pp xiv-xiv, map 2 - geography and politics: prussia and her neighbours in 1795 pp xv-xv, map 3 - geography and politics: prussia and her neighbours in 1803 pp xvi-xvi, 1 - introduction pp 1-32, part i - the structures pp 33-34, 2 - the structure of prussian politics during the early reign of frederick william iii pp 35-66, 3 - problem areas of prussian policy and politics: the centres of attention abroad, 1797–1804 pp 67-114, 4 - problem areas of prussian policy and politics: the centres of attention at home, 1797–1804 pp 115-156, part ii - the events pp 157-158, 5 - the failure of neutrality: prussian policy and politics, october 1804–september 1805 pp 159-190, 6 - delayed decisions: prussian policy and politics, october 1805–february 1806 pp 191-229, 7 - the hanoverian crisis: prussian policy and politics, march–june 1806 pp 230-266, part iii - the responses pp 267-268, 8 - facing napoleonic france: prussian responses to the french threat, 1804–1806 pp 269-303, 9 - the search for decision: prussian reform attempts immediately before jena pp 304-337, 10 - conclusion pp 338-343, bibliography pp 344-382, index pp 383-390, altmetric attention score, full text views.

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7 The French Revolution, Napoleon, and Nationalism in Europe

Michael Rowe, is Lecturer in Modern European History at King’s College London. His publications include From Reich to State: The Rhineland in the Revolutionary Age, 1780–1830 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003) and, as editor, Collaboration and Resistance in Napoleonic Europe (London: Palgrave, 2003).

• Published: 01 May 2013
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The outbreak of the French Revolution in 1789 resulted from a longer-term transformation of political culture. Central to this was the emergence of a self-conscious public opinion that viewed itself as national and sovereign. The failure of the French monarchy to adapt to this development culminated in its removal. The French nation was now sovereign, and hence able to set aside all existing laws and privileges. In terms of France’s relationship with the rest of the World, the Revolution initially heralded a new era of fraternity. This proved ephemeral as war engulfed Europe from 1792 to 1815. In France, war initially encouraged national solidarity as the entire country mobilized. As the war persisted this solidarity broke down and a chasm developed between civilians and soldiers. The latter were increasingly motivated by a cult of honour that found its ultimate expression in Napoleon Bonaparte. He seized control of France in 1799, and then built up an empire in which the national element was increasingly diluted with each new conquest. Napoleonic imperialism in turn triggered reactions in other parts of Europe where opposition to French exploitation manifested itself amongst ordinary people. Intellectuals and some politicians sought to harness popular sentiment by preaching national hatred, and to some extent this assisted the massive mobilization effort necessary to defeat Napoleon. However, following victory Europe’s rulers quickly suppressed the rhetoric of national liberation, as they recognized the danger it posed to their own position.

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Early life and education

The jacobin years.

• The Directory
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Napoleon I, also called Napoléon Bonaparte, was a French military general and statesman. Napoleon played a key role in the French Revolution (1789–99), served as first consul of France (1799–1804), and was the first emperor of France (1804–14/15). Today Napoleon is widely considered one of the greatest military generals in history.

Napoleon first seized political power in a coup d’état in 1799. The coup resulted in the replacement of the extant governing body—a five-member Directory —by a three-person Consulate . The first consul, Napoleon, had all the real power; the other two consuls were figureheads. Napoleon eventually abolished the Consulate and declared himself Emperor Napoleon I of France.

Napoleon served as first consul of France from 1799 to 1804. In that time, Napoleon reformed the French educational system, developed a civil code (the Napoleonic Code ), and negotiated the Concordat of 1801 . He also initiated the Napoleonic Wars (c. 1801–15), a series of wars that carried over into his reign as emperor of France (1804–14/15). As Emperor Napoleon I, he modernized the French military.

After a series of military defeats in 1812–13, Napoleon was forced to abdicate the French throne on April 6, 1814. Napoleon returned to power in early 1815 but was again ousted on June 22, 1815. In October 1815 Napoleon was exiled to the remote island of St. Helena in the South Atlantic Ocean, where he remained until he died on May 5, 1821, at age 51.

No! “Le Petit Caporal” wasn’t petite—at least not by 19th-century standards. The estimated average height of a French man in 1820 was 5 feet 4 inches (about 1.65 meters). At the time of his death in 1821, Napoleon measured about 5 feet 7 inches (roughly 1.68 meters) tall, meaning that he was actually of above-average height.

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Napoleon I (born August 15, 1769, Ajaccio, Corsica—died May 5, 1821, St. Helena Island ) was a French general , first consul (1799–1804), and emperor of the French (1804–1814/15), one of the most celebrated personages in the history of the West. He revolutionized military organization and training; sponsored the Napoleonic Code , the prototype of later civil-law codes; reorganized education; and established the long-lived Concordat with the papacy.

(See “Napoleon’s Major Battles” Interactive Map)

Napoleon’s many reforms left a lasting mark on the institutions of France and of much of western Europe . But his driving passion was the military expansion of French dominion, and, though at his fall he left France little larger than it had been at the outbreak of the Revolution in 1789, he was almost unanimously revered during his lifetime and until the end of the Second Empire under his nephew Napoleon III as one of history’s great heroes.

Napoleon was born on Corsica shortly after the island’s cession to France by the Genoese. He was the fourth, and second surviving, child of Carlo Buonaparte , a lawyer, and his wife, Letizia Ramolino. His father’s family, of ancient Tuscan nobility, had emigrated to Corsica in the 16th century.

Carlo Buonaparte had married the beautiful and strong-willed Letizia when she was only 14 years old; they eventually had eight children to bring up in very difficult times. The French occupation of their native country was resisted by a number of Corsicans led by Pasquale Paoli . Carlo Buonaparte joined Paoli’s party, but, when Paoli had to flee, Buonaparte came to terms with the French. Winning the protection of the governor of Corsica, he was appointed assessor for the judicial district of Ajaccio in 1771. In 1778 he obtained the admission of his two eldest sons, Joseph and Napoleon, to the Collège d’Autun.

A Corsican by birth, heredity, and childhood associations, Napoleon continued for some time after his arrival in Continental France to regard himself a foreigner; yet from age nine he was educated in France as other Frenchmen were. While the tendency to see in Napoleon a reincarnation of some 14th-century Italian condottiere is an overemphasis on one aspect of his character, he did, in fact, share neither the traditions nor the prejudices of his new country: remaining a Corsican in temperament, he was first and foremost, through both his education and his reading, a man of the 18th century.

Napoleon was educated at three schools: briefly at Autun , for five years at the military college of Brienne, and finally for one year at the military academy in Paris. It was during Napoleon’s year in Paris that his father died of a stomach cancer in February 1785, leaving his family in straitened circumstances. Napoleon, although not the eldest son, assumed the position of head of the family before he was 16. In September he graduated from the military academy, ranking 42nd in a class of 58.

He was made second lieutenant of artillery in the regiment of La Fère, a kind of training school for young artillery officers. Garrisoned at Valence , Napoleon continued his education, reading much, in particular works on strategy and tactics. He also wrote Lettres sur la Corse (“Letters on Corsica”), in which he reveals his feeling for his native island. He went back to Corsica in September 1786 and did not rejoin his regiment until June 1788. By that time the agitation that was to culminate in the French Revolution had already begun. A reader of Voltaire and of Rousseau , Napoleon believed that a political change was imperative , but, as a career officer, he seems not to have seen any need for radical social reforms.

The Revolutionary period

When in 1789 the National Assembly , which had convened to establish a constitutional monarchy , allowed Paoli to return to Corsica, Napoleon asked for leave and in September joined Paoli’s group. But Paoli had no sympathy for the young man, whose father had deserted his cause and whom he considered to be a foreigner. Disappointed, Napoleon returned to France, and in April 1791 he was appointed first lieutenant to the 4th regiment of artillery, garrisoned at Valence. He at once joined the Jacobin Club , a debating society initially favouring a constitutional monarchy, and soon became its president, making speeches against nobles, monks, and bishops. In September 1791 he got leave to go back to Corsica again for three months. Elected lieutenant colonel in the national guard, he soon fell out with Paoli, its commander in chief. When he failed to return to France, he was listed as a deserter in January 1792. But in April France declared war against Austria , and his offense was forgiven.

Apparently through patronage, Napoleon was promoted to the rank of captain but did not rejoin his regiment. Instead he returned to Corsica in October 1792, where Paoli was exercising dictatorial powers and preparing to separate Corsica from France. Napoleon, however, joined the Corsican Jacobins, who opposed Paoli’s policy. When civil war broke out in Corsica in April 1793, Paoli had the Buonaparte family condemned to “perpetual execration and infamy,” whereupon they all fled to France.

Napoleon Bonaparte, as he may henceforth be called (though the family did not drop the spelling Buonaparte until after 1796), rejoined his regiment at Nice in June 1793. In his Le Souper de Beaucaire ( Supper at Beaucaire ), written at this time, he argued vigorously for united action by all republicans rallied round the Jacobins, who were becoming progressively more radical, and the National Convention , the Revolutionary assembly that in the preceding fall had abolished the monarchy.

At the end of August 1793, the National Convention’s troops had taken Marseille but were halted before Toulon , where the royalists had called in British forces. With the commander of the National Convention’s artillery wounded , Bonaparte got the post through the commissioner to the army, Antoine Saliceti, who was a Corsican deputy and a friend of Napoleon’s family. Bonaparte was promoted to major in September and adjutant general in October. He received a bayonet wound on December 16, but on the next day the British troops, harassed by his artillery, evacuated Toulon. On December 22 Bonaparte, age 24, was promoted to brigadier general in recognition of his decisive part in the capture of the town.

Augustin de Robespierre, the commissioner to the army, wrote to his brother Maximilien , by then virtual head of the government and one of the leading figures of the Reign of Terror , praising the “transcendent merit” of the young republican officer. In February 1794 Bonaparte was appointed commandant of the artillery in the French Army of Italy . Robespierre fell from power in Paris on 9 Thermidor, year II (July 27, 1794). When the news reached Nice, Bonaparte, regarded as a protégé of Robespierre, was arrested on a charge of conspiracy and treason. He was freed in September but was not restored to his command.

The following March he refused an offer to command the artillery in the Army of the West , which was fighting the counterrevolution in the Vendée . The post seemed to hold no future for him, and he went to Paris to justify himself. Life was difficult on half pay, especially as he was carrying on an affair with Désirée Clary, daughter of a rich Marseille businessman and sister of Julie, the bride of his elder brother, Joseph. Despite his efforts in Paris, Napoleon was unable to obtain a satisfactory command, because he was feared for his intense ambition and for his relations with the Montagnards , the more radical members of the National Convention . He then considered offering his services to the sultan of Turkey .

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• SAIS Review

Geography and Foreign Policy

• Yves Lacoste
• Johns Hopkins University Press
• Volume 4, Number 2, Summer-Fall 1984
• pp. 213-227
• 10.1353/sais.1984.0024
• View Citation

Additional Information

GEOGRAPHY AND FOREIGN POLICY Yves Lacoste An international relations, what we call "geography" is subjected to two contradictory appraisals. The influence offactors considered to be geographic is either greatly exaggerated or nearly overlooked, in spite of obvious territorial imperatives. Let us first examine a number of the arguments that accord considerable importance to "geographic data" in the making of a nation's foreign policy. Napoleon was no theoretician, but a formidable practitioner, a surgeon of international relations. He believed that "the policy of a state lies in its geography." But what is geography, after all? Whatever the answer, it is important first to make clear that Napoleon's expedient and sibylline formula is as unacceptable now as his foreign policy was then. This is true even if we conceive of geography as something more than topographical configurations or contrasts of climate. Napoleon himself, unlike the majority of authors who deal with international relations, had enough strategic experience and political realism to conceive of geography in less restricted and elementary terms. More than anyone, however, he had to realize that a state's foreign policy also derives from the ideas, the aspirations, and even the fantasies, of those who lead it, and particularly the one who leads. It is true that these ideas, these geopolitical projects, draw on geographic images that are to a greater or lesser degree subjective and deformed by ambition. Nevertheless, it is safe to assume Yves Lacoste is director of the Institute of Geography at the University of Paris VIII and editor of the review Hérodote, ajournai of geography and geopolitics published in Paris by Editions Maspero/La Découverte. His publications include Unité et diversité du tiers-monde and La géographie, ça sert, d'abord, à faire la guerre (both published by Maspero), and La géographie du sous-developpement (Presses Universitaires de France). This article was translated by Steven Kennedy. 213 214 SAIS REVIEW that when the Emperor Napoleon, master of most of Europe, plainly and with deliberate simplicity proclaimed his geographic formula (emphasizing both the topographical relief and the boundaries of the territories in his path), his purpose was to impose his geopolitical plan and to present it as if it corresponded to the "nature of things" so as to disqualify inconvenient arguments, such as the diversity of the peoples he sought to bring under his power. Today still, recourse to geographic "evidence" and "imperatives" to justify the foreign policy of a state is a means of deflecting more complicated and less favorable analyses of that state's interests and ambitions. Another, more recent, example of the sort of political argument that appears to be based on geographic "evidence" dates from the turn of the century, when Adm. Alfred Thayer Mahan and the geographer Halford Mackinder (who, unlike Napoleon, were theoreticians) developed the famous theses of the fundamental antagonism between sea power and continental power, an opposition of land and sea that was alleged to date from antiquity. Mackinder and Mahan spared nothing in their long descriptions of England's struggle with Napoleon. At the time they were developed, these theses corresponded to definite strategies. In the aftermath of World War II they have had a considerable following because of the rivalry of the two superpowers, of which the Soviet Union is supposed to be the "continental power" par excellence. Now that the number and tonnage of the Soviet submarine force is greater than the U.S. Navy's, however, and can easily pass under the ice barrier that surrounds Russia's major sea front, this appraisal will have to be revised. The theses of Mahan and Mackinder, to which today's geopoliticians attach too much importance, rest more on historical evocations than on rigorous strategic thinking, based as they are on the grandiose geographic metaphors of the Land and the Sea. Although the theses lack scientific value, their lyrical function is unquestionable. Nevertheless, the rivalry between the Soviet Union and the United States is not a matter of metaphysical conflict between Land and Sea but rather a result of the political and military antagonism of two economic, social, and cultural systems. Many theories do not have the global pretensions of Mahan's...

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