Napoleon's Empire (European Politics in Global Perspective)

Beyond its modernizing impact in Central and Western Europe, the Napoleonic Empire played a crucial role in realigning international power structures on a worldwide scale. By reshaping global landscapes and refining state sovereignty, French imperialism contested, or even shattered, early modern empires in the Atlantic world, around the Mediterranean and across the Baltic Sea. Whereas much of Napoleon's expansionism can be understood as aiming at re-installing France's colonial supremacy lost to Great Britain in the Seven Year's War, it ultimately did not only strip France of many imperial possessions and catalyzed Prussia's and Russia's ascendency, but also induced the final downfall of many traditional European sea powers. Thus, Napoleon's anti-British expansionism was crucial for Great Britain's rise to world power in the nineteenth century. In Napoleon's Empire, leading experts in their field investigate the impact of the Napoleonic era on more than twenty countries across the globe, from Western Europe and the Mediterranean, across the Baltic Sea to the Ibero-Atlantic area, and the Ottoman Empire.