Alexander Mikaberidze - Napoleon, War, Progress, and Global Order

Speaker 1 All right, today I have the pleasure of interviewing Professor Alexander Mikaberza, who is a professor of history and the Ruth Herring Knowle Endowed Chair at Louisiana State University.

Speaker 1 And he's the author of the Napoleonic Wars, A Global History.

Speaker 1 This is an absolutely fascinating book. It was unlike any other history book I've read in the sense that it was just global in a scope and you're covering such an interesting period in history.

Speaker 1 So first of all, can you give my audience a little bit of background on yourself and on the Napoleonic Wars?

Speaker 2 Yes. Thank you so much for having me.
It's a delight to be here.

Speaker 2 I'm originally from a country of Georgia. And I usually tell people that, no, it's not the state of Georgia, right? The country of Georgia in Eastern Europe.

Speaker 2 A small state sandwiched between Russia and Turkey with a rather complex and diverse and turbulent history.

Speaker 2 But as

Speaker 2 most

Speaker 2 small nations, it is oftentimes kind of lost on the pages of history.

Speaker 2 And of course, when I embarked on this career to become a professional historian, I've always wanted to see, you know, where my people kind of fit in the larger scheme of things

Speaker 2 uh and i was oftentimes frustrated uh especially

Speaker 2 working on the revolutionary napoleonic era that

Speaker 1 the

Speaker 2 huge transformations that this period witnessed in caucuses were not properly addressed and so

Speaker 2 the immediate cause and kind of spark to write this book was desire to kind of wrong to correct the wrong but it also kind of then grew from there

Speaker 2 to get a better understanding of the field. Because the Napoleonic era is one of the most written historical periods.

Speaker 2 There are thousands and thousands of volumes. In fact,

Speaker 2 Napoleon is probably the most written-about historical figure period.

Speaker 2 The last estimate was that at least three, maybe 400,000 volumes have been written just about him.

Speaker 2 So there has to be a really good reason to write another book about this topic. And my

Speaker 2 gradually my realization was that almost everything that has been written about this period is written from the French and British points of view and focused on the great transformations taking place inside Europe.

Speaker 2 And that is perfectly worthwhile enterprise, but I thought that it offers a very narrow snapshot of the period. Because Napoleonic, revolutionary Napoleonic

Speaker 2 period is the moment when we see the modernity setting and not just in Europe, but gradually extending to various parts of the world.

Speaker 2 It changes the trajectory

Speaker 2 that many of these world regions followed.

Speaker 2 And I thought a fresher study was needed to flesh that out.

Speaker 1 And you know what I appreciated, you know, as like an American of Indian origin is that you had almost a chapter in the book that was just dedicated to how the Napoleonic Wars impacted, you know, the expansion of British rule in India, and also about obviously

Speaker 1 the impact on the Americas from the Louisiana Purchase onwards.

Speaker 1 I'm curious, by the way, how it's possible that so many volumes about Napoleon have been written.

Speaker 1 I think Andrew Roberts said that there's been one, on average, one new book about Napoleon a day since he died.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 Oh, yeah.

Speaker 1 How are there possibly that many Napoleonic scholars?

Speaker 2 Well,

Speaker 2 it's a very enticing field.

Speaker 2 I compare Napoleon, and you told me that the video will be recorded, right? So

Speaker 2 you see

Speaker 2 the wall behind me, which has parts of the British propaganda, part of the French propaganda, and of course the gift from my students, Napoleon's cutout. But oftentimes compare Napoleon to a siren.

Speaker 2 And because...

Speaker 2 For those who first approach the shores of Napoleonic history, they are drawn by the lure of that sweet song of Napoleonic legend, right?

Speaker 2 That the vision of a romantic kind of titan, the Prometheus who thought to bring about change and was ultimately defeated and exiled to a rock in the middle of nowhere.

Speaker 2 And I think Napoleonic legend exercises such a lure that there is always

Speaker 2 enough people interested in it to write about it.

Speaker 2 But it has a downfall, a kind of side effect, and that is

Speaker 2 most of what is written

Speaker 2 on Europe

Speaker 2 for linguistic reasons. For example, to write the books of global nature, global historical narrative, you need to have diversity of language skills.

Speaker 2 That includes not just the French and British, which by now is taken for granted, but Spanish and German and Russian.

Speaker 2 And if you expand your narrative even further to the east, then you have to involve the Ottoman and Iranian historical traditions as well, right?

Speaker 2 And of course, that is a colossal challenge, and I think that oftentimes pushes people away from such a narrative.

Speaker 2 And also, that the events in Europe itself

Speaker 2 in this period are of such colossal scale, right? So we talk about the battles that involve,

Speaker 2 for example, at Borodino, there are a quarter million troops, at Leipzig, there are well over over half a million troops fighting for the future of Europe. That by comparison,

Speaker 2 let's say dealing with events in

Speaker 2 Russo-Iranian war where you have on average 10,000 to 15,000 men engaged, it kind of not sexy now, right? Not big enough.

Speaker 2 So I think that also

Speaker 2 plays a role. And the charisma of these great personalities that were engaged also kind of skews it towards Eurocentric narrative.

Speaker 2 And that's exactly the point that I was trying to make in the book: is that that should not be the reason to avoid our discussion elsewhere.

Speaker 2 And as you pointed out,

Speaker 2 for India, this is the moment of tremendous importance.

Speaker 2 And not to include the developments in India under the leadership of British East India Company led by Richard Wellesley from 1798 to 1805, right?

Speaker 2 These seven years are of crucial importance because in many respects the foundation for what will be the Raj

Speaker 2 is laid exactly at this time.

Speaker 2 And same applies to, let's say, extending our narrative to North America or South America where

Speaker 2 this period saw the collapse of the Spanish imperial rule and the emergence of a new political reality that will continue to reverberate and kind of affect us to the present day, right?

Speaker 2 The fact that we have such a

Speaker 2 political reality of independent nation states from Mexico down to Argentina all are

Speaker 2 part of the legacy

Speaker 2 of the Napoleonic period.

Speaker 1 Can you talk more about the impact of the Napoleonic Wars on India?

Speaker 1 Why was it so crucial for the British East India Company?

Speaker 2 Now, of course, the English presence in India predates the revolutionary period.

Speaker 2 And by the start of revolutionary wars, and I remind the listeners, the French Revolutionary War started in April of 1792, and Britain joined the war in 1793.

Speaker 2 So by then, British East India Company had already an established presence in India, especially in the northeastern part of it, in Bengal.

Speaker 2 And of course, India oftentimes people forget just how huge and how diverse and how populous this

Speaker 2 subcontinent is. And notice that I use the term subcontinent, not region, because

Speaker 2 again,

Speaker 2 it's enormous in scale. In fact, we can, you know, the estimates usually point that India at this time has a population well over 120 million people.

Speaker 2 So, and this would have been a huge area for or huge area for the British as a market for their goods, but also as a source of the goods for their own commerce. And we know that

Speaker 2 before revolutionary wars, there was a vibrant trade going on that

Speaker 2 in many respects sustained the industrial, the

Speaker 2 nascent industrial revolution in Britain. So, from the British point of view, India is a crucial asset, at least the presence in India is a crucial asset.

Speaker 2 But it is an asset that, from the British point of view,

Speaker 2 is constantly under threat from other

Speaker 2 powers, both local, such as, for example, Mughal Empire, until it experienced the decline in the mid-18th century, and then the Maratha Confederation,

Speaker 2 and external threats, most notably

Speaker 2 the French, who've been kind of nibbling at their heels all through the 18th century. And so,

Speaker 2 to me,

Speaker 2 the interesting aspect of this is not necessarily the actual threat that existed, but it's the perceptions of threat that Britain saw, the British officials saw. Not all of them.

Speaker 2 For example, when we look at the 1798, 1799 period,

Speaker 2 you have some British officials, such as Granville, who was a foreign secretary, arguing that the threat, direct threat to British presence in India

Speaker 2 is exaggerated and kind of embellished, and that Britain should focus its efforts on confronting France in Europe. And then you have colonial officials,

Speaker 2 of course the

Speaker 2 British East India Company officials steadfastly arguing that the threat is real, that French are coming. And in fact, if you read the letters of

Speaker 2 Richard Wellesley, who was appointed as the Governor General of the British East India Company in 1798, 1798, he speaks constantly of this

Speaker 2 French threat as if it is real, as if it is imminent, even though we know that France was not

Speaker 2 in a position to directly threaten the positions, the British positions in India at this time.

Speaker 2 The French hands are tied in Europe. But nonetheless, the perception is important because it is

Speaker 2 under this pretense of confronting the French

Speaker 2 that Wellesley then embarks on empire building. And in the book, I refer to Wellesley as probably the most Napoleonic of this British statesmen of this period because his vision

Speaker 2 is that of an empire in India which can be built within the context of confronting

Speaker 2 this alleged French threat. And so we see

Speaker 2 the wars,

Speaker 2 the campaigns that Wellesley

Speaker 2 waged against the local

Speaker 2 Indian states that refused to trod the British line. So I remind you

Speaker 2 the war between Anglo, the British and the Mysore, right? The infamous storming of Seringabatam and the killing of its ruler of Tipu Sultan, or

Speaker 2 the subjugation of Nizam of Hyderabad, who is forced to accept this subsidiary relationship with the British, or the confrontation ultimately between the British forces and the Maratha Confederation, during which, in 1803, for example, you have that famous Battle of Assay,

Speaker 2 where Arthur Wellesley, right, the Richard's younger brother and future greatest

Speaker 2 British military commander of the age, Duke of Wellington, distinguished himself. And so, these policies of

Speaker 2 using the French scare to impose the British

Speaker 2 kind of interest on the local states are extremely successful in that by 1805, much of southern and eastern Indian subcontinent is under British rule.

Speaker 2 Now, different shades of it, you know, direct or indirect rule, but nonetheless, it's under the British influence. And that process will only continue in the subsequent years so that by 1819

Speaker 2 you see the extension of the British authority in the north to areas like Ud,

Speaker 2 in northern parts of the subcontinent, and of course the encroachment on the Maratha territory,

Speaker 2 which will be ultimately consumed by 1819, 18 in early 20s. And hence we see the establishment of the British

Speaker 2 rule in India. Is having your,

Speaker 1 you know, like a global empire, a bunch of colonies, is that helpful when you're engaged in a war with another power?

Speaker 1 I mean, in some sense, maybe you're like, I don't know, more diversified, but in another, you had to, as you just said,

Speaker 1 the British had to divert resources and attention to

Speaker 1 defending their stakeholder in India.

Speaker 1 And, you know, even in World War II, Churchill has to worry about the

Speaker 1 Singapore is taken over by the Japanese. So

Speaker 1 when you're fighting a war, is it good to have a lot of colonies or is it bad for you?

Speaker 2 No, of course.

Speaker 2 Having colonies means having access to resources. Resources both in terms of manpower, but also resources in terms of commodities, natural

Speaker 2 resources that sustain your economy your war effort i mean to kind of deviate from maybe napoleonic era uh you know when we talk about the that other great war because napoleonic wars for much of the 19th century was the great war only to be superseded by world war one but think about the british imperial involvement in world war one when we talk about britain at war we really mean the empire and it's it needs to be pointed out that more indian troops served in that war than the actual British troops.

Speaker 2 And certainly, you know, the expeditions to, for example, Iraq involved thousands of Indian forces.

Speaker 2 So, that is, you know, having an empire certainly helps

Speaker 2 in conducting the war. And that is true in the Napoleonic period because the trade that Britain conducted both with India and with China

Speaker 2 was extremely lucrative. And there are

Speaker 2 excellent studies done on the extent of this trade and on the value of the

Speaker 2 volume and value of the commerce that was conducted

Speaker 2 with Asia, which is one of the crucial

Speaker 2 parts of the British economic

Speaker 2 endurance kind of

Speaker 2 resilience. Because

Speaker 2 once Napoleon consolidates his control of the continent, we know that in 1806 he embarks on a

Speaker 2 system that we refer to as continental blockade,

Speaker 2 which was designed to isolate the British or cut them off from

Speaker 2 the continent in terms of their ability to sell goods.

Speaker 2 One of the reasons why Britain was able to survive this

Speaker 2 economic war was precisely because it could rely on its colonial presence,

Speaker 2 rely on markets elsewhere, and of course

Speaker 2 have the ability, the naval capacity

Speaker 2 to ensure that its commercial routes, its lifelines, continue to sustain its war effort.

Speaker 2 And the reverse is true for France. And that is one of the crucial stories of the revolutionary Napoleon era is the collapse of what we call first French Empire.
France

Speaker 2 loses virtually every possession it has outside Europe, that is in India, that is broadly in the Indian Ocean, certainly the Caribbean. And of course, you refer to the loss of Louisiana

Speaker 2 in 1803.

Speaker 2 1804, right? So that means that by comparison, France finds itself in a much weaker position in the years to come. And that

Speaker 2 later on will kind of sustain this narrative of restoration of the national

Speaker 2 grandeur, which will justify, for example, colonial enterprise or colonial projects that France will unleash in Algiers in 1830 and then sub-Saharan Africa in later periods, right, as a part of that, the reconstruction of the imperial construct.

Speaker 1 Did the continental system contribute to Britain having the Industrial Revolution first? There's a book

Speaker 1 by this developmental economist, Joseph Studwell, called How Asia Works. And in it, he makes a case that

Speaker 1 these Asian tigers in the late 20th century,

Speaker 1 they imposed a bunch of tariffs whose main purpose was to enforce export discipline so that it would help their nascent industries, I guess, car making in Korea, for example.

Speaker 1 It would give them a leg up so that they could build a know-how within the country to manufacture these things, and then they could get rid of the tariffs.

Speaker 1 Did this kind of just artificially happen with the continental system? I mean, to what extent are the Napoleonic Wars and the Industrial Revolution linked?

Speaker 2 So in the book, I devote an entire chapter to what I call war through other means, and that is the economic side of the war. In fact, I wish I had more space to devote to.

Speaker 2 In fact, that's one of the topics I'm working on today or nowadays, and that is to

Speaker 2 explore the economic dimensions of the war, which usually is ignored, even though it's absolutely instrumental to it.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 there are a couple of things to kind of address right away. And one is

Speaker 2 that

Speaker 2 industrialization began in Britain before the war. We know that

Speaker 2 the elements of the industrial development are already present in Britain in the 1760s, 70s, 70s. Certainly, by the 1780s,

Speaker 2 Britain is far more industrialized than

Speaker 2 the continental powers.

Speaker 2 The second point is that France had prerequisites for industrialization.

Speaker 2 And there is a fascinating new study on why the Industrial Revolution

Speaker 2 didn't take place in France in the 1760s, 70s, and 80s like it did in Britain.

Speaker 2 But that's a separate kind of topic.

Speaker 2 However,

Speaker 2 once the Industrial Revolution took off in Britain, it gave the British an enormous advantage in terms of their economic parity, in terms of their economic or financial

Speaker 2 relations with the continent. And it left, therefore, the continental powers

Speaker 2 in this position where the only way they really can respond to

Speaker 2 to the British threat or economic threat is by, as you pointed out, creating barriers, tariffs. Napoleon understood that

Speaker 2 opening up market, that letting the British goods flow will be absolutely catastrophic to French interests, not to mention to the industrial,

Speaker 2 the nascent

Speaker 2 industries in the territories that he controlled, which is why

Speaker 2 he comes up with this continental system. And I want to, and that's kind of my pet peeve,

Speaker 2 and that I am very adamant about distinguishing between continental blockade, which was

Speaker 2 a policy designed to deal with the British commerce, and a continental system, which was a far more encompassing policy that Napoleon pursued towards creating

Speaker 2 a new reality, political economic reality in Europe.

Speaker 2 Later on on San Helena Island, when he's exiled, he does talk about his desire to create

Speaker 2 United States of Europe, effectively an early version of the European Union. But

Speaker 2 we have to bear in mind that

Speaker 2 Napoleon's version of European Union was an imperial construct where France was supreme. But within that European Union, so to speak,

Speaker 2 Napoleon did want to use the terrorists, the protective barriers, as a way of promoting industrial growth.

Speaker 2 And that's where Napoleonic wars is interesting because on one hand, the fighting, the military devastation that takes takes place in places like Spain, like Germany, like Russia, does affect the local manufacturing, does affect local industries.

Speaker 2 But on the other hand, Napoleon, by creating this kind of vacuum or the bubble, not that bubble around

Speaker 2 certain areas of Europe, tried to promote industries within the safety so that the British couldn't compete with them directly. And we see the kind of haphazard impact of his policies.

Speaker 2 There are some areas where it worked, and in the post-war period, places like Belgium, Netherlands, southern Germany, northern France, northern Italy, the industrial development took off.

Speaker 2 But on the other hand, there are areas where the war had a far greater impact. And the continental system with its restrictions actually delayed the industrial development rather than promote it.

Speaker 1 I was just looking at this paper from the economist Aaron Asimoglu. I think it's called The Consequences of Radical Reform.
And in it, he was making the case that

Speaker 1 if you look at the places that Napoleon conquered and reform within the Apollonic Codes,

Speaker 1 his claim is that after 1850, all of them, they all experienced more economic growth than the places that he didn't conquer.

Speaker 1 And I think he says in the paper that there were no cases where there was that he couldn't identify any negative effects

Speaker 1 from

Speaker 1 this.

Speaker 1 I wonder if you agree or

Speaker 1 was this just an unalloyed good?

Speaker 2 I think

Speaker 2 it's too generalized kind of statement. And if you dig deeper, I think you'll see a more complex reality.

Speaker 2 One thing is that

Speaker 2 many of the areas that

Speaker 2 the author was referring to as having the economic growth and all, right?

Speaker 2 they had the preconditions for economic prosperity, for industrialization before Napoleon showed up. So usually

Speaker 2 the case studies for that are low countries, right? Belgium, Dutch Republic,

Speaker 2 the Rhineland, the northern Italy areas around Turin and Milan. But those were already

Speaker 2 urbanized, developed.

Speaker 2 regions that were on the way to

Speaker 2 industrialization. In fact, in those areas, you can argue,

Speaker 2 and many of my colleagues have done, that the Napoleonic wars actually hampered the industrial growth because

Speaker 2 of the direct effect of the war, the fighting and the destruction, but also because of the taxes, requisitioning, occupational costs that the war brought on these regions.

Speaker 2 However, if you look beyond this kind of, and that's where in the book what I'm arguing is that the impact of Napoleon

Speaker 2 needs to be qualified, you know, kind of kind of,

Speaker 2 you know, you have to approach it very carefully because

Speaker 2 it depends on particular region and on the duration of the French presence. So the areas that I just mentioned stayed under French control for much longer.

Speaker 2 For example, you know, in Belgium case, we talk about from 1794 until 1814, right? There's a much longer duration in time.

Speaker 2 Compare that, for example, to Calabria in southern Italy, where the French arrive in 1806.

Speaker 2 They face vociferous resistance from the local population,

Speaker 2 and they really can't overcome it until 1801.

Speaker 2 And then in 1814, they are gone. So how much can you accomplish in four years? Or think about Poland, let's say, or in Spain, right?

Speaker 2 So there is a far shorter duration of the Napoleonic impact, and there is only so much you can accomplish in that few years.

Speaker 2 And so that's where I would argue is that, yes, Napoleon, the introduction of Napoleonic reforms

Speaker 2 in many cases, were

Speaker 2 helpful in changing the system.

Speaker 2 Now, what I mean by Napoleonic reforms, this is usually centralization of authority, this is professionalization of administration, this is enforcement of new administrative

Speaker 2 institutions. And of course, as you mentioned, the new legal framework, Napoleonic Code was,

Speaker 2 you know, this transformation, this revolutionary change

Speaker 2 through a legal code. But how long did they stay? That's the question, right? What's the actual impact on the ground?

Speaker 2 And that's where you see, once you scratch the surface, that the impact is not as uniform

Speaker 2 and much dependent on the willingness of the local population to accept this change.

Speaker 1 And then, you know, in a previous life, you were a lawyer. I'm wondering how that experience

Speaker 1 or how that background has shaped your understanding of the impact of these reforms and

Speaker 1 these codes. And

Speaker 1 especially to the question of there's a perennial debate about whether institutions and laws that have been shaped kind of naturally through tradition and through history are better, or ones that are

Speaker 1 ones that are more technocratic based on more rational principles,

Speaker 1 whether that's preferable. I wonder what kinds of lessons you draw on questions like that.
So,

Speaker 2 it's a complex question, but it's an interesting question to ponder. And in my own courses, when I teach students, I usually ask

Speaker 2 to

Speaker 2 look at what Napoleon tried to implement, right? On the legal side of it, with Napoleonic Code, go through the provisions of Napoleonic Code, and there is a lot

Speaker 2 that can be qualified as progressive for this period, right? If we set aside

Speaker 2 important issues on which Napoleon was not as

Speaker 2 progressive, for example, on the issue of the equality of the women or the issue of the property, you know, kind of property rights of

Speaker 2 certain children born out of wedlock and all that. But if we look at some of the core elements of the

Speaker 2 Napoleonic regime, of Napoleonic reforms, they are quite progressive.

Speaker 2 However,

Speaker 2 is progress always a good thing? That's, I usually kind of pose the question to students. And usually the answer is, oh yeah, of course, progress is a good thing.

Speaker 2 But what if the progress comes in an intrusive manner and it changes the way of life that you are used to, you're comfortable with?

Speaker 2 Then the question becomes whether the progress is actually

Speaker 2 a good thing. And what I mean by this is that in places like Spain or Italy or in Poland, Napoleonic reforms, as progressive as we might argue, right, they were,

Speaker 2 they threatened to bring about more centralized, therefore more intrusive power of the state. It threatened to bring about more effective tax collection, more effective administration.

Speaker 2 It effectively threatened to create a system that held citizens more accountable.

Speaker 2 Now, today we all like to complain about taxes and about the government overrich, right? So why are we kind of surprised that people in early 1800s would have been complaining about this?

Speaker 2 In some way,

Speaker 2 some of it might strike as quite

Speaker 2 unusual, not unusual, but in a weird way is that, for example, one of the great legacies of Napoleon is the vaccination program. I think that is especially relevant in the last two years, right?

Speaker 2 The government's efforts to vaccinate, to boost, and all this. And even today, we know that people were resisting it, right?

Speaker 2 Now, Napoleon promoted a great vaccination program for smallpox, and he started with his own child.

Speaker 2 He vaccinated his troops. and then kind of rolled this program to the territories that he occupied.

Speaker 2 But in many areas, the people resisted vaccination because it represented government overreach, because it represented government kind of telling people you got to vaccinate.

Speaker 2 And there were

Speaker 2 parts of Europe where people suspected that vaccination was part of the government's

Speaker 2 kind of secret plan to control them,

Speaker 2 which will strike us as a very modern thing, right?

Speaker 1 Conspiracy theorists

Speaker 2 today

Speaker 2 are not that original.

Speaker 1 Today, there's like a big discrepancy between how Americans and Europeans see the role of the state.

Speaker 1 Europeans are much more comfortable with it.

Speaker 1 Is the origin of that, that they did have a figure like Napoleon centuries ago who instilled a more centralized and, I guess, more administrative form of government?

Speaker 2 Partly.

Speaker 2 Of course,

Speaker 2 we have to bear in mind that unlike the United States, let's say, or to a great degree, Britain, continental European history is centers around

Speaker 2 strong authoritarian monarchical rule. rule.

Speaker 2 Here we see kind of dichotomy of, for example, of the French absolutism with the British

Speaker 2 parliamentarian, limited monarchical development. Or further east, we go, right?

Speaker 2 In Prussia, for example, we see the development of, again, absolutist tendencies in the camera list system, or further to the east in Russia, of course, the autocratic

Speaker 2 monarchical government that

Speaker 2 predates, of course, Napoleon. So there is a long history of a strong

Speaker 2 statist approach to it. Now, what Napoleon tried to do is he tried to make the state efficient.

Speaker 2 And in that, he was, I mean,

Speaker 2 that's actually one of the most fascinating things about him is kind of increasing the centralization, the efficiency, the enforcement of the state.

Speaker 2 In France, we, for example, see that after the turbulent years of revolution, Napoleonic centralization and enforcement completely changed the relationship between the people and the state.

Speaker 2 And that includes, for example,

Speaker 2 in areas like tax payments, tax collection, which increased exponently as Napoleon actually set up the system that held people accountable for it.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 that made, I think, the continental powers or the continental societies far more willing to accept the role of the state. Now, there is another kind of

Speaker 2 fault to this, in this, and that goes that after the Napoleonic period, right, once the war is over and now we're at a period of peace and will last several decades, you know, until the 1850s with the Crimean War and then with the bigger conflicts of 60s and 70s.

Speaker 2 But nonetheless, we have about four decades of peace. Well, we have have to deal with this kind of gorilla, 800-pound gorilla in the room, and that is the British industrial might.

Speaker 2 And one of the ways we can deal with that is

Speaker 2 by maintaining the protective barriers of tariffs and by increasing the role of the state. in the economic development.
And here your listeners can read up on, for example,

Speaker 2 the economic theories that Friedrich Liszt

Speaker 2 was the great proponent of, which indeed championed the role of the state in promoting economic prosperity and promoting industrialization. And many European states followed exactly that model.

Speaker 1 Another theory about how the economics here proceeded is maybe the public choice theory model from like Manster Olsson, where he observed that, for example, after World War II, economic growth rates in Germany and Japan were increased by a lot.

Speaker 1 And his theory is just that you got rid of these old institutions and

Speaker 1 old institutions and

Speaker 1 these built-in incentives that the old system had. And then maybe similarly in continental Europe, Napoleon gets rid of these guilds, he gets rid of these titles of nobility and these

Speaker 1 arcane systems.

Speaker 1 To what extent is public choice theory also a good model of what was happening at the time? Yes.

Speaker 2 And that's, I think, yeah, I would agree with that to a great deal in that ultimately, you know,

Speaker 2 usually I end my lectures in my Napoleonic history courses by saying that ultimately Napoleon

Speaker 2 is a loser in that he lost the war, he lost the empire, he ended the life on that godforsaken place

Speaker 2 in the Atlantic.

Speaker 2 But the impact that he left

Speaker 2 stays with that in that

Speaker 2 in the post-Napoleonic period, the European powers have to grapple with his legacy.

Speaker 2 Even though his changes, for example, are

Speaker 2 reversed in

Speaker 2 Italy, where

Speaker 2 his United Kingdom of Italy is abolished and pre-Napoleonic arrangements are restored, even though we see restoration of the ruling dynasties that he overthrown,

Speaker 2 we cannot reverse the clock. We cannot simply go back to pre-Napoleonic era and pretend that it didn't happen.

Speaker 2 So you have to accept the

Speaker 2 changes that he introduced. Now, the question is to what degree will you accept?

Speaker 2 And here again, we can look at the kind of gradation.

Speaker 2 And there are some areas like in southern and western Germany where Napoleonic, and certainly in the Netherlands and in Belgium and in Northern Italy, where the impact was so pronounced that it stays, that it will be simply impossible to turn the clock back.

Speaker 2 But in other areas, it was easier to accept some changes and then reverse many others. So, for example, we know that

Speaker 2 in places like in Poland or in southern Italy or

Speaker 2 in Spain,

Speaker 2 the Napoleonic impact in terms

Speaker 2 of the changes of the old regime

Speaker 2 was far less pronounced than

Speaker 2 in the core areas of Europe. And so,

Speaker 2 but overall, I think you're right in that Napoleon represented such a major blow to the old regime that it simply couldn't stay the way it was.

Speaker 2 It had to reinvent itself and reinvent it did, right, in this post-Napoleonic era.

Speaker 2 And here, I do want to point out that oftentimes we think about this post-Napoleonic Reconstruction as this conservative, you know, reactionist, these arch conservatives and

Speaker 2 the reactionaries.

Speaker 2 But we have to bear in mind that majority of these conservatives were not against the change

Speaker 2 even metternich who is usually perceived as this arch conservative uh you know villain um

Speaker 2 he is not averse to change he's averse to revolutionary pace of the change and so here in the post-napoleonic era These great powers were willing to accept reforms and changes that came

Speaker 2 gradually in a controlled environment. And that's essentially what we see taking place in the decades after Napoleon is gone.

Speaker 1 That's very interesting because

Speaker 1 Robert Conquest

Speaker 1 has these set of laws, and his second law is that any institution that is not explicitly right-wing will eventually become left-wing.

Speaker 1 And I don't know, it seems that the course of Europe after Napoleon's is similar. Like

Speaker 1 you have a bloody revolution, you have this person who causes a massive amount of death and war. And then,

Speaker 1 at least if you're trying to make the monarchical case, right, you'd say, oh, this is a result of these revolutionary ideals. Obviously, monarchy is better.
We should go back to the old ways.

Speaker 1 Maybe intellectually you'd think that that view would get vindicated, at least at the time. But it seems like, no,

Speaker 1 even given the immediate consequences of the French Revolution and Napoleon,

Speaker 1 eventually kind of the system

Speaker 1 he and the revolution created endured and caught on the rest of Europe.

Speaker 1 Do you have any comments on like this move in history where things, maybe left-wing is not the right word, but

Speaker 2 and in modern is almost a tautology but you maybe you see what I mean yes I think the the way I I look at it is and the way I kind of discuss it with my students is that I look at what the revolution promised and at its simplest right the revolution was about quest for equality and that quest can be then kind of you know interpreted and in a variety of ways.

Speaker 2 It can be a political equality with the suffrage voting and and all. It can be economic equality, social equality, gender equality, all this, right?

Speaker 2 And so to me, the revolution and Napoleon, and then of course the post-Napoleonic period is not necessarily this, you know, left-wing, right-wing, or liberal, conservative.

Speaker 2 You know, we can use whatever terminology you would like to, but to me, it's the quest for these

Speaker 2 evolving notions of equality.

Speaker 2 So, for example, when we talk about the politics, right, the political side of this equality, we know that the revolution

Speaker 2 produces remarkable documents in August of 1789 with the Declaration of Rights of Men and the Citizen proclaiming in its very first article that men are born and remained free and equal in their rights.

Speaker 2 That's a very aspirational, very idealistic kind of statement. But it's also a problematic statement because it's so vague.
What does it mean equal in their rights? And what does it mean to be men?

Speaker 2 Now, in French,

Speaker 2 the term is um, but um,

Speaker 2 even though it was used in this context of men, can be interpreted as being as human beings.

Speaker 2 And so here then, the story of revolution and Napoleon is the story of the struggle of various groups for the political equality, because the revolution,

Speaker 2 after the Declaration of Rights of Men, interpreted this provision as saying, well,

Speaker 2 it's equality of those men who are self-reliant. who are well off, that cannot be influenced.
So therefore, we're going to institute property qualification and let only affluent vote.

Speaker 2 Well, what about those who are below the threshold, right? And so you see then that struggle during revolution Napoleonic era leading to, for example, Napoleon proclaiming universal male suffrage.

Speaker 2 After Napoleon is overthrown, that system is reversed to a much stricter property qualification.

Speaker 2 And then

Speaker 2 you will see again universal male suffrage coming back in 1848 and staying part of French political narrative.

Speaker 1 And the same

Speaker 2 kind of quest for political equality can be then traced in many of these other European powers that were affected by Napoleon or even in Britain.

Speaker 2 I mean think about the British electoral reforms of 1832, the Great Reform Bill or 1860s and 1880s. It is also part of that quest for greater political equality.

Speaker 2 Same then, you know, if we're going to expand our view, what about then social economic equality?

Speaker 2 What about the treating our fellow citizens more equitably when it comes to wages, when it comes to working conditions, when it comes to what we now call the welfare, kind of social welfare system?

Speaker 2 Because these are the ideas the revolutionaries were grappling with, Napoleon was grappling with, and of course in post-Napoleonic period, they all were trying to find a way to answer these challenges.

Speaker 2 So in in 1848, for example, French socialists

Speaker 2 tried to find a solution to the existing problem of the socio-economic inequality by setting up what they referred to as national workshops, effectively a state-subsidized system where people could register and drew sustenance from the state.

Speaker 2 And it is this time when we see the kind of the

Speaker 2 concept of right to work come to

Speaker 2 come,

Speaker 2 you know, come into the public

Speaker 2 discussion so that's how I look at it and then again we can look at the gender equality we can look at the issues for example of slavery that is at its at its simplest about the equality of human beings and how is your how how how how did growing up in the former Soviet Union how has that shaped your

Speaker 1 views about a sort of idealistic

Speaker 1 revolution for equality and then deferring to a sort of enlightened despot.

Speaker 1 How has that shaped your views here? Well,

Speaker 2 my kids, I have two kids, two boys, and the oldest one is already reaching that age when he's studying this modern history.

Speaker 2 And one of the other day, he

Speaker 2 kind of came to realization that I was born and raised in the evil empire. So he was quizzing me about

Speaker 2 what it was like, Father,

Speaker 2 to be on the other side. I'm like, well, thank you, son.

Speaker 2 I think, of course, it has a direct impact because I was born and raised in the Soviet Union. And my father was a critic of the Soviet system.
And he,

Speaker 2 I remember him as a young man

Speaker 2 back in the early 80s, kind of listening to, secretly listening to the broadcasts of Voice of America, BBC, which were kind of muffed, but he would still listen.

Speaker 2 And this is some of my early kind of memories as a child when my father would sneak out and kind of secretly listen to

Speaker 2 a

Speaker 2 radio receiver that

Speaker 2 he fashioned.

Speaker 2 And I think that kind of imperial,

Speaker 2 that experience within imperial entity,

Speaker 2 it did have an impact on me.

Speaker 2 And certainly shaped me because Soviet Union collapsed when I was becoming, you know, my character,

Speaker 2 my personality was being

Speaker 2 forged in the 90s and I lived through the debris of the post-Soviet era with this economic devastation, with its civil strife, with its economic collapse. So in that sense,

Speaker 2 in many respects, I can relate to

Speaker 2 that generation that lived through the Napoleonic era, saw the collapse of the empires, and then lived through the post-imperial, kind of post-Napoleonic era, which was a period of economic turbulence, turbulence, economic stagnation in many parts of Europe,

Speaker 2 not to mention the civil strife that Revolution Napoleon unleashed in many parts of Europe. So I think, you know, for example, you know, just if nothing else, I would

Speaker 2 oftentimes tell students that, you know, living through the 90s in Georgia was

Speaker 2 grappling with basic necessities such as standing in line for bread for two or three days kind of waiting for

Speaker 2 a loaf of bread. And when I talk about the French experiencing, for example,

Speaker 2 during the Revolution, this hardship and trying to really find sustenance and seek out,

Speaker 2 like me, pieces of bread in various bakeries,

Speaker 2 I could,

Speaker 2 on some level,

Speaker 2 could relate to their misery, right? Could relate to their frustration.

Speaker 1 I guess another aspect of

Speaker 1 this conflict is,

Speaker 1 so, you know, I know very little about history, which is why it was very fun to read this book and to, I guess, venture forth and

Speaker 1 learn more about your history through the podcast. But one of the things that's interesting to me is that

Speaker 1 it seems that there's like these punctuated equilibrium in international relations and

Speaker 1 in,

Speaker 1 you know,

Speaker 1 you have these long periods of peace and then you have these periods where there's massive wars, massive deaths, borders get reshuffled.

Speaker 1 I guess from the Seven Years' War to the Napoleonic Wars, and then from there to World War I.

Speaker 1 And then, you know, maybe we can draw that line to today where since World War II, we've had peace in Europe, and then now we have the conflict in Ukraine.

Speaker 1 Is this a pattern you see?

Speaker 1 And if you do, what is the explanation?

Speaker 2 Well, I mean, if we look at the conflict in Ukraine, and that's the conflict

Speaker 2 that has a a direct relevance to me

Speaker 2 because it's part and parcel of the

Speaker 2 Russian Imperial project.

Speaker 2 In many respects, this conflict doesn't start in February of 2022 or in 2014 when Russia took over Crimea and the eastern provinces of Ukraine, but to me it starts in 2008 when we had a war between Russia and Georgia for

Speaker 2 that very reason, right,

Speaker 2 of the countries, of the group, of people seeking a course of development that is different from the one that the Russian

Speaker 2 government has envisioned for them.

Speaker 2 So that's where I see,

Speaker 2 if you look at the rhetoric that comes from Moscow and then the statements by President Putin or his ministers, they all have the echoes of the 19th century great power politics, which, as far as I'm concerned, should stay part of history rather than the reality.

Speaker 2 As you pointed out, in the post-World War II period, we went to great lengths to fashion an international system

Speaker 2 to prevent the very imperial, so the very kind of great power politics that dominated European, you know, the

Speaker 2 global

Speaker 2 development in the later half of the 19th century. Because look at effectively what Putin's

Speaker 2 kind of grand strategy is, is to carve out spheres of influence, which would be not unlike what Catherine the Great, for example, did in the late 18th century when

Speaker 2 under her leadership, Russia partitioned the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, coincidentally the very territory that

Speaker 2 involves the war today, right?

Speaker 2 Ukraine, the Baltic states. So that's where I see the kind of connections.

Speaker 2 And to me, it is absolutely paramount to contain these imperial impulses and to ensure that the people have agency, that people have the ability to self-determine their fate.

Speaker 2 I mean, that's, you know, kind of to go back to your earlier question about my own experiences. I lived through the 90s.
I lived through the national liberation movement.

Speaker 2 I lived through this civil war. I lived through this, our own Georgian efforts to figure out who we are and

Speaker 2 what we want to be.

Speaker 2 But that's exactly the issue.

Speaker 2 It should be our decision, you know, as a group of people

Speaker 2 to

Speaker 2 figure out whether we want to be a Western nation, whether our ideals are more attuned to European, or whether we would like to seek closer relationship with Russia. We should not be punished.

Speaker 2 by an outside power for seeking a course that disagrees with

Speaker 2 its vision. And same applies for Ukraine, right? To me, that's the war in Ukraine

Speaker 2 is about the agency of the Ukrainian people.

Speaker 1 What changed between before World War II and afterwards that didn't change after the Napoleonic Wars?

Speaker 1 Do you think that after the Napoleonic Wars, that if the international norms could change, they would have changed at that time to be like, okay, no more great conquests, but maybe it took till World War II.

Speaker 1 And then

Speaker 1 what has caused this idea that you can have

Speaker 1 these kinds of,

Speaker 1 you can expand into what you perceive to be your zone of influence?

Speaker 1 So, how do you explain these two different changes in norms?

Speaker 2 Actually, the interesting thing is the immediate post-Napoleonic era saw the creation of a new international security system. Absolutely remarkable.
And

Speaker 2 my dear colleagues, like Professor Beatrice de Grave from the University of Utrecht, has written fascinating studies. And we talk about just the last two years or so,

Speaker 2 exploring the impact of Napoleonic wars on crafting this new international system. And the hallmarks of this system was indeed

Speaker 2 the

Speaker 2 balance of power, where these great powers sought to maintain certain parity.

Speaker 2 The goal of this was international cooperation to prevent political instability in Europe. So hence we see, for example, the great power cooperation, the issues of suppression of revolutionary

Speaker 2 cycles in the 1820s and 1830s.

Speaker 2 And kind of to draw parallel to World War I or World War II, one of the things that we oftentimes forget is that it is Napoleonic wars that pioneered a new mechanism of dealing with the defeated power.

Speaker 2 And that includes occupational regimes, that includes

Speaker 2 development schedules of reparation payments.

Speaker 2 Yes, defeated powers before, right,

Speaker 2 had to pay war indemnities, but

Speaker 2 post-Napoleonic era saw a very different mechanism that involved occupation, that involved extraction of resources,

Speaker 2 that is formalized and that is a kind of part of the coalition,

Speaker 2 which is very similar to what, for example, was done in the post-World War II period.

Speaker 2 In 1815, for example, France is divided into zones of occupation, and European powers have occupational troops that are occupying specific regions as a way of

Speaker 2 de-bonapartize France.

Speaker 2 Just like in the post-World War II,

Speaker 2 we have Germany dividing the zones of occupation with the policy of denazification.

Speaker 1 Why was this not implemented after World War I, the occupational policy? Was that just a massive oversight?

Speaker 2 No, well, partly because I think we have to bear in mind that unlike World War II,

Speaker 2 the war didn't directly reach Germany, right? It was mostly fought

Speaker 2 in northern France and in Belgium

Speaker 2 and kind of the Rhineland area, but Germany itself remained intact for much of it.

Speaker 2 And certainly

Speaker 2 by the end of the war, the sheer exhaustion of France and Britain and the collapse of Russia, the collapse of Austria and other powers certainly create the reality that was very different from

Speaker 2 1945, when you have a grand alliance and that grand alliance is determined to carve out the zones of occupation, right? I mean, think about kind of the United States in 1919 with its

Speaker 2 self-imposed isolation is a very different entity from the 1945 United States that is keen on

Speaker 2 keeping its presence in Europe. Same applies for Russia in 1919,

Speaker 2 is imploding, while in 1945

Speaker 2 it is quite strong, or at least it will be

Speaker 2 on its way to recovering from the war. And it certainly has the military capacity to carve out a zone of occupation in Eastern Germany.

Speaker 1 So another question I have the Napoleonic Wars is, it seems that,

Speaker 1 so, you know, in the Seven Years' War in 1756, you know, if France loses, it's not that long before the Napoleonic Wars happen.

Speaker 1 And, you know, when France is fighting the Napoleonic Wars, it's like gone through a bloody revolution. It's a completely new regime.

Speaker 1 So in many ways, it should be in a weaker position, it seems, just from

Speaker 1 the politics of what's happening in France.

Speaker 1 And obviously,

Speaker 1 France absolutely dominates for like a decade afterwards. So,

Speaker 1 maybe in financial terms, you can think of in business, there's like private equity where if a firm has good potential, but it has like a lot of assets under management, but I don't know, it just has bad leadership, you can have another one that like buys it out and then runs it better.

Speaker 1 So,

Speaker 1 is that the story here? Like, why did the French military and government just

Speaker 1 seem to get so much more effective between these two wars?

Speaker 2 Yes, I think, again,

Speaker 2 there are multiple threats that come together

Speaker 2 in this period. So one of them, for example, is

Speaker 2 France's ability to mass mobilize.

Speaker 2 And that is particularly clear in 1793, 95 period when, in response to being confronted by the European coalition, France begins a system that

Speaker 2 we refer to as levée en masse,

Speaker 2 which involves mass mobilization of manpower, that involves development of a home front to support war effort.

Speaker 2 In military history, we oftentimes grapple with this kind of concept of limited war.

Speaker 2 And I think limited in the sense that conflict before the French Revolution were

Speaker 2 isolated affairs that didn't affect the societies as a whole, right? So you have much smaller forces,

Speaker 2 the conflicts for the kind of obvious, clear, dynastic or political goals. Now, the French Revolution is different

Speaker 2 in that it mobilized far greater percentage of the population.

Speaker 2 If you read the text of the Levé and Mas Decree, it talks about young men registering and serving, children

Speaker 2 participating

Speaker 2 in helping

Speaker 2 in

Speaker 2 production and manufacturing, women kind of

Speaker 2 supporting the home front and even the elderly kind of

Speaker 2 providing that moral boost and kind of inspiration and leadership for the population. So it's a more encompassing vision of nation at war.
And it is very difficult to defeat an entity like this.

Speaker 2 And France shows that.

Speaker 2 As a nation that can mobilize greater manpower, that can put greater government controls on the economy,

Speaker 2 and armed with an ideology that it can overrun.

Speaker 2 what we will

Speaker 2 kind of call the old regime forces. It doesn't mean that the old regime armies were inherently weaker or inherently kind of destined to lose, not at all.

Speaker 2 The fact that it took a decade for the revolution to prevail over the old regime, right, until 1802 when the revolutionary wars are formally over,

Speaker 2 testifies to the resilience of the old regime. But

Speaker 2 it is also

Speaker 2 a conflict in which the old regime has to respond, has to kind of tweak itself.

Speaker 2 Napoleon then, as a kind of to move away from structural issues to more individual issues, Napoleon, whether you like him or not, you know, even his greatest critics admit that he was a brilliant,

Speaker 2 brilliant individual, very capable, workaholic,

Speaker 2 an individual who could multitask like, unlike anyone you really can

Speaker 2 encounter in pages of history books.

Speaker 2 His ability to control at the height of the empire,

Speaker 2 a virtual continent, an entire continent before the time of phones and internet and mass

Speaker 2 and instant communication is just staggering.

Speaker 2 And Napoleon does play an important role because of his sheer brilliance on the battlefield. I mean,

Speaker 2 it's hard to imagine

Speaker 2 kind of France going on a rampage as it did in the 1805 to 1809 period

Speaker 2 without Napoleon, because he brings so much

Speaker 2 to the table. Wellington, I think, has that famous statement that Napoleon was equal to 40,000 men on the battlefield, right? That he brought so much to the table.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 the interesting thing is that Napoleon is not necessarily the only one that France had. In fact, that revolutionary decade produced a number of brilliant military commanders.

Speaker 2 It produced a number of

Speaker 2 talented men in bureaucracy and finance. In fact, one of the books that I want to write, and that's part of that kind of economic side of the history, is

Speaker 2 a brilliant financial wizard that,

Speaker 2 as far as I'm concerned, essentially bankrolled Napoleon for much of his reign and, most crucially, ensured rapid French reconstruction in the post-Napoleonic era.

Speaker 2 So

Speaker 2 it's dealing with these these individual agencies that also makes this period fascinating because you find the characters that are

Speaker 2 simply amazing.

Speaker 1 I wonder what you think of this, but it seems to me, you know, I'm in tech circles, and it seems to me that if Napoleon was alive today, he'd be a

Speaker 1 long hours,

Speaker 1 the ability to micromanage and to multitask,

Speaker 1 obviously the leadership and the ability to inspire. And then also most importantly, maybe the

Speaker 1 sort of the

Speaker 1 risk-taking there, right?

Speaker 1 If you see something, well, I mean, a startup founder has to, they're probably going to fail. So they're just trying to maximize the expected value,

Speaker 1 like increase the odds that you have a trillion dollar company, not necessarily that you have, make any money, not necessarily increase the odds you make some money. So yeah, just the risk-taking

Speaker 1 especially, it seems to me that what do you think about this?

Speaker 2 Would Napoleon, I don't know, know, become the CEO of a company like Tesla. I love this vision of Napoleon as Elon Musk, right?

Speaker 2 There is a fascinating movie. It's a kind of light comedy called Emperor's Niclode that envisions Napoleon escaping from San Helena Island in disguise, leaving a double.

Speaker 2 And then before he can return to France, his double dies and he's buried with all the honors. And then real Napoleon finds himself caught in this kind of conundrum of trying to prove himself.

Speaker 2 And what he does, he starts a business in Paris of selling bread and using his military genius kind of strategy. He

Speaker 2 comes to dominate the

Speaker 2 baking business in Paris. So, Napoleon, yes, somebody already envisioned him as a startup guy.

Speaker 2 Oh, wait,

Speaker 2 Emperor's New Clothes.

Speaker 2 He in a wonderful Jan Holm

Speaker 2 reprising the role of Napoleon, and he's quite good at it.

Speaker 2 So he does have a mindset for that. Napoleon has ability.

Speaker 2 Well, first of all, let me put it.

Speaker 2 By nature, he was a very gifted man with almost photographic memory. So he retained minutiae of detail.

Speaker 2 And I've spent the better part of a quarter century examining his documents and going through the archives, kind of dealing with the paperwork that he left behind. And it's prodigious.

Speaker 2 We just finished a collective effort of publishing kind of compilation of his

Speaker 2 personal letters and we had to stop at 44,000 and that doesn't account for the government decision and government paperwork that he reviewed and then signed on. And

Speaker 2 in my books on 1812 you kind of see him

Speaker 2 deep in Russia. He's governing empire that stretches from Spain to Poland and from Denmark to

Speaker 2 Croatia, right? And he deals with minutiae of these details. So he would have been, in that sense, a micromanaging CEO.

Speaker 2 Again, I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing because

Speaker 2 it has its pros and cons. But he was a micromanaging.

Speaker 1 I mean, have you seen the videos? Yeah. Have you seen the videos of Elon Musk going through the minutiae of these

Speaker 1 raft ranks?

Speaker 2 Yeah, that's exactly what I'm saying. Napoleon would have been that.
And the worst thing is that I don't know how good Elon's memory is. Napoleon's is brilliant.
And he would be kind of on a page,

Speaker 2 score, you know, footnote that

Speaker 2 you found, you found. Yeah, there is a fascinating moment when

Speaker 2 he's in Moscow,

Speaker 2 he actually noticed that a small battalion was sent on the wrong road in the countryside in central Italy.

Speaker 2 Who does that kind of thing, right?

Speaker 2 They're kind of keeping that

Speaker 2 level of

Speaker 2 detail. Or as an emperor, he actually

Speaker 2 supervised what we can say, I think, a modern police state.

Speaker 2 The extent of the police surveillance of the French population is stunning. And as part of it, what is interesting is that

Speaker 2 he required weekly reports on what people, average people, kind of common people, would say in the streets.

Speaker 2 And police agents would compile these reports from all across France and he would receive digests. So, on top of everything else that he would be doing, he would sit down and kind of going through and

Speaker 2 learning what Alex said on Thursday and what Juarque said on Friday, right? And that's an expression of

Speaker 2 public sentiment.

Speaker 2 So, no,

Speaker 2 he had all the preconditions for it. And kind of at the last point, he loved technology and

Speaker 2 he supported technology. He'd support, for example, he was the one who set up prizes for technological improvements that benefited the French military.

Speaker 2 It's a famous story of him

Speaker 2 setting awards for developing new ways of preserving food, which led to conservation.

Speaker 2 The kind of jars that we are now consuming actually come from Napoleonic era. Or it is Napoleon who, for example, conducted or supported experiments on developing submarine technology.

Speaker 2 In fact, in the middle of Paris on the Seine River, they tested submarines. Now, it didn't work out, and

Speaker 2 the submarines were leaking, so he didn't adopt it. But nonetheless, it shows his willingness to embrace it, this technological development.
He tried to stay abreast of it all.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it's similar with, I think, many other important leaders in history. I think Churchill was a big,

Speaker 1 he was a big aviator, and I think

Speaker 1 he crashed

Speaker 1 at least once. And also, he saw the importance of tanks early on, I think, while he was in India or something.
So, yeah, that's very interesting. Now, you mentioned earlier that

Speaker 1 this era in history in France brought forth a lot of young, great young leaders and a lot of young talent.

Speaker 1 Was it just that the old people got killed during the revolution?

Speaker 2 Or

Speaker 1 was there something else going on?

Speaker 2 No, not necessarily. No, the revolution was bloody, but not that bloody.
No, there is

Speaker 2 the revolution was about opening careers to talent and I think that's one of the great legacies of the revolution and Napoleon in that they created a system that valued merit

Speaker 2 yes connection still you know still played a role I mean it's a you know if there is one constant in the inconstancy of human nature and that is that you know the nepotism and corruption stays with us.

Speaker 2 But to a far greater degree,

Speaker 2 merit played a role. And so

Speaker 2 you see that in the people Napoleon promoted and surrounded himself with

Speaker 2 were, again,

Speaker 2 his cabinet is quite capable. And he stays so throughout the empire.
And not just in the military, as I said, but it's in finance, in administration, in science. It's the ability to...

Speaker 2 for a person from a humble background to go to a school, to distinguish himself through

Speaker 2 his, and at this this time it's largely his, right? That the women were not given the equality through his talent and merit and rise to the top. That's what matters.

Speaker 2 And that's what is missing, I think, in many other areas of Europe at this time, in parts like in Spain, in southern Italy, in Austria, and Russia.

Speaker 2 There is a far less opportunity for a commoner to rise to the top.

Speaker 2 But Napoleon makes sure that by the time he's gone, that the system is already entrenched.

Speaker 2 That, yes, monarchy will be restored, bourbons will be back, but even bourbons will have to accept the charter, this constitutional arrangement,

Speaker 2 one of the principles of which will be equality before the law, will be this acceptance of careers open to merit.

Speaker 1 What happened to this

Speaker 1 model of the sort of enlightened despot? It seems that that's more less common today. Maybe the most recent one would have been somebody like Lee Huan Yu,

Speaker 1 who is a similar model to Napoleon. But what happened to figures like this

Speaker 1 in our government?

Speaker 2 So

Speaker 2 in my own research, and certainly in this book,

Speaker 2 I'm making an argument,

Speaker 2 not necessarily an original argument, but I certainly am a big proponent of it, that Napoleon is not necessarily the child of revolution.

Speaker 2 Now, he's a product of the revolutionary circumstances, but he does not necessarily represent revolution as such. To me, as I mentioned in the book, he's the last of the enlightened despots.

Speaker 2 Because much of what he tried to establish, much of what he tried to introduce in equality, but also order and efficiency, these are not necessarily the revolutionary ideals, but these are ideas that other enlightened despots, including Frederick the Great, including Joseph II of Austria, tried also to a various degree of success implementing in their countries.

Speaker 2 But Napoleon, I think, is the last of them and probably the most successful in that his system survived. And the reason why he's most successful, Frederick

Speaker 2 Joseph, is

Speaker 2 because of revolution.

Speaker 2 Now, Napoleon did not support the radicalism of revolution. And we see that throughout his life, that even as a young man, when he witnessed revolutionary

Speaker 2 events in Paris, that he consistently came out against or

Speaker 2 expressed opinion against the radicalism of the crowd.

Speaker 2 And that to me

Speaker 2 is

Speaker 2 kind of an element in his mindset that tells that

Speaker 2 he is not a revolution on horseback as such, but enlightened despotism.

Speaker 2 Once he passed away, right?

Speaker 2 once he's off the historical stage,

Speaker 2 even though we are not talking about the enlightened despotism as such, but the core of it still is there.

Speaker 2 It's the government trying to bring about changes, government bring about standardization, bring about efficiency. Now, it is not done as overtly or

Speaker 2 as acutely as Napoleon did it. But that's because circumstances have kind of changed and evolved.
But we still see, for example, Prussian development in the 1820s and 30s that are part of that,

Speaker 2 what I I would say is part of that enlightened rational

Speaker 2 reform movement. And even later on in

Speaker 2 post-Crimean period, Alexander II, the Russian emperor's great reforms, can be perceived to be as part of that steady, gradual introduction of change that will modernize the state.

Speaker 2 So, you know, I think you can make an argument connecting those dots.

Speaker 1 And then what happened to

Speaker 1 that form of government? It seems that,

Speaker 1 yeah, other than Singapore, it's kind of

Speaker 1 a lost.

Speaker 2 No, well, I mean, I wouldn't say,

Speaker 2 would you consider, for example, Soviet state as that? Because it is

Speaker 2 a statist approach that is ushering in rapid transformation of society.

Speaker 2 I think it evolved. It's changed its nature.

Speaker 2 Singapore is a unique case in that it was

Speaker 2 both kind of liberal, but

Speaker 2 authoritarian in that sense, right? It was kind of

Speaker 2 controlled liberal environment.

Speaker 2 But the Soviet system was authoritarian, but more radical in its transformations.

Speaker 2 So

Speaker 2 it's, I think, a part of the evolutionary process

Speaker 2 of what's happening. So, not necessarily that it's withered away and disappeared.

Speaker 2 You certainly can, for example, make a case for some of the Latin American examples where this enlightened, you know, kind of enlightened reform movements led, spearheaded by an individual,

Speaker 2 might be

Speaker 2 still relevant.

Speaker 1 And then, this is the question I meant to ask you earlier, which is when we were talking about how this was a unique time in terms of giving these talented young people

Speaker 1 access to positions based on their merit. Is that possibly one of the advantages of war, which is that you have to,

Speaker 1 if the weak perish, then the

Speaker 1 nations have a very strong incentive to make sure their systems and their government are as efficient as possible.

Speaker 1 If you look at, let's say,

Speaker 1 the U.S., it's still a meritocracy, maybe

Speaker 1 in the

Speaker 1 private markets, but

Speaker 1 the average age of congressmen and president seems to keep increasing. And maybe that has something to do with,

Speaker 1 it's not like titles of nobility anymore, but it is a greater and greater level of their accreditation.

Speaker 1 Is this one of the defenses of war, which is that it forces countries to become more efficient as they do? No,

Speaker 2 I think that's a challenging

Speaker 2 question to

Speaker 2 deal with in a sense because

Speaker 2 in the late 19th century,

Speaker 2 social Darwinists, for example, argued that war was a great purger of societies that rejuvenates it. So I'm not sure that we want to kind of go back

Speaker 2 to that argument.

Speaker 2 You know,

Speaker 2 the war, I mean, the sheer nature of the war is that it makes things possible that in peacetime would be unthinkable. It is a great,

Speaker 2 it has a great homogenizing effects. It suppresses some of the sharper edges, or in some areas, it actually makes those sharper edges even more pronounced.

Speaker 2 And certainly when we talk about the French Revolution, for example, without the war, the revolution would not have radicalized as rapidly or to the extent that it did.

Speaker 2 Without the conflict that started in 1792, France would have, it's my argument, would have continued on the path of a gradual reform movement towards a constitutional limited monarchy rather than rush towards a radical republicanism, terror, and violence, which then beget more violence, more cycles of political instability, and ultimately led to military dictatorship.

Speaker 2 That's where the war is crucial. And certainly within that context, in the context of war, there are a lot of things that revolutionaries

Speaker 2 thought were justifiable. For example, suspension of habeas corpus, for example, arrest and persecution of their political

Speaker 2 opponents, but also instituting great government controls. Think about law of maximum, for example, that Jacobins introduced during the terror.

Speaker 2 All that is in the context of that fear, of that anxiety, of that emergency situation that the war cultivates. That's where I see the impact of it.
And of course, the war also creates conditions where

Speaker 2 bright, talented, however you want to, you know, whatever adjective you want to put it, individuals have an opportunity to distinguish. Now, for example, you know, kind of to go back to what you said

Speaker 2 about the war being this kind of great purger, it certainly had a role in weeding out out many officers in the French Corps.

Speaker 2 Many of them immigrated, left the army, some of them failed in the tasks that

Speaker 2 the revolutionary government set for them and were

Speaker 2 punished dearly so for it.

Speaker 2 We have several cases like General Coustain or General Beauhornet or others who failed to achieve the mission that the government set for them and they were recalled and condemned and executed for it.

Speaker 2 And so it certainly creates this environment in which

Speaker 2 you have to deliver, you have to be at your best, or in an environment in which

Speaker 2 people who are willing to take the risk are pushed forward. And that's in many respects how Napoleon got his start, right?

Speaker 2 In 1793, he's a lowly nobody in the French

Speaker 2 army and yet he's the one who is willing to take charge of artillery command in a town of Toulon, which is besieged by the army. He comes out with a plan that brings the city to

Speaker 2 its knees, and the rest is history, right? And always done within this war environment.

Speaker 2 Who knows how things would have turned if there was no war and whether Napoleon would have been able to distinguish himself or the other generals

Speaker 2 that went on to make great careers.

Speaker 1 It seems that one of the reasons that that

Speaker 1 the revolutionary and Napoleonic ideas spread a lot was that also at the time that France was the

Speaker 1 seat of intellectual discourse

Speaker 1 at the time.

Speaker 1 Why was that?

Speaker 1 Maybe today

Speaker 1 America has that sort of cultural influence that France had at the time. When you read like War and Peace,

Speaker 1 all the elites in Russia are talking in French.

Speaker 1 What gave France its cultural dominance?

Speaker 2 That's a longer kind of structural historical process.

Speaker 2 We can go back to the 17th century and see the rise of dominant, France as a dominant,

Speaker 2 both political entity in Western Europe and a cultural kind of entity in Europe as a whole. I think it's a creation of Louis XIV's era.

Speaker 2 the grandeur of the French monarchy, the opulence, the luxury of it,

Speaker 2 the diversity and the richness of French offerings.

Speaker 2 And of course, you know, this is where I think it gets really interesting in the sense that France is oftentimes envisioned as an absolutist monarchy with kind of tight controls and everything.

Speaker 2 But on the other hand,

Speaker 2 in the 18th century, we see a diverse range of opinions expressed within France by the French writers. On one hand,

Speaker 2 you can find anti-Enlightenment writers, but alongside you will see Voltaire, you'll see Rousseau, or the less known ones like Holbach, who was an atheist who was writing critical works against the organized religion and envisioning these technocratic utopias.

Speaker 2 So

Speaker 2 that is a unique circumstances that France was able to craft and cultivate that other countries

Speaker 2 were unable to replicate or were able to replicate to a lesser degree. I think the other country that was successful in doing that, of course, Britain,

Speaker 2 you know, which had a very vibrant and rich intellectual life at this time.

Speaker 1 I want to be respectful of your time.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 is there,

Speaker 1 the book is The Napoleonic Wars, a global history. And yeah, if you want to mention your Twitter handle.

Speaker 2 It's just AA, yeah, my first name and last name. So it's pretty straightforward.
If you can spell my last name, Nikovet,

Speaker 2 you'll find me.

Speaker 2 You know,

Speaker 1 when I was doing research for the book, book, there were many times when I had to look up your, I was like maybe looking, trying to look up older interviews or something.

Speaker 1 And every time I had to go to Amazon and make sure I copied the name right.

Speaker 2 My students call me Dr. M,

Speaker 2 which make me a kind of character from the James Bond movie, but it's easier for them to recall, to remember it.

Speaker 1 Sure.

Speaker 1 Yeah, and then, yeah, any other, I don't know if there's like

Speaker 1 some final note or some final point that you want to close on,

Speaker 1 something that stuck out from the conversation.

Speaker 2 I think

Speaker 2 this book represents kind of a humble effort to showcase what history can do in modern context, and that is to move away from traditional boundaries,

Speaker 2 to adopt a more wider lens at looking at events, more transnational, more comparative.

Speaker 2 It's perfectly fine to to do a national histories and to kind of look at the historical developments of particular country, but to me it is far more rewarding to

Speaker 2 see how countries developed in relationship with each other, how events in one part of the world reverberate in another.

Speaker 2 Because

Speaker 2 in our day, nowadays, we live in such an interconnected world that that transnational and comparative approach is absolutely essential to your success in really in any field of career that you pursue, and certainly in politics and business and

Speaker 2 law.

Speaker 2 And so I encourage your listeners to pick up books like that, books written with the global history in mind

Speaker 2 and

Speaker 2 broaden their horizons.

Speaker 1 From the little history I have read, usually it's like a biography or something, and you really do miss the global implications of the decisions that are being made and the changes that are happening.

Speaker 1 So it was super interesting to get that

Speaker 1 total perspective.

Speaker 2 Thank you.

Speaker 1 So yeah, it's a super fascinating book and this is a super fun conversation. Thanks so much for coming on the podcast.

Speaker 2 Thank you. I appreciate that.
Thank you for the opportunity.

Speaker 1 I hope you enjoyed this podcast. If you did and want to help support it, the most helpful thing you can do is share it on social media and with your friends.

Speaker 1 Other than that, please like and comment on YouTube and leave good reviews on podcast platforms. Cheers and thanks for watching.