The rule of empires : those who built them, those who endured them, and why they always fall (46 page)

its growth by giving conquered peoples a reason to hate the French.

By this reasoning, forward-looking continental notables who would

have valued Napoleon’s commitment to good governance, stability,

and the rule of law turned against him because they suffered at the

hands of his soldiers. Broers is one of the most thoughtful and perceptive authorities on Napoleonic Europe, but in this case his perspective is too narrow.6 Looking back over earlier imperial eras, it is clear

that all empires were built by violent conquest and that conquered

peoples invariably resented their subjecthood.

The Napoleonic empire was not abnormal; rather, it represented

the end of a long tradition of empire that had lasted for several millennia. This imperial model lost its viability when common people

came to see empires as foreign and thus illegitimate. Eighteenthcentury absolutism and centralization made imperial rule far more

burdensome by giving conquerors the means to extract wealth more

directly from their subjects. Rural communities throughout Napoleonic Europe fell back on localism to defend themselves against this

new, more invasive style of exploitation, but they gradually found

common cause in resisting an oppressive imperial regime. It would

take time for intellectuals and politicians to enlist or conscript the

peoples of Europe in nation building, but the emergence of more

coherent and broadly based collective identities steadily closed up the

social divisions that empire builders needed to recruit the local allies

that made long-term rule possible.

This enhanced social cohesion meant that conquistadors, nabobs,

and other imperial entrepreneurs could no longer turn a quick military victory into an empire. Just as European Christians decided it

236 THE RULE OF EMPIRES

was no longer acceptable to enslave each other in the early modern

era, by the turn of the nineteenth century it became increasingly diffi cult to consign Europeans to the kind of subhuman subjecthood that

was central to profi table imperial extraction. As Napoleon discovered,

it now took a full-scale invasion and extended military occupation to

create a continental European empire in the early national age. His

empire was thus a transitional, absolutist conquest state that bridged

the “old” early modern empire building and the last-gasp “new”

imperialism of the modern nationalist era.

Napoleon certainly went to great lengths to depict himself as a

benevolent emperor. Writing from his exile in St. Helena, he claimed

that his main aim was to promote European unity and spread the

ideals of the Enlightenment. Although he envisioned himself as the

heir of Augustus and Charlemagne, he insisted that he had not gone

to war to build a continental empire. Audaciously, he asserted: “All

my victories and all my conquests were won in self-defense.”7 By

this argument, he waged war to turn back the reactionary enemies

of progress and had no intention of profi ting unreasonably from his

conquests.

Most imperial adventurers made similar claims, but the limited

evidence from earlier eras made it diffi cult to refute them conclusively. Napoleon, however, produced one of the fi rst bureaucratic

empires. His more effi cient systems of rule left a paper trail of letters,

orders, and pronouncements that provided a much clearer picture of

his imperial aspirations and practices. Consequently, it is easier to

recognize his benevolent declarations for what they really were: propaganda to mobilize his subjects, win foreign allies, and embarrass his

enemies. In reality, he spread rational secularism and legal equality

to create a uniform administrative system and sweep away the aristocratic and feudal institutions that limited his ability to impose his

will on conquered peoples.

Although Napoleon had more personal and state power than his

imperial predecessors, he still shared their goals. As a nabobist general, he sought wealth and personal aggrandizement. As an emperor

and head of state, he pursued these grandiose aspirations as the

self-proclaimed personifi cation of the French nation. He sought an

empire to make his fortune, distract his French subjects with glorious

foreign conquests, and acquire resources to underwrite his dynastic

ambitions.

Napoleonic

Italy 237

Moreover, the Napoleonic regime’s legitimizing imperial ideologies

were consistent with the excuses that the Romans, Umayyads, Spaniards, and British used to justify their empires. Indeed, Napoleon was

entirely conscious of his imperial predecessors and often cast himself

as their heirs. He adopted Roman symbols and titles and sponsored

neoclassical interpretations in the fi ne arts, fashion, furnishings, and

architecture. For all of his reformist and paternal rhetoric, Napoleon

was more than willing to invoke the Roman privileges of conquest.

Thus he bluntly answered his brother Jérôme, the ruler of the puppet

state of Westphalia, who opposed seizing land to create new noble

estates, with the dismissive rebuke: “These domains belong to my

generals who conquered your kingdom.”8

Furthermore, Napoleon never forgot that at its core his empire

was fundamentally French. Although he was born on Corsica, he recognized the value of French cultural confi dence as a potent imperial

tool. Eighteenth-century Frenchmen saw themselves as the heirs of

the Greeks and Romans and the center of the European Enlightenment. After the revolution of 1789, they grew even more certain of

their superiority over the superstitious feudalistic societies of ancien

régime Europe. Under Napoleon, French intellectuals reassured themselves that their culture combined the best of the classical tradition,

Enlightenment science, revolutionary egalitarianism, and ancient

French martial values.

Napoleonic empire builders thus used French culture as a yardstick

to measure the societies they conquered. The notables, intellectuals,

and city dwellers that came closest to the French ideal were worthy of

enlistment in the French imperial project. Rural peoples were trapped

in an earlier stage of development and therefore needed an extended

lesson in “civilization” before they could qualify for
amalgame
and

claim the privileges that came with French rule. In their eyes, the

France of the revolution and Napoleon was fundamentally settled,

cosmopolitan, and urban. French intellectuals in fact considered their

own peasants to be just as barbarous and uncultured as their foreign

rural subjects.

This is how Napoleon could depict himself as the liberator of subject nations even as he overran the continent. He pledged to help

Europeans realize their national destinies by freeing them from the

superstition of the Catholic Church and the narrow particularism

of ancien régime feudalism. Promising to give Italians a national

238 THE RULE OF EMPIRES

education, on the eve of his fi rst invasion of Italy in 1796 he declared:

“People of Italy, the French army is coming to break your chains. Meet

it with confi dence.”9 This was pure propaganda. Napoleon often pretended to support the national ambitions of his subjects, but toward

the end of his reign he explicitly declared that his main concern was

“the glory and power of France.”10

Both the emperor and his representatives actually held Italians in

contempt. French imperial proponents professed respect for the classical Romans, but they believed that their descendants were degenerate. Italian nobles and urban elites were lazy, soft, effeminate, and

beholden to the Catholic Church. They wasted their time on billiards,

opera, and love affairs. Rural peoples, particularly those of the Apennine highlands, were even worse. From the French perspective, they

were irrational savages ruled by vendettas and superstition, and a

French administrator went so far as to compare the villagers of Frosinone, a small hill town southeast of Rome, to Africans in their barbarity and “fi erce nature.”11 By this account, common Italians were so

uncivilized that they needed French imperial tutelage to regain their

status as Europeans.

French empire builders thus envisioned themselves as secular

missionaries charged with spreading the civilizing message of the

Enlightenment to the backward corners of the continent. They would

create a new enlightened European society by abolishing feudalism

and introducing rational secularism, the rule of law, social equality,

public education, and agricultural effi ciency. Both Napoleon and the

original French revolutionaries believed that their ideals were universal and transcended local cultural differences. Not surprisingly,

they were equally confi dent that post-1789 France was the purest

manifestation of this new enlightened, rational society.

The French told themselves that they had built an enlightened

liberal empire to justify plunging Europe into a continental war, but

this was nonsense. The primary function of Napoleon’s reformist

agenda was to create a powerful centralized imperial state to better

extract wealth and military conscripts from subject societies. While

he might have depicted himself as the enemy of feudal privilege, he

was more than willing to work with the representatives of the ancien

régime if they were suffi ciently cooperative. In essence, the Napoleonic empire was a conquest state, and it is doubtful that many of

its subjects considered the benefi ts of French civilization suffi cient

Napoleonic

Italy 239

compensation for the men and wealth the emperor demanded in

return.

Ultimately, Napoleon was just as ruthless as his imperial predecessors. He may have promised the Italians liberation, but in 1805 he

betrayed his true intentions when he told Eugène de Beauharnais not

to tolerate resistance in the Kingdom of Italy.

There is evil in [Italians]. Do not let them forget that I am the master

and can do whatever I wish. This needs to be drummed into all peoples,

but especially the Italians, who only obey the voice of a master. They

will respect you only if they fear you, and they will fear you only if

they realize that you understand their false and deceitful character.12

Under Napoleonic rule, the Italians now had the same status as the

ancient Britons, whom their Roman ancestors had conquered almost

two millennia earlier. Napoleon’s sprawling imperial state marked a

turning point in the larger history of empire, but the dehumanizing

realities of imperial subjecthood remained largely constant.

The nationalism that rendered imperial projects unworkable did

not arise out of thin air at the close of Europe’s early modern era.

Undoubtedly, the kernels of ethnicity that formed the basis of western national identities were long-standing, if not ancient. But in the

seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the linkage of identity with

blood and ancestry, the translation of the Bible into vernacular languages, the expansion of secular printing, service in large nonprofessional armies, and the increased capacity of absolutist regimes to

break down local particularism began to inspire at least some Europeans to see themselves as members of discrete, bounded, and ultimately superior “nations.”

For the most part, these nation builders were princes, intellectuals,

and cultural brokers who vied with each other to imagine and defi ne

the scope and membership of the larger national communities. Much

like empire builders, they represented special interests who advanced

their own personal agendas by framing them in broad idealistically

collective terms. The stakes of the competition were formidable, for

nationalism produced homogenous nation-states that empowered

their leaders to claim specifi c territories and demand unprecedented

levels of compliance and sacrifi ce from their citizens.

To make this work, would-be nation builders had to convince the

wider population to accept and internalize their conception of the

240 THE RULE OF EMPIRES

nation. This was a big step. In embracing national identities, local

communities had to accept kinship with people they most likely

would never meet. National rulers could also demand that they submit to military service, taxation, invasive laws, and the abolition of

collective feudal rights and local privileges. This is why peasants and

other common peoples resisted nation building with tax rebellions,

food riots, and sullen indifference. Yet membership in a nation also

had its compensations. Up until this point, citizenship simply meant

insider status in comparison to even more marginal groups that had

no protection from the full weight of imperial extraction. Now, citizenship in a nation-state brought the right of individuality, property

ownership, assembly, expression, and eventually political participation. These national identities also provided a measure of stability

and security during the social turmoil of the industrial revolution.

Perhaps most important, nationalism imagined sovereignty invested

in a national citizenry, and as “the people” of a nation, Europeans

gradually acquired the capacity to place limits on state power.

Theoretically, the strength of a nation rested in its homogeneity.