The Napoleonic Wars: A Global History

The Napoleonic Wars is a long book that covers the Napoleonic Wars as well as all the world history that immediately related to it. Napoleon himself only plays a minor part in the story. There are shifting alliances among other European countries. The European nations at the time had colonies throughout the world. Thus, the various conflicts among the nations spread through the entire world.

Napoleon rose to power after the French Revolution. The revolution started out as an attempt to ensure freedom for the people. Alas, this freedom ended up with people that did not like the "right" freedom losing their heads. Eventually, the best way to be "free" was to have a strong leader that could force other people to be "free." Napoleon filled this void. He was a keen military leader and took advantage of this opportunity to take over the army and eventually declare himself emperor. All of the idealism of the revolution simply resulted in the replacement of one despot with another. (Oh, and a few million people died in the process.) Alas, this pattern has seemed to repeat itself again and again as the "people" throw out the despot only to end up needing a new despot to force the "will of the people". A violent progressive revolution is a dangerous thing.

The events of the Napoleonic war caused massive changes in other parts of the world. A number of colonies switched hands during the time. Many took that opportunity to proclaim their own independence.  It was not a direct process. There were rises and falls before the revolutions finished playing out. France, Spain and Britain were somewhat involved, but also busy with the European battles. Asia was also involved, with China, India, Vietnam and Indonesia all touched by these wars. The United States also grew with the Louisiana purchase. International trade was impacted by the wars as countries tried to block others from trading. Slavery was initially banned by the French, but Napoleon was convinced to maintain it. (The Haitian government created after a slave rebellion was blackballed by much of the world.)

Back in Europe, Napoleon created a large (if temporary) unification of Europe. In some sense, it was a preview of the European Union that would come in the future. There were some bad economic decisions in the process. However, in the end it was primarily overextension of military quests that did in Napoleon. 

Napoleon was exiled, then came back. He seemed to have a chance, but just was not quite up to his old self. This time he was exiled a little more thoroughly. France was also punished more thoroughly with more territory lost than at the end of the previous peace. The author posits that the way tides had turned, Napoleon would have eventually met his defeat no matter what had happened. He just made some mistakes that caused it to happen earlier. Britain seemed to be the big European winner. After the huge number of deaths, there was a lot more respect for conservative leadership. The ideals of the French revolution did continue to hold some sway, they just progressed a little slower.