About the Book
Winner of the Gilder Lehrman Military History Prize, the first global history of the world's first world war.Austerlitz, Wagram, Borodino, Trafalgar, Leipzig, Waterloo: these are the places most closely associated with the era of the Napoleonic Wars. But how did this period of nearly continuous conflict affect the world beyond Europe? The immensity of the fighting waged by France against England, Prussia, Austria, and Russia,
and the immediate consequences of the tremors that spread throughout the world.In this ambitious and far-ranging work, Alexander Mikaberidze argues that the Napoleonic Wars can only be fully
understood in an international perspective. France struggled for dominance not only on the plains of Europe but also in the Americas, West and South Africa, Ottoman Empire, Iran, India, Indonesia, the Philippines, Mediterranean Sea, and the Atlantic and Indian Oceans. Taking specific regions in turn, Mikaberidze discusses major political-military events around the world and situates geopolitical decision-making within its long- and short-term contexts. From the British expeditions to Argentina
and South Africa to the Franco-Russian maneuvering in the Ottoman Empire, the effects of the French Revolution and Napoleonic Wars would shape international affairs well into the next century. In
Egypt, the wars led to the rise of Mehmed Ali and the emergence of a powerful state; in North America, the period transformed and enlarged the newly established United States; and in South America, the Spanish colonial empire witnessed the start of national-liberation movements that ultimately ended imperial control.Skillfully narrated and deeply researched, here at last is the global history of the period, one that expands our view of the Napoleonic Wars and their role in
laying the foundations of the modern world.
Table of Contents:
Chapter 1: The Revolutionary Prelude
Chapter 2: The Eighteenth-Century International Order
Chapter 3: The War of the First Coalition, 1792-1797
Chapter 4: The Making of "La Grande Nation," 1797-1802
Chapter 5: The Second Coalition War and the Origins of the "Great Game"
Chapter 6: The Rites of Peace, 1801-1802
Chapter 7: The Road to War, 1802-1803
Chapter 8: The Rupture, 1803
Chapter 9: The Elephant Against the Whale: France and Britain at War, 1803-1804
Chapter 10: The Emperor's Conquest, 1805-1807
Chapter 11: "War Through Other Means": Europe and the Continental System
Chapter 12: The Struggle for Portugal and Spain, 1807-1812
Chapter 13: The Grand Empire, 1807-1812
Chapter 14: The Emperor's Last Triumph
Chapter 15: The Northern Question, 1807-1811
Chapter 16: "An Empire Besieged": The Ottomans and the Napoleonic Wars
Chapter 17: The Qajar Connection: Iran and the European Powers, 1804-1814
Chapter 18: Britain's Expeditionary Warfare, 1805-1810
Chapter 19: Britain's Eastern Empire, 1800-1815
Chapter 20: The Western Question? Struggle for the Americas, 1808-1815
Chapter 21: The Turning Point, 1812
Chapter 22: The Fall of the French Empire
Chapter 23: The War and Peace, 1814-1815
Chapter 24: The Aftermath of the Great War
Notes
Select Bibliography
Index
About the Author :
Alexander Mikaberidze is Professor of European History at Louisiana State University Shreveport, where he is also Ruth Herring Noel Endowed Chair for the Curatorship of the James Smith Noel Collection. He is the author of several books, including Kutuzov: A Life in War and Peace and The Burning of Moscow: Napoleon's Trial by Fire 1812.
Review :
To grasp this changing world and understand Newman's response to it, Mikaberidze's The Napoleonic Wars is a great place to start.
...Mikaberidze (Louisiana State Univ., Shreveport) offers a pathbreaking, genuinely global geopolitical narrative that pursues history down numerous remote pathways.
In this extraordinary work of scholarship, Mikaberidze provides vital context and global perspective to the epic struggle between France and its European competitors until Napoleon's defeat at Waterloo in 1815.
Mikaberidze offers a clear, accurate, up-to-date and richly detailed narrative of the Napoleonic Wars. If you want a thumbnail sketch of the Battle of Austerlitz, a quick explanation of the reason the Franco-British Peace of Amiens broke down in 1803, or to learn how many horses Napoleon lost in Russia (200,000), look no further.
Engrossing and authoritative
An outstanding book for anyone interested in the French Wars or 'Big History'.
In this thousand-page tour de force, researched in over a dozen languages with 189 pages of notes, the exceptionally talented Georgian-American historian Alexander Mikaberidze, a professor at Louisiana State University Shreveport, revisits a foundational conflict in the modern world, the veritable 'world war' unleashed by the French Revolution and dominated by the towering figure of Napoleon Bonaparte.
Alexander Mikaberidze ...argues persuasively in The Napoleonic Wars: A Global History that the deepest and longest-lasting effects of the 23 years of fighting actually occurred outside Europe.
an impressive reinterpretation of the wars of the French Revolution and Napoleon (1792-1815) ... An outstand book for anyone interested in the French Wars or "Big History".
Far broader and deeper in scope than any previous history of the Napoleonic Wars, Alexander Mikaberidze has produced a true masterpiece. He proves conclusively how intimately interconnected the events of the great struggle were, not just in Europe but also encompassing the Americas, Africa, the Middle East, Iran, India, China and Japan. He rightly argues that as an agent for social change, the Napoleonic Wars were the most important thing to have taken place between the Reformation and World War I. With his mastery of the myriad sources in multiple languages, Mikaberidze reminds us what first-class scholarship can do to our perceptions of an important subject when allied to excellent writing. This book will be an instant modern classic.
An entirely rewarding history of a Europe-based struggle that 'influenced the course of events across the globe.'
Through his mastery of international bibliography (facilitated by his knowledge of several languages), his expertise in political, diplomatic and military affairs (though we did not expect anything else from the apprentice of Professor Donald D. Horward), the extent of the issues dealt with and problems revisited that go far beyond the simple narration of military conflicts and lead us, without Manichaeism, to the very heart of the issues, through his accessible writing style (clear enough even for a mediocre Anglophone to easily follow his story and reasoning) and, dare I to say it, his profound knowledge of historical events, Professor Mikaberidze confirms that he is one of the great Napoleonic scholars of today. No one will be able to study the Napoleonic episode without having at hand this global history which fills a gap in the English-language historiography.
Already distinctive thanks to his insights from the Russian perspective, Alexander Mikaberidze in this very important new book provides a valuable global perspective on Napoleon's war-making. This approach provides both an instructive narrative and a perspective from which the impact and legacy of the period can be understood.
At long last we have the truly global history of the wars of 1789-1815 that we have long needed. This book gives us new perspectives to understand this critical turning point in world history. A must have for all students of the period.
Alexander Mikaberidze believes that the twenty-three years of war from 1792 to 1815 - which the British were content to describe as the 'French wars' - cannot be fully understood unless we extend our gaze beyond Europe, to consider colonial ambitions, revolutions and power struggles across the globe. The result is a hugely impressive work of scholarship that slips seamlessly across continents, taking the reader not just to the steppes of Russia but to the Balkans and Iran, Japan and China, the Indian Ocean, Indonesia, the United States, South America and the Caribbean. This is global history at its most exhilarating, a history of the Napoleonic Wars for the twenty-first century.
This important, ground-breaking book reveals (for the first time in a comprehensive overview) the global repercussions of the Napoleonic wars. A must read!
This is an extraordinary work of scholarship. Despite the book's length, scope, and detail, the narrative never flags. It is hard to see how anyone will improve on this account.
This book is a vivid, entirely engrossing history of that conflict, full of military shot and incident, full of choice quotes, full of vibrantly dramatic vignettes set in locations as far from Austerlitz as South America or Egypt. It firmly establishes a version of the Napoleonic Wars in which Bonaparte himself was in many ways merely the pebble that triggers the avalanche, and it provides unfailingly enjoyable reading along the way. It deserves to stand as the definitive one-volume treatment of the period.
This expansive work-the research and analysis, the breadth, depth, and detail of the narrative, presented in writing that will satisfy both popular and scholarly audiences-may very well be the last word that needs to be written on the subject.
