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Notes -
What do you think of Napoleon's Legacy?
I, an amateur to the Napoleonic wars, wandered away from Ridley Scott's Napoleon feeling more or less pleased with my night. By terrible mistake I related to a friend who loves the Emperor that I enjoyed the movie, and was informed that the entire film was a piece of British propaganda. I objected that the British were hardly in the movie at all, only to be explained that the things Scott chose to highlight or ignore mostly followed the contours of the British perspective on the conflict. For instance, Waterloo is emphasized because the British played a decisive role, even though Napoleon stood no real chance of victory during his return, whereas the larger Battle of Leipzig which really ended Napoleon's bid for domination wasn't even mentioned because the British weren't there. And of course what about the fact that Napoleon only ever declared war twice while Britain was actively funding other countries to oppose France, and so on and so on.
My friend's counter-narrative of perfidious Albion being the real villain behind the Napoleonic wars is likely no more straightforwardly true than the narrative that France alone was at fault, but it's a helpful reminder that even today there remain vastly diverging perspectives on the immense impact of the man, the myth, and the legend of Napoleon Bonaparte.
For instance, there's also of course his political reforms, which are the part I found myself missing the most in the movie, even though they would have been impractical to include. A while back Scott touched upon a study by Daron Acemoglu claiming that long run growth was much higher in the areas that Napoleon conquered, due to him abolishing guilds, monopolies, and other rent seeking institutions. Rebuttals included people arguing that Acemoglu et al forgot to control for access to coal, after which you supposedly see no impact from Napoleonic conquest remaining.
Or military reforms. Was Napoleon a genius for coming up with military reforms like how to mobilize national resources and break armies down into self-sustaining units that could live on the land and rely less on supply trains? I've heard people argue these were really mostly Ancien Regime ideas crafted after their loss in the Seven Years War. Napoleon only took advantage of the flux of the revolution to be the one to ram them through.
And what about Republicanism and liberalism in general? Did he hasten them along by spreading their ideas farther and faster than they ever would on their own, or did he doom them for decades by encouraging the conservative monarchs to see liberals as a threat to be immediately stamped out, rather than a nuissance that could be tolerated?
So how do you feel about Napoleon's legacy? Was he an expansionist warmonger or a peacemaker driven to conflict by other powers? Was he a brilliant military reformer or mostly an opportunist riding off others' inventions? Did he leave a legacy of economic and political dynamism or barely make a dent? What's your take?
I'm almost inclined to view Napolean as a force of nature rather than as "good" or "bad."
He was a man of incredible talent, incredible will, he was both a man of action and intellectually a total mensch. Thus, anyone who wants to achieve something in the world, can profit from studying his life.
But, what he accomplished, he accomplished for his own visions. The results were in the end catastrophic for the men who followed him, as they starved and froze to death in the Russian winter. The results for France itself were a mixed bag.
But it is hard for me to cry too many tears about the fate of his followers or of his victims. The institutions that fell were old and rotting. The men who followed him, chose to do so, if they were captivated by his amoral visions of conquest and were willing to subjugate themselves to his vision, then I cannot say they deserved better. We all die in the end.
I haven't seen the movie and don't intend to after reading the American Sun review and others. From what I've heard the main problem is that they turned one of the most charismatic men in history into a mumbling bumbling clingy loser.
Strangely I found that review very funny and largely accurate, but I also enjoyed the movie.
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AFAICT Napoleon drafted 60k-120k people every year during the wars.
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What would you say made them amoral?
Amoral means that a choice was made without reference to morality. Immoral means that it is contrary to morality. If Napoleon was motivated solely by glory, his decisions were amoral. They may also have been immoral - that depends on what your moral code is, because Napoleon didn't have one.
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This is much how I feel as well. I can't bring myself to particularly like or dislike him, or take a side between his followers and detractors, it's more of a feeling of being very impressed from a far distance.
I'll say I think it was still a decent enough movie, and I was surprised how much I enjoyed it after reading angry reviews like the one linked. Certainly not an incredible movie, and one that'll drive hardcore fans mad, but a decent enough way to spend a few hours.
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