pauline is not necessarily the child of revolution now he's a product of the revolutionary circumstances but he does not necessarily represent revolution as such to me he's the last of the enlightened despots napoleon did not support the radicalism of revolution and
we we see that throughout his life the sheer nature of the war is that that it makes things possible that in peacetime would be unthinkable without the war the revolution would not have radicalized as rapidly or to the extent that it did i wonder what you think of this if
napoleon was alive today he'd be a startup founder you know as you mentioned uh what do you think about this would napoleon i don't know become the ceo of a company like tesla today [Music] all right today i have the pleasure of interviewing professor alexander mika
beretza who is a professor of history and the ruth herring noel endowed chair at louisiana state university and he's the author of the napoleonic wars a global history um so this is absolutely fascinating book uh it was unlike any other history book i've read in the sense that it was just uh global
in a scope and you're covering such an interesting period in history um so first of all can you give my audience a little bit of background on yourself and on the napoleonic wars yes thank you so much for having me it's it's a delight to be here 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 or georgia in eastern europe a small state sandwiched between russia and turkey with a rather complex and diverse and turbulent history but this is most small nations it is oftentimes
kind of lost in on the pages of history and of course when i embarked on on this career to become a professional historian i've always wanted to see you know where my my people kind of fit in the larger scheme of things and i was oftentimes frustrated especially
working on the revolutionary napoleonic era that the huge transformations that this period witnessed in caucuses were not properly addressed and so 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
to to get a better understanding of the field because napoleonic era is one of the most written historical periods um there are thousands and thousands of volumes in fact uh napoleon is probably the most written about historical figure period the last estimate was that at least
three maybe four hundred thousand volumes have been written just about him so there has to be a really good reason to write another book about this topic and my um 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 and that is perfectly worthwhile enterprise but i thought that it offers a very narrow snapshot of the period because napoleonic revolutionary napoleonic moon period is the moment when we see the
modernity setting and not just in europe but gradually extending to various parts of the world it changes the trajectory uh that many of these world regions followed and i thought in fresher study was needed to flesh that out and you know what i appreciated
you know as like a american of indian origin is that like you had almost a chapter in the book that was just dedicated to how the napoleonic wars um impacted you know the expansion of british rule in india and also about you obviously um the impact on the americas from the
louisiana purchase onwards i'm curious by the way how how it's possible that so many volumes about napoleon have been i think andrew roberts said that there's been one on average one new book by napoleon a day since he died yeah oh yeah how hard how are there how are there
possibly that many napoleonic scholars um well uh it's it's a it's a very enticing field um i i compare napoleon and uh you told me that the video will be recorded right so you see the uh the the wall behind me which has uh parts of the british uh propaganda part of the french propaganda
and of course the gift from my students napoleon's cut out but often times compare napoleon to a siren and because for those who first approach the shores of napoleonic history they are drawn by the lure of that sweet song of napoleonic legend right that the vision
of the romantic kind of tightened the the prometheus who's thought to bring about change and was ultimately uh defeated in exile to iraq in the middle of nowhere um and and i think napoleonic legend exercise is such a learner that there is always uh enough people interested in it to
write about it but but it has a downfall or kind of side effect and that is um most of what is written is written on on on europe uh for for linguistic reasons for example to write the books of global nature a global historical narrative you need to have diversity of
language skills that includes not just the french and british which by now is taking for granted but spanish and german and russian and then if you expand your narrative even further to the east then you have to involve the ottoman and and iranian historical traditions as
well right um and and of course that is a is a colossal challenge and i think that is oftentimes pushes people away from such a narrative um and also that the events in europe itself uh in in the period are such colossal scale right so we talk about the battles that involve
uh for example at borodino there are a quarter million troops at leipzigs there are well over half a million troops fighting for the for the future of europe uh that by comparison uh you know let's say dealing with events in uh in russo-iranian war where
you have on average ten to fifteen thousand men engaged it kind of not sexy now right not not big enough um so i think that also uh uh plays a role then the the charisma of these great in personalities that were engaged also kind of skews it towards eurocentric narrative and that's
exactly the point that i was trying to make in the book is that that should not be the reason to to avoid our discussion in elsewhere and as you pointed out um for for india this is the moment of tremendous importance and not to include the developments in in in india under the leadership
of british india company led by richard wellesley from 1798 to 1805 right this seven years of crucial importance because in many respects the foundation for what will be the raj right is late exactly at this time uh and same applies to let's say extending our narrative to north america
or south america where you know the this period saw the 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 the the the fact that we have such a political
uh uh kind of a political reality of of independent nation states from mexico down to argentina all are uh the the you know part of the legacy of the napoleonic period can you talk more about the impact of the uh the valence wars on india um why why why was it so crucial for the
british india company now the of course the english presence um in india predates the revolutionary period 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. uh so by then
the british east india company had already uh established presence in in india especially in the northeastern part of it in bengal and of course india oftentimes people forget just how huge and how diverse and how populous this this uh subcontinent is and notice that
i use the term subcontinent not region because again uh it's it's enormous in scale in fact we can we you know the estimates uh usually point that india at this time has a population well over 120 million people uh so and this would have been a huge area for a huge area for for the british as
market for their goods but also as a source of the goods for their own commerce and we know that in before revolutionary wars there was a vibrant trade going on uh that in in many in many respects sustained the industrial the the 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 but it is an asset that from the british point of view has is is constantly under threat from other uh powers uh both local such as for example moral empire until it
experienced the decline in the mid 18th century and then the maratha confederation that uh and and external threats most notably uh the french who've been kind of nibbling at their hills all through the 18th century and so the what what to me the the
the interesting aspect of this is not necessarily the actual threat that existed but it's the perceptions of the of threat that britain saw the british officials saw not all of them for example when we look at 1798 1799 period you have some british officials such as
granville who was a foreign secretary arguing that the threat direct threat to british presence in india is over is exaggerated and kind of embellished and that britain should focus its efforts on confronting france in europe and then you have colonial officials of course the uh the british is the
india company officials uh steadfastly arguing that the threat is real that french are coming and in fact if you read the letters of uh richard wellesley who is appointed as a governor general of british east india company in 1798 he speaks constantly of this um a french threat as if it is real
as if it is uh imminent even though we know that france was not um in a position to directly threaten the positions of the british positions in india at this time right the french hands are tied in in europe but nonetheless the perception is important because it
is on under this pretense of confronting the french threat that the wellesley then embarks on on empire building and in the book i refer to wellesley as probably the most napoleonic of this british statesman of this period because his vision is is that of an empire in india which can
be built within the context of confronting the or this alleged strength threat and so we see the uh the the wars the comp the campaigns that wellesley waged against the local native uh indian states that uh refused to trot the british line so i remind you
the the war between angela uh the uh the british and the mysore right the infamous uh storming of serengabatam and the killing of this ruler of tipu sultan or the uh 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 where uh arthur wellesley right the richard's younger brother and future greatest british military commander of the age duke
wellington uh distinguished himself and so these policies of of using the french scare to impose the british um kind of interest on the local states by extremely successful in that by 1805 much of southern and eastern indian con subcontinent is on the british rule now different shades of it direct
or indirect role but nonetheless it's under the british influence and that process will only continue in the subsequent years so that by 1819 you see the extension of the british authority in the north to areas like ud in in northern parts of the subcontinent and
of course the encroachment on the maratha territory um which will be ultimately right consumed by 18 uh 1918 uh and early 20s and hence we see the establishment of the british rule in india is having your uh you know like a global empire a bunch of colonies is that helpful when
you're engaged in a war with another power i mean in some sense you maybe you're like i don't know more diversified but in another you had a as you just said you had the british had to devote resources and attention to um defending their stakeholder in india
um and you know even in world war ii churchill has to worry about that singapore uh singapore is taken over by the japanese so when you're fighting a war is it good to have a lot of colonies or is it bad for you no of course having having colonies means having access to
resources resources both in terms of manpower but also resources in terms of commodities natural uh 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 that other great war because napoleonic
wars for much of the 19th century was the great war only to be superseded by world 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 and certainly you know the expeditions to for example iraq involved thousands of indian forces uh so that you know having an empire certainly uh helps in in in conducting the war uh and and that is true in napoleonic uh period because the trade that uh britain
uh conducted both with india and with china was um was extremely lucrative and there are uh you know excellent studies done on the extent of this trade and on this on the value of the uh or the volume and value of of the commerce uh that was conducted uh uh with with
with asia which is is one of the crucial uh um parts of the british economic uh endurance kind of uh resilience because i think in 18 you know once napoleon consolidates his control of the continent we know that in 1806 he embarks on a system that we refer to as continental blockade
uh which was designed to isolate the british or cut them off from from the uh continent in in terms of their ability to sell goods uh the one one of the reasons why britain was able to survive this uh economic war was precisely because it could rely
on its colonial presence or rely on markets elsewhere and of course uh uh have the ability in the naval capacity to to to ensure that its commercial routes its lifelines continue to sustain its war effort uh um and the the reverse is true for france and and that is one of the crucial
stories of the nepali revolutionary napoleon era is the collapse of the what we call first french empire france loses loses virtually every possession it has outside europe that is in india that is in broadly in indian ocean certainly the caribbean and of course
you referred to the loss of louisiana uh um in in 1803 1804 right so that means that by comparison france finds itself in a much weaker position in the years to come and that later on will kind of sustain this narrative of restoration of the national uh grinder which will justify for example colonial
enterprise or colonial projects that france will will unleash in algeria in 1830 and then sub-saharan africa in in later periods right as a part of that the reconstruction of the imperial uh construct did the continental system contribute to britain having the industrial revolution
first there's a book by this uh developmental economic uh joseph studwell called how asia works and in it he makes the case that um these uh asian tigers in the late 20th century they they imposed a bunch of tariffs um whose main purpose was to enforce export
discipline so that it would uh help the their nascent industries i guess car making in uh korea for example um it would give them a leg up so that they could build the know-how within the country to manufacture these things and then then they could regard the tariffs
this kind of just artificially happen with the continental system i mean to what extent are the napoleonic wars and the industrial revolution uh linked um so in in the book i devote an entire chapter to what i call war through other means and that is the the economic side of the war
in fact i wish i had more more space to devote to in fact you know that's one of the topics i'm working on today or nowadays and that is to uh to explore the economic dimensions of the war uh which usually is ignored even though they are it's absolutely instrumental to it
uh and the the there are a couple of things to kind of address right away and one is that industrialization began in britain before the war uh we know that the the the elements of the industrial development already present in brit in britain in 1760s 70s 70s certainly by 1780s
britain is far more industrialized than uh your the continental powers the the second point is that france had prerequisites for industrialization right and there is a fascinating new study on on why the industrial revolution didn't play didn't take place in france in
in 1760s 70s and 80s like it did in britain and and that's a separate kind of topic what however uh once the industrial revolution took off in in britain uh it gave the british an enormous advantage uh in in terms of their uh economic parity in terms of their economic or financial events uh uh um
relations with with the continent and it left therefore the continental power with in in this position where the only way they really can respond to uh to the british threat or economic right threat is by as you pointed out creating barriers tariffs napoleon understood that
opening up market that letting the british goods flow will be absolutely catastrophic to french interest not to mention to the industrial kind of the the nascent in in industries in in the territories that he controlled which is why uh he comes up with this continental system
and i want to and that's what kind of my pet peeve and that i oh i am very adamant about distinguishing between continental blockade which was uh a policy designed to deal with the british commerce and the continental system which was a far more encompassing
uh policy that napoleon pursued towards creating uh as a new reality political economic reality in europe uh later on and said helena island when he's exiled he does talk about his desire to create uh united states of europe effectively an early version of european union
but we you know we we have to bear in mind that that europe napoleon's version of european union was an imperial construct where france was supreme but within that european union so to speak right napoleon did want to use the terrorists the protective barriers is a way of
promoting industrial growth and that's where napoleonic wars is interesting because on one hand the fighting the military devastation that takes place in places like spain like germany like russia does affect the local manufacturing does affect local industries but on the other hand
napoleon by creating this kind of vacuum or the bubble no that kind of a bubble around certain areas of europe try 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 of his policies there are some areas where it
worked and the in the post-war period places like belgium netherlands southern germany northern france northern italy the industrial development took off and but also 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 i was just looking at this paper um from the economist aaron asimoglu i think it's called the consequences of radical reform and in it he was making the case that um
if you look at the places that uh napoleon conquered and you know performed within the planet codes um i i is claiming that after 1850 all of them they all experienced more economic growth in the places that he didn't conquer um and i think he says in the paper that there were no cases where
there was a data couldn't identify any negative effects um from uh from uh from this i i i wonder if you um agree or or was this uh was this just uh unalloyed good i think um i think it's a general it's a it's too generalized kind of statement and and if
you dig deeper i think you'll see a more complex reality one thing is that many of the all the areas that this uh the author was referring to as having the economic growth and all right they had the preconditions for economic prosperity for industrialization before napoleon showed up so usually
uh the case studies for that are low countries right belgium dutch republic um the rhineland the northern italy areas around turin and milan but those were already high you know urbanized developed uh regions that were on the way to to industrialization in fact in those
areas you can argue to and many of my colleagues have done that the napoleonic wars actually hampered the industrial growth because nepal you know because of the direct effect of the war right the fighting and the destruction but also because of the taxes requisitioning occupational costs
that the war brought on these regions however if you look beyond this kind of and that's where in the book i what i'm arguing is that the impact of napoleon needs to be uh needs to be quant qualified you know kind of kind of uh uh you know you have to approach it very carefully because
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 for example you know in belgium case we talk about from 1794 until 1814 right there's a much longer duration in
time compare that for example to calabria in southern italy where the french arrive in 1806 uh they face vociferous resistance from the local population uh and they really can't overcome it until 18010 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 so there is far short duration of the napoleonic impact and there is only so much you can accomplish in that few years and so that's where i would argue is that yes napoleon the introduction of napoleonic reforms uh in many cases were
uh helpful in changing the system now what i mean by napoleonic reforms this is usually centralization of authority this is professionalization of administration this is enforcement of new administrative uh uh institutions and of course as you mentioned the new legal framework
napoleonic code was um you know this transformation this revolutionary uh change uh in in through a legal code but how long did they stay that's the question right what's the actual impact on the ground and that's where you see once you scratch the surface that the
impact is not as uniform and much much dependent on the willingness of the local population to accept this change and then i you know in a previous life you were a lawyer i'm wondering how that experience uh or how that background has shaped your understanding of the impact
of reforms and these these codes and more especially to the question of there's a like 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 um ones that are more technocratic based on
more rational principles um whether that's preferable i i wonder what kinds of lessons you draw um on questions like that so that's a it's a complex question but it's an interesting question to ponder and i in my own courses when i teach students i usually ask to
look at what napoleon tried to implement right on the legal side of it with napoleonic code look go through the provisions of napoleonic code and there is a lot uh that can be qualified as as progressive for this period right if we set aside um important issues on which napoleon was not as as
as progressive for example an issue of the equality of the women or the issue of the proper you know kind of uh property rights of of of of certain you know children born out of wedlock and all that but if we look at some of the core elements of the um napoleonic
regime of napoleonic uh reforms they are quite progressive however is progress always 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 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 uh then the question becomes whether the progress is actually a good thing and what i mean by this is that in places like spain or italy or in poland napoleonic reforms as progressives who
might argue right they where uh they all they the the 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 uh it it effectively threatened to create a system that held citizens more
accountable now today we all like to complain about taxes and about the government over rich right so why are we kind of surprised that people in early 1800s would have been complaining about this in in some of it family with my striker is quite quite you know um
unusual you know unusual but you know 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 the government's effort to vaccinate to boost and all this and even today we
know that people were resisting it right now napoleon uh promoted a great vaccination program for smallpox and he started with the owner with his own child he uh he accident his troops and then kind of rolled this program on to to the territories that he occupied
but in many areas the people resisted vaccination because it represented government overreach because it represented government kind of telling people you gotta vaccinate uh and um there were par you know part of europe where people suspected that vaccination was part of the government's
kind of secret plan to control them which is which uh which will strike us as a very modern thing right the conspiracy theorists uh today were not you know are not that original today there's like a big discrepancy between how americans and europeans see the role of the state you know europeans
are much more comfortable with it is the origin of that that they did have a figure like napoleon um centuries ago who instilled a more centralized and i guess more more administrative form of government partly of course we have to bear in mind that unlike
united states let's say or to a great degree of britain continental european history is centers around strong authoritarian monarchical rule you know here we see kind of taxonomy for example of the french absolutism with the british uh uh parliamentarian you know limited
monarchical development or further east we go right in in 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 uh monarchical government that uh predates of course napoleon so that
there is a long history of of a strong statist approach to it now what napoleon tried to do is he tried to make the state efficient and in that he was i mean that's actually one of the most fascinating things about him is kind of increasing the centralization the
efficiency the enforcement of the state um in france we for example see that after the turbulent years of revolution napoleonic uh centralization and the enforcement completely changed the relationship between the you know the people in the state uh uh and that includes for example in
in in areas like tax payments right tax collection which increased exponentially as napoleon actually set up the system that held people accountable for it um and and that made that made i think the continental uh powers of the the continental society is far more willing to accept the role of
the state now there is another kind of not you know fall to this in this and that goes that after napoleonic period right once the war is over and now we're at the period of peace and will last several decades you know until 1850s with the crimean war and then with
the bigger conflicts of 60s and 70s but nonetheless you know we have you know about four decades of peace well we have to deal with this kind of guerrilla 800-pound gorilla in the room and that is the british industrial might and one of the ways we can deal with
that is is 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 theory you know the economic theories that friedrich liszt uh 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 the another theory about how the economics here proceeded is maybe the public choice theory model from like
manchester olsen where you know he observed that for example um after world war two economic growth rates in germany and uh japan were increased by a lot and this theory is just that you got rid of these old institutions and um old institutions and um uh these uh built-in incentives that the
old system had and then maybe similarly in uh continental europe nepali engaged of these guilds he gets rid of um these titles of nobility and these arcane um arcane systems to what extent is uh public choice theory also a good model of uh what was happening at the time yes and and
that's i think yeah i would agree with that to to a great deal in that ultimately you know i usually end my lectures uh in my napoleonic history courses by saying that ultimately napoleon is is a loser in that he lost the war he lost the empire he ended the life on that god for second
place in right in in atlantic but the impact that he left is is stays with that in that the the in the post-napoleonic period the european powers have to grapple with his legacy right even though right his changes for example are reversed in in italy where you know
his united kingdom of italy is abolished and pre-napoleonic arrangements are restored even though we see restoration of the ruling dynasties that he overthrow um we cannot reverse the clock we cannot simply go back to pre-napoleonic era and and pretend that it didn't happen right
so you have to accept the uh the changes that he introduced now the question is to what degree you will accept and here again we can look at the kind of gradation and there are some areas like in southern and western germany where napoleon 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 but in other areas it was easier to accept some changes and then reverse many others so for example we know that in in in places like in poland or in
southern italy or in or in spain uh the napoleonic impact in terms that of of of of the changes of the old regime uh was was far less pronounced than in in the in the core areas of europe and so 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 it had to reinvent itself and reinvent it did right and then this post-napoleonic era uh and and here i do want to point out that oftentimes we think about this post-napoleon reconstruction as this
conservative are you know reactions it's art conservatives and you know the reactionaries um but we have to bear in mind that majority of these conservatives were not against the change right even metronic who is usually perceived as this arch conservative uh you know villain
he is not a verse to change he is 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 at cert gradually in a controlled environment and that's essentially what what we see uh taking place in in the
decades after napoleon is gone that's very interesting because you know um robert conquest has uh uh has these set of laws and his second law is that any institution that is not explicitly um right-wing will eventually become left-wing and i don't know it seems that
like the the course of europe after napoleon's is similar like you have um you have a bloody revolution you have this person who causes a massive amount of uh death and war and then um 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 like maybe intellectually you'd think that that view would get vindicated uh at least at the time uh but it seems like no the ev even given the immediate consequences of uh the french revolution and napoleon um
eventually the kind of the system he he and the revolution created um endured and caught on the rest of europe do you have any comments on like uh this this move in history where things maybe left-wing is not the right word but uh and in modern is almost a tautology but
maybe you see what i mean yes i think the the way i i look at it is in the way i kind of um discuss it with my students is that i look at what 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 in in variety of ways it can be political equality with the suffrage voting and all it can be economic equality social equality gender equality all this right 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 you know we can use whatever terminology you would like to but to me it's it's the quest for these uh evolving notions of equality uh so for example when we talk about the politics right the political side of
this equality we know that revolution all right produces remarkable documents in august of 1789 with declaration of rights of men and a citizen proclaiming in the in his very first article that men are born and remain free and equal in their rights 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 right now in french the the the term is um but um uh even though it was used in this context of
men can be interpreted as being as human beings and so here then the story of the revolution in napoleon is the story of the struggle of various groups for the political equality because the revolution after the declaration of rights of men interpreted this provision as saying well
uh 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 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 after napoleon is overthrown that system is reversed to a much stricter property qualification and then you'll see again universal male suffrage coming back in 1848 and staying
part of french political narrative and the same um kind of quest for political equality can be then traced in many of these other european powers that were affected by by napoleon or even in britain 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 same then you know if we can uh expand our view what about then social economic equality right what about the treating our you know fellow citizens in it more equitably when it comes to wages when it comes to working
conditions when it came comes to what we now call the you know welfare kind of social welfare system 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 uh to
answer these challenges so in 1848 for example french socialists try to find a solution to the existing problem of the socio and economic inequality by setting up what they refer to as national workshops effectively a state subsidized system where people could register and
and and drew sustenance from the state and it is this time when we see the kind of the uh the concept of right to work come to uh to come uh you know coming into the public uh 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 uh simplest about the quality of human beings and how is your um how how did growing up in the former soviet union how has that shaped your views about a sort of idealistic uh uh you know a revolution for equality
and then um deferring to a sort of enlightened despot um how how has that shaped your views here well um my kids um i have two kids or two boys and the oldest one is already reaching that age when he's studying this modern history and and while the other day he
kind of came to realization that i was born and raised in the evil empire so he was quizzing me what it was like so father to be on the other side like oh thank you son um i think of course it has a direct impact because i was born and raised in soviet union and um my father was a critic of the
soviet system and he uh i remember him as as a young man um uh in like in the early 80s kind of listening to secretly listening to the broadcasts of of voice of america or bbc which were kind of muffed but uh he would still list and this is some of my early kind of you know memories as
a child when my father would sneak out and kind of secretly listen to a a a rigged a radio receiver that he he he fashioned uh and and i think that and kind of imperial ex you know that experience within imperial entity uh it does it did have an impact on me
um and and certainly shaped me because soviet union collapsed when i was becoming you know my my character my my my my personality was being uh uh forged in in 90s and i lived through the the degrees of the supposed soviet era with this economic devastation with its
civil strife with its economic collapse so uh in that sense i i in many respects i can relate to to those to that generation that lived through 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 economic uh stagnation in many parts of europe um not to mention the 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 uh you know oftentimes tell
students that you know living through the 90s in in in georgia was grappling with basic necessities such as standing in line for bread for two three days kind of waiting for a loaf a piece of a loaf of bread and uh you know when i talk about the french experiencing for example
during revolution this hardship and trying to really find the sustenance and seek out uh like me pieces of bread in in various bakeries um i i could on some level kind could relate to their misery right could relate to their frustration i guess another aspect of uh this conflict is um yeah
so you know i know very a little about history and which is why it was very fun to uh read this book and to i guess venture forth and um learn more about your history through the podcast but one of the things that's um interesting to me is that um it seems that there's like these uh
punctuated equilibrium in international relations and um in you know um you know you have these long periods of peace and then you have these periods where there's massive wars massive death borders get reshuffled i guess from the seven years war to the napoleonic wars
and then from there to world war one um 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 is this a pattern you see or and if you do what is the explanation well i mean
if we look at the conflict in ukraine and that's the conflict you know that has a direct relevance to me in in because it's part and parcel of the uh russian imperial project that you know in many respects this conflict doesn't start in february of 2022 or in 2014 when russia took over uh
crimea and in the eastern province of ukraine but to me it starts in 2008 when we had a war in between russia and georgia for that for that very reason right of of of of the countries of the group of people seeking a course of development that was that is different from the one
that the russian uh you know government has envisioned for them uh so to so that's where i see and i mean it kind of if you look at the rhetoric that comes from uh 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 as you pointed out in the post-war ii period we we went to great length to fashion uh an international system uh to prevent the very imperial so the the very kind of great power of
politics that dominated europe you know the global uh the global uh development in the later half of the 19th century because look at effectively what putin's kind of grand strategy is is to carve out spheres of influence which would be uh not unlike what catherine the great
for example did in in the late 18th century when um in under her leadership russia partitioned uh polish lithuanian commonwealth coincidentally the very territory that uh involves uh the war today right ukraine the baltic states so that's where i see the kind of
connections uh and to me it is absolutely paramount to to contain these imperial uh impulses and and to ensure that the people have agency that people have the ability to self-determine their fate 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 i lived through this civil war i lived through this our own georgian efforts to figure out who we are and what and what we want to be uh but that's exactly the issue and it
should be our decision you know as a group of people uh to to 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 by an outside power for seeking
a course that disagrees with this with with its vision and same applies for ukraine right to me that's the war in ukraine is is about the agency of the ukrainian people what changed between before world war ii and afterwards so that didn't change after the napoleonic wars you'd think
that after the political wars that if the international norms could change they would have changed at that time to be like okay no more great conquest but you know maybe it took to world war two and then what has caused uh what has caused this idea that you can
have uh you know these kinds of uh you you can expand into what you perceive to be your zone of influence um but so how do you explain these two different uh changes of norms actually the the interesting thing is um the immediate post-napoleonic era saw the creation of a new international security
system absolutely remarkable and they were my my dear colleagues like professor beatrice de graf from the university of utrecht has written fascinating studies and we'll talk about just last two two years or so uh exploring the impact of napoleonic wars
on crafting this this new international system and the hallmarks of this system was indeed uh the the uh balance of power where these great powers sought to maintain certain parity uh 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 cycles in 1820s and 1830s uh and and kind of to draw parallel to war one or world war ii one of the things that we oftentimes forget that it is napoleonic wars that pioneered
new mechanism of of dealing with the defeated power and that is includes occupational regimes that includes uh development schedules of reparation payments right yes defeated powers before right um had to pay war indemnities but napoleon post napoleonic era saw a very different mechanism that
involved occupation that involved extraction of resources on the that is formalized and that is a kind of part of the coalition uh uh which is very similar to what for example was done in in post-war ii period um in 1815 for example france is divided in
the zones of occupation in european powers have occupational troops that occupying specific regions as a way of d uh de-monopolize france just like in the post-world war ii in right we have germany dividing the zones of occupation with the policy of denaturification right why was this not
implemented after world war one the occupied occupational was that just a massive oversight no well partly because um um i think we have to bear in mind that unlike uh world war ii um the war didn't directly reach germany right it was mostly fought on the in the northern in northern france and
in belgium uh and and kind of the rhineland area but um germany itself remained intact for much of it uh and certainly uh by the 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 po in war in from 1945 when you have a grand alliance and that grand alliance is determined to to carve out the zones of occupation right i mean think about uh kind of united states in 1919 with its uh
self-imposed isolationist is a very different entity from the 1945 united states that is keen on on you know keeping its presence in europe same applies for russia in 1919 is not is is imploding while in 1945 it is it is quite strong uh or at least it's it will be on on you know it's on its
way to to recovering from the war it certainly has the military capacity to carve out the zone of occupation in eastern germany so another question of the apollonic wars is it seems that uh so you know in the seven years war in 1756 um you know if france loses it's
not that long before the napoleonic wars happen um and you know when france is fighting napoleonic wars it's like gone through a bloody revolution it's a completely new regime so in many ways um it should be in a weaker position it seems just from the with the politics of what's happening in
france and and obviously um france absolutely dominates uh for like a decade um afterwards so what you know like i mean maybe in like financial terms you can think of like in business there's like private equity where um 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 uh so is that is that the story here like why did the french military and uh government just got seemed to get so much more effective
between these two tours yes i think there again there are multiple threats that come together uh in in in this period so one of them for example is the france's ability to mass mobilize uh and and that is particularly uh is clear in 1793-95 period when in response to being
confronted by the european coalition france begins a system that we you know that we refer to as leviant mass which involves mass mobilization of manpower uh that involves development of a home front to support war effort uh you know in the military history we
oftentimes grapple with this kind of concept of limited war and i think limited in the sense that conflict before the french revolution will wear ice you know kind of isolated affairs that didn't affect the the societies as a whole right so you have much smaller forces
uh you know the conflicts with the for the kind of obvious clear uh dynastic or political uh goals now the french revolution is is different in this because in that it mobilized far greater percentage of the population in in you know if you read the text of the levianmas decree talks about young men
registering and serving children being participating in the in in helping kind of in that can in in production in production and manufacturing women uh kind of uh supporting the home front and the even the elderly uh kind of uh providing that moral uh boost and kind
of inspiration and leadership food for the population it's a more encompassing vision of nation at war and this is very difficult to defeat an entity like this and france shows that the you know with this uh that they are as a nation that can mobilize greater manpower that
can put greater government controls on that on economy uh and armed with an ideology uh that it it can overrun uh what we will you know can 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 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 or testifies to resilience to the old regime but it is a it is also a conflict in which the old regime has to respond has to kind of tweak itself
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 um he was a brilliant brilliant individual very capable workaholic uh an individual who could multitask like
unlike anyone you really can can you know encounter in pages of history books um you know his ability to control at the height of the empire of uh virtual continent an entire continent before the time of phones and internet and mass right instant communication is just
staggering and napoleon does play an important role because of his sheer brilliance on the battlefield i mean it's hard to imagine kind of france going on the rampage as it did in 1805 to 1809 period uh without napoleon because he brings so much it to the table wellington nothing has that
famous statement that napoleon was equal to 40 000 men on the battlefield right that he brought so much to the table and 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 and it produced a number of uh 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 is a is a is a brilliant financial wizard that
as far as i'm concerned essentially bankrolled napoleon for must much of his reign and most crucially ensured uh rapid french reconstruction in the post-napoleonic era so it's it's dealing with this individual agencies that also makes this period fascinating because you you find the
characters that are simply uh amazing i wonder what you think of this but it seems to me you know i'm in i'm in tech circles and it seems to me that if napoleon was alive today [Laughter] the ability to micromanage and to uh multi-task the obviously the leadership and the ability
to inspire and then also most importantly maybe the um the the sort of the risk uh the risk taking uh there right if you see something well i mean startup founder has to because they're probably gonna fail so they're just trying to maximize the expected value um
like increase the odds that you have a trillion dollar company not necessarily that you have make any money nothing necessarily increased guys who make some money uh so um yeah just the risk-taking especially it seems to me that what do you think about this would napoleon i don't know
like tesla i love this vision of napoleon's elon musk right yeah there's a there is a fascinating movie it's a kind of a light comedy uh called emperor's new clothes that envisions napoleon escaping from san helena island in disguise leaving a double 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 and what he does he he starts a business in paris of selling bread and and using his military genius kind of strategy he uh he uh beca you
know comes to dominate the baking industry baking business in paris so napoleon yes somebody already envisioned him as the startup guy oh wait emperor's new clothes uh he is a wonderful yan home uh uh reprising the role of napoleon and he's quite good at it so i
he does have a mindset for that um napoleon has ability well first of all let me put by nature he was very gifted man with the almost photographic memory so he retained minutiae of detail and i've spent better part of quarter century examining his documents and going through the
archives and kind of dealing with the paperwork that he left behind and it's prodigious uh we just finished uh a collective effort of publishing uh kind of compilation of his uh personal letters and we we had to stop at 44 000 and that doesn't account for the
government decision the government paperwork that he you know reviewed and then signed on and you know in in when in my books on 1812 you kind of see him uh you know deep in russia he's governing empire that stretches from spain to poland and from denmark to
to croatia right and he deals with minutiae of these details so he would have been in that sense a micromanaging ceo again that's i don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing because it it it has it's it's pros and cons but he was a micromanager i mean have you seen the videos yeah
have you seen the videos of elon musk uh going through the minutiae of these uh plans and then also like they're after yeah that's exactly what that was napoleon wouldn't 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 this skull you know footnote that you found he found there is a fascinating moment when uh when he's in moscow uh he actually noticed that a small battalion was sent on the wrong road in the countryside in central italy who does that kind of thing right
they're kind of keeping that um that level of uh of detail or as an emperor he actually uh supervised what we can say i think a modern police state uh the the extent of the police surveillance of the french population is stunning and as part of it what is interesting is that he would he
required weekly reports on what people average people kind of common people would say in the streets 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 in learning what alex said on thursday and what workers said on friday right under this expression of public uh public sentiment um so no he he had uh all the preconditions for it and kind of at the last point he loved technology
and he he supported technology he'd support for example he was the one who uh set up prizes for technological improvements that benefited the french military for you know it's a famous story of him right kind of setting awards for developing new ways of preserving food which led to
conservation you know the uh kind of jars that we are now consuming right actually come from napoleonic era or it is napoleon who for example conducted or supported experiments on developing submarine technology in fact in the middle of paris on the sand river they
tested submarines now it didn't work out and uh 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 also yeah it's similar with um i think many other important leaders in
history i think churchill was a big um yeah he he was a big aviator and i think he he crashed at least once and also he he saw the importance of tanks early on i think while he was in um india or something um so um yeah that's very interesting now you mentioned earlier that
uh the the this era in history in france brought forth a lot of young great young leaders and a lot of young talent um was it just that the old people got killed during the revolution was there something else going on um no not necessarily no revolution was bloody but not that bloody um no there is um
um 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 yes connections still you know still played a role i mean it's a you know if there is one constant in the in
constancy of human nature and that is that you know the nepotism and corruption stays with us uh but to a far greater degree uh merit played a role and so that see you see that uh in in the people napoleon promoted and surrounded himself with uh were again
there his cabinet is is quite capable uh and he stays so throughout the empire and not just in military as i said but it's in finance and administration in in science uh it's the ability to uh for a person from a humble background to go to a school to distinguish himself
through his through his and at this time it's it's largely his right that the women were not given the equality uh through his talent and then merit and rise to the top that's what matters and that's is what is missing i think in many other areas of europe at this time
in parts like in spain and in southern italy in austria and in russia there is a far less opportunity for a commoner to to rise to the top um but napoleon makes sure that by the time he is gone that the system is already entrenched that yes monarchy will be restored boar
bones will be back but even boar bonds will have to accept the charter this constitutional arrangement one of the principles of which will be equality before the law will be this acceptance of careers open to to merit what happened to this um uh this model of the sort of enlightened death spot it
seems that that's more less common today maybe the most recent one would have been somebody like lee huanyu uh who is a similar model to napoleon but what happened to figures like this in uh in our government um so in my in my own research and certainly in this book i
i'm making an argument um not necessarily an original argument but i certainly am a big proponent of it that napoleon is not necessarily the child of revolution now he's a product of the revolutionary circumstances but he doesn't does not necessarily represent revolution as such
to me as i mentioned in the book he's the last of the enlightened despots because much of what he tried to create establish what much what would he try to introduce inequality 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 right tried also to various degree of success implementing in their countries to napoleon i think is the last of them and probably the most successful in in that his system uh
survived and the reason why he's most successful in frederick or joseph is because of revolution okay now napoleon did not support the radicalism of revolution and we we see that throughout his life that you know even as a young man when he witnessed revolutionary
uh events in paris that he consistently came out against or or expressed opinion against the radicalism of the crowd he and and that to me is is is kind of an element in in his mindset that tells that he is not a real you know revolution on horseback as such but enlightened despotism
um once he passed away right uh once he's you know off the historical stage even though we are not talking about the enlightened despotism as such but the core of it still is there it's the government trying to bring about changes government bring about standardization
bring about efficiency now it is not done as overtly always as is as acutely as napoleon david uh but that's because circumstances have kind of changed and evolved but we see still see for example prussian development in 1820s and 30s that are part of that kind of uh uh would i would say this
part of this enlightened rational uh reform movement uh and even later on in in post-crimean period uh alexander ii the russian emperor's great reforms can be perceived to be as part of that steady gradual introduction of change that uh will modernize the state so you know
you i think you can make an argument connecting those dots and then what happened to that that that former government it seems that other than yeah other than singapore it's kind of uh kind of a lost uh well i mean i wouldn't say um would you consider for example soviet
state is as that because it is a status it's a status approach that is ushering in rapid transformation of society um i think it evolved it it's changed its nature um singapore is a unique case in that it was it it was both kind of liberal but also or you know authoritarian in that sense
right it was kind of controlled liberal environment but soviet system was authoritarian but more radical in its in its transformations uh so uh it's i think it's a part of evolutionary process of of what's happening so not necessarily that it's withered away and disappeared
you certainly can for example make a case for some of the uh latin american examples where this enlightened you know can enlighten reform movements led spearheaded by an individual might be um might be still relevant 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 um access to positions based on their merit is that possibly one of the advantages of war which is that you have to uh if if the weak perish then um the the
nations are have a very strong incentive to make sure their systems and their government are as efficient as possible i if you look at let's say uh um the u.s it's still a meritocracy maybe uh maybe in the in like private markets but there's uh the the average age of congressman and president seems to keep
increasing and maybe that has something to do with uh it's not like titles and nobility anymore but it is a greater greater level of accreditation um is this one of the defenses of war which is that it forces countries to become more efficient yeah i think that's a um i
think that's a challenging top question to to to deal with in a sense because that you know in the late 19th century you know social darvanist for example argued that war was a great purge of societies that rejuvenated so and i'm not sure that we want to kind of go back
to that to that to that argument uh i you know the war i mean the sheer nature of the war is that that it makes things possible that in peace time would be unthinkable it is a great it has a great homogenizing effects it suppresses some of the uh sharper edges
or in some areas it actually makes those sharper edges even more pronounced 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 right without the conflict and that
starts in 1792 friends would have it's my argument would have continued on the path of the gradual reform movement uh towards the constitutional limited monarchy rather than rush towards the radical republicanism terror and violence which then beget more violence more cycles of
political instability and ultimately led to military dictatorship that's where the war is is crucial and certainly within that context right in the context of war there are a lot of things that revolutionaries uh thought were justifiable for example suspension of hobbyist corpus for
example uh arrest and persecution of their political uh this uh opponents but also instituting great government controls think about law of maximum so example of the jacobins introduced during the terror all that is in the context of that fear of that anxiety of that emergency
situation that the war cultivates that's where i i see the impact of it and of course the war also creates conditions where um 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 um about the war being this kind of great purger it certainly uh it had a role in in weeding out many officers in the french corps some many of them immigrated left the army some of them uh failed in the tasks that revolutions the
revolutionary government set for them and were uh punished dearly so forth we have several cases like general kustan or general bernay on others who failed to achieve the mission that the government set for them and they were recalled and condemned and executed for it and so it
certainly creates uh this environment in which you have to you have to deliver you have to be at your best or you in an environment in which uh people who are willing to take the risk are pushed forward and that's in many respects how napoleon got his start right
in 1793 he's a lowly nobody in the french uh um army and yet he's the one who is willing to take charge of artillery command in this town of toulon which is besieged by the army he comes out with a plan that uh brings the city to the uh the to its knees and the rest is history right and and
all is done within within this war environment um who knows how things would have turned if there was no war and whether napoleon would have been able to distinguish themselves or the other generals like uh or that that went on to make great careers it seems that one of the reasons
that the uh the the the revolutionary and the philonic ideas spread a lot was that also at the time that france was the seat of um a seat of intellectual uh discourse um at the time why was that you know maybe today uh america has that sort of cultural
influence that uh france had at the time when you read like war and peace you know that all the elites and russia are talking in french um what what what gave france its cultural dominance that's a longer kind of structural uh historical process uh you know we can go back to 17th century and
see the the rise of dominant france as a dominant uh both uh political entity in western europe and the cultural kind entity in in europe as a whole i think it's a creation of louis xiv zera the the the grandeur of the french monarchy the oppositeness the luxury of it the the diversity and the richness of
french offerings uh and of course you know this is where i think it gets very interesting in the sense that uh france is oftentimes envisioned as an absolutist monarchy with kind of tight controls and everything but on the other hand in the 18th century we see a diverse
range of opinions expressed within france by the french writers on one hand you know you can have you you can find and 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 they're envisioning this technocratic utopias so that is a unique circumstances that france was able to craft and cultivate that other countries were unable to replicate or were able to directly to a certain to a lesser degree
i think the other country that was successful in doing that of course britain but uh uh you know which had a very vibrant and and rich intellectual life at this time i i want to be respectful your time uh so is there um the book is the napoleonic wars of global history
and uh yeah if you want to mention your twitter handle um it's just a yeah my my uh first name and last name so it's pretty straightforward if you can spell my last name because you'll find me when i was doing research for the book um there were many times when i had to
like look up your i was like maybe you look trying to look up older interviews or something and every time i go to amazon and like make sure i copy the name right my students call me dr m which makes me kind of a character from the james bond movie but it's easier for them
to remember it sure um yeah and then uh yeah any other i don't know if there's like a uh some final note or some final point that you want to close on uh something that stuck out from the conversation i think uh you know this book represents kind of a as a humble effort to
showcase what history can do in in in modern context and that is to move away from traditional boundaries to to adopt a more wider lens at looking events more transnational more comparative that it's perfectly fine to to do national histories and to kind of look at the historical developments of a
particular country but to me it is far more rewarding to to see how countries developed in relationship with each other how events in one part of the world reverberates in another because um the more then in in our day nowadays we live in such an interconnected world
that that transnational and comparative approach is absolutely essential to your success in in really in any field of of career that you pursue and certainly in politics and business and in in law uh and so i encourage um uh your listeners to to pick up books uh like
that i think the books written with the global history in mind um and and broaden their horizons 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 um so it was super interesting to get that uh that um total perspective um so yeah it's a super fascinating book and this is a super fun conversation thanks so much for coming on the podcast thank you i appreciate that uh thank you for the opportunity 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 other than that please like and comment on youtube and leave good reviews on podcast platforms cheers and thanks for watching [Music]