Empire Flashcards
How did Napoleon assert imperial bureaucracy?
-Prefects, sub-prefects, tax collectors, customs officers, police commissaries and Gendarmes were deployed into every department.
How did Napoleon organise his states
- In greater France there were fully carved out into departments where the french system was fully integrated.
- Satellite states adopted most of the French ideas but never fully.
How did Napoleon ensure obedience in his wider empire?
-The Gendarmerie enforced authority even in remote parts of the empire. It was very effective in parts of Germany and southern Italy. Attempts to create a gendarmerie in Spain completely failed.
How was Napoleon’s empire centralised?
- Administration was highly centralised.
- Napoleon insisted that rulers report regularly to him. All documents from council meetings were dispatched to Paris. This sometimes caused substantial delays.
What was the ‘inner’ empire?
What was the ‘outer’ empire?
- The inner empire was ‘enlarged France’ and the territories immediately beyond this; Belgium, Netherlands, the rhineland and most of western Germany. It was well integrated, efficiently administrated and largely obedient.
- The outer empire consisted of the conquered states, they were much less enthusiastic about french rule. Administrative controls rested on an insecure alliance of local collaborators and French professionals, both of whom were unpopular with the locals.
- What and when was the concordat?
- Where was it accepted?
- Where was it opposed?
- 1801, it brought an end to secular privileges, and imposed toleration everywhere. Church lands were seized, monasteries abolished. Tithes abolished, priests became civil servants. Saint’s days and religious festivals disappeared.
- Accepted: Rhineland businessmen and industrialists.
-Opposition: 1808 peasant uprisings in Spain.
1809 more uprisings following the seizure of the Pope.
Strongly catholic areas such as southern Italy.
What examples of there to resistance to the 1808 for the toleration of Jews?
- 1808 Warsaw suspended Jewish toleration for 10 years.
- Bavaria refused to grant rights for Jews until 1813.
-Backlash from jews, they viewed the attempt to impose french rule over their communities as an attack on religion.
- How did nobility remain powerful under Napoleon?
- How were they rewarded?
- They were given or allowed to retain positions of power and influence over local government.
- The main rewards were in the form of Dotations and went to those who were already established in the social hierarchy.
-Give two fact about the abolition of Serfdom in the Empire
- 1807 abolished in Warsaw. However they failed to fully impose Napoleon’s constitution.
- 1807 abolished in Prussia.
- Give two examples of conscription from the wider empire
- How was conscription initially a failure?
- To what extent did conscripts improve?
- 1806: Grand duchy of Berg with a population of 50,000 had to provide 5,000 soldiers.
- 1806: Westphalia with a population of 2 million had to provide 600,000 soldiers.
- 1804: 25% of conscripts evaded service.
- 1813: 10% of conscripts evaded service.
- What phrase embodies the economic priorities of the Empire
- How did Napoleon exploit the outer states for financial gains?
- ‘France first.’ They had to pay heavily for french protection.
- Removal of guilds and internal customs barriers, combined with a strict taxation system to maximise the revenue from the satellite states.
- Naples: over 100 taxes were reformed into one tax for land and industry.
- Holland: a new tax was brought in, taxing less for commercial profits than agricultural profits, allowing the businessmen to flourish.
What were the advantages of the dotations?
What were the disadvantages?
- Social benefit, ensured loyalty without financial means.
- Economic burden, led to decreased land income.
What were the successes of the continental system?
- Textile industry in Lyons flourished.
- Mining in the Rhineland prospered and created a more cohesive economic system within the state.
How was the Continental system limited?
- Manufacturers unable to import the newest British technology.
- Non french manufacturers suffered.
- The silk industry in Lombardy and Piedmont rapidly decreased, as all raw silk had to be sent to Lyons and France.
- In Berg the textiles could not compete with the production in the Rhineland departments.
- Genoa and the Ligurian Republic lost trade to Nice.
-What effect did Napoleon’s agricultural policies have?
- They supported large farmers but not smaller local farmers, the gap in the social order and wealth increased.
- In Italy the north became far more capitalist and the south increasingly poor.
