French Revolution, Points Test 16 - The Control of the Grand Empire Flashcards
1
Q
What were Napoleon’s main aims in organising the empire?
A
- Napoleon wanted his ‘Grand Empire’ to share the French experience.
- This meant destroying privilege, applying Napoleonic legal codes and concentrating power in hands of efficient, centralising administration.
- Wherever Empire was established, there followed Imperial bureaucracy of prefects, sub-prefects, tax-collectors, customs officers, police commissaries and gendarmes.
2
Q
How was the empire differentiated in terms of ‘greater France’ and other imperial territories?
A
- In territories that became part of greater France (Belgium, German territories west of Rhine, Piedmont, Ligurian Republic, Nice and Savoy), départements carved out and administration fully integrated into a system centred on Paris.
- Elsewhere, in those territories that were not under direct French control, systems more varied, but the idea mimicked France’s administration with a council of state and a prefectural structure.
- Furthermore, these satellites adopted the French model of public finance, with a restructuring of the fiscal administration, and the introduction of budgeting and accounting.
3
Q
Who did Napoleon recruit to help administer the empire in the imperial provinces?
A
- Establishing French-style administrative institutions across empire depended on finding men to make them function.
- Napoleon called on mixture of men from incorporated territories, given a stake in the regime, and professional French soldiers (many who gained experience in France during rev.).
- These imperial administrators varied in quality.
- Some honest and capable, some speculating, corrupt and privately motivated.
- Occasionally, Napoleon deliberately appointed men who had been disgraced in Paris, to remove them.
- For most part, empire effectively run.
4
Q
How effectively was the empire policed?
A
- A gendarmerie set up in areas where French extended imperial rule.
- This reinforced power of central government in even remotest parts of empire.
- This was essential not only to establish control over those opposed to French rule, but for policing of lawless areas, such as Apennine regions of Italy and parts of Rhineland, centres of smuggling and banditry.
- Gendarmeries proved effective in directly-controlled territories, but in south Italy and north German coast (insecure regions of empire) concept never accepted.
5
Q
Why did Napoleonic attempts to police the empire often backfire?
A
- Local people resented paramilitary police force, regarding it as oppressive and unnecessary.
- All attempts to create one in Spain failed.
- There, French army relied upon to maintain control.
6
Q
How centralised was the empire?
A
- Despite some devolution of authority to satellites, French administration highly centralised.
- Napoleon insisted rulers should report directly and refer all major decisions to him.
- Documents ranging from minutes of councils of state to copies of budgetary statements all dispatched to Paris.
- If Napoleon didn’t read all these himself, they were perused by Ministers.
- This sometimes caused substantial delays when authorisation sought.
7
Q
What opportunities did the empire provide for the bourgeoisie of the satellites?
A
- Occasionally, difficult to find local men with necessary skills.
- There were plenty of opportunities for educated, middle-class officials living in satellite states.
- Ending of feudal restriction/opportunity for merit created pool of administrators to staff bureaucratic state.
- Positions limited only by French insistence that more sensitive posts (highest offices in justice and finance) be reserved for Frenchmen.
- Prestigious role of prefect filled by men from variety of states, rarely appointed as administrators in their own region.
- The corps therefore became more international, as well as professional.
8
Q
How well did Napoleonic family run their respective parts of the empire?
A
- In Westphalia, Jerome fulfilled his brother’s wishes by establishing the Code Napoleon, abolishing feudalism and introducing religious toleration into his territories.
- His older brother Joseph much less successful in introducing reforms and establishing effective administration, both in his initial posting in Naples, where his attempted introduction of the Code met resistance, and in Spain, where French never established control.
- Louis, in Holland, proved too independent for Napoleon, failing to introduce conscription and allowing some self-government.
- He was forced to abdicate in 1810.
- Eugéne Beauharnais proved a more reliable viceroy in Italy.
- Here, feudalism disappeared, Code brought in, education extended and French legal system operated reasonably effectively.
9
Q
How effective was the imperial bureaucracy?
A
- For the most part, the French imperial administrative system was a well-oiled bureaucratic machine.
- French passion for regulation may have smothered independent initiative and stifled aspirations of some of empire’s subject peoples.
- However, to Napoleon and his ministers, standardisation a virtue.
10
Q
What was the ‘inner empire’?
A
- The historian Michael Broers has made a useful distinction between the ‘inner’ and ‘outer’ empire.
- The ‘inner’ empire, consisting of the ‘enlarged France’ (pays réunis) and the territories (pays allies) immediately beyond this (Belgium, Netherlands, Rhineland, most of western Germany, Switzerland and North Italy) was well-integrated, efficiently administered and largely obedient.
- Here, the policy of raillement created a loyal administrative class.
11
Q
What was the ‘outer empire’?
A
- The ‘outer’ empire, comprising the satellite states and conquered territories, was much less enthusiastic about French rule.
- Administrative control here rested on insecure alliance of local collaborators and French professionals, both of whom unpopular with subjects.
12
Q
What was the economic organisation of the imperial economy?
A
- The policy of ‘France First’ the watchword of imperial economics.
- Imperial states paid heavily for privilege of ‘French protection’.
- Removal of privilege, dismantling of guild system and of internal customs barriers, combined with rigorous tax-collection system, were all intended (at least in part) to maximise the amount of revenue to squeeze out of empire.
- Improved efficiencies raised tax revenue in Italy by 50% between 1805 and 1811.
- Taxes also simplified. In Naples over 100 different taxes replaced by single one on land and industry.
- In Holland, new uniform tax brought in and commercial profits taxed at lower rate than agricultural profits, to ensure the support of the wealthier merchants.
13
Q
Explain Imperial ‘Donations’ and what were the advantages/disadvantages of the system?
A
- The Empire also provided booty – sometimes land, taken from church and disposed sovereigns – to be used for donations.
- In attempt to create solid base of supporters, regime used this system from 1806.
- This consisted of giving individual an endowment, namely the right to collect revenue from land seized in Italian, German or Polish territories and taken under empire’s direct control.
- This endowment could be passed on through the male line, but could not be sold or given to anyone else without the Emperor’s permission.
- All recipients had to swear an oath of loyalty to the Emperor.
- The holders of the donation was not encouraged to live on his lands and these donations did not carry any judicial or political rights.
- Donations were particularly used in Poland and Westphalia, which jointly supplied 25%.
- While gifting of land revenues served useful social purpose, in reduced incomes of states themselves.
- It has been estimated Duchy of Warsaw lost 20% of its revenue this way.
- War made the successful financial management of the satellite states more difficult.
- However, Napoleon more concerned about their contributions to the French budget than to their own self-sufficiency.
14
Q
How were different economies of the French Empire treated?
A
- The economies of states comprising the empire developed in different ways.
- Those states under direct french control enjoyed preferential treatment.
- Satellites primarily regarded as suppliers of raw materials and food for France, and were not allowed to develop manufacturing industries that competed with French producers.
- This different became acute after the establishment of the continental system throughout the empire, following the Berlin Decree of 1806 and the Milan Decree of 1807.
- France and annexed territories of Belgium, the Rhineland and parts of Italy could circulate goods across the rest of the empire, while satellite states had to pay increasingly prohibitive tariffs on their own exports to France and to each other.
- Napoleon hoped french industries would fill gap left by absence of British goods.
- Preferential trade zone parts of ‘inner’ empire did well.
- Belgium able to take advantage of ban on British cotton and their textile industry boomed.
- Although manufacturers unable to import latest British technology.
- Mining did well in the Rhineland, and formation of Confederation of Rhine helped integrate economies of west german states, creating more cohesive economic unit.
- However, non-french manufacturing centres of Europe suffered.
- Silk Industry of Lombardy and Piedmont rapidly declined as all raw silk sent to Lyons.
- In areas where commerce and manufacturing critical to local economy, results catastrophic.
- Grand Duchy of Berg and the ligurian republic, hard hit.
- Berg textiles couldn’t compete with Rhineland.
- Genoa lost trade to Nice.
15
Q
How was agriculture affected across the empire under Napoleon?
A
- Agriculture less affected by Napoleonic policies.
- Italy, for eg., viewed as breadbasket of the empire.
- Almost all of its rice crop went to France.
- In areas where larger-scale commercial agriculture developed, profits could be made, but Napoleonic policies made much less difference to small-scale subsistence farmers.
- Indeed, gap between more prosperous north of Italy (where capitalist agriculture developing) and more traditional, poorer south, widened.
- Italian economy had suffered from localised markets and political fragmentation for centuries, and the french empire did, at least, create a single market in the Kingdom of Italy.
