The Grand Empire

Question 1

What was Napoleon’s vision for his grand Empire?

Answer 1

Napoleon wanted his grand Empire to share the French experience. This meant destroying privilege applying the Napoleonic legal codes and concentrate in power in the hands of an efficient centralising and ministration. Where Empire was established, they followed an imperial bureaucracy of prefix prefix tax collectors customs officials, police commissaries and grendarmes

Question 2

Which areas became known as greater France

Answer 2

Belgium, the German territories west of the Rhine, Piedmont, Ligurian Republic, nice and Savoy

Question 3

Administrators in the Empire

Answer 3

It proved difficult to find local men with necessary skills but there were plenty of opportunities for educated middle-class officials living in the satellite states. The start of promotion by talent also help to get a pool of administrators to staff the bureaucratic states. that position was limited by French insistence that more sensitive post reserve for those are French origin.


Question 4

Establishing empire

Answer 4

• The imperial administrators varied in quality from the honest and capable to the speculating tax collectors, corrupt customs offices, and military leaders looking for private profit. Occasionally, Napoleon deliberately appointed men who had been disgraced in Paris to get them out of the way, the Empire was effectively run for the most part.
• A gendemaire was also set up in those parts of Europe where the French expanded their room. This reinforce the power and authority of the central government in even the most remote parts of Napoleon’s large and disparate Empire.
• Napoleon insisted that rulers of the satellite states should report regularly and refer or major decisions to him.

Question 5

What were the names of Napoleon’s two brothers that rode in his empire?

Answer 5

• Jérôme
• Jospeh

Question 6

How successful when Napoleon’s brothers

Answer 6

Jérôme I filled his brothers wishes by establishing the code Napoleon, abolishing feudalism and introducing religious toleration into his territories. However, Napoleon’s older brother Joseph was much less successful in introducing forms and establishing and efficient administration. 

Question 7

Economic policies

Answer 7

• The policy of ‘France first’ First was the watchword of imperial economic policies.
• The removal of privilege, the dismantling of guild system and of internal customs barriers combined with a vigourous tax collection system were all intended to maximise the amount of revenue that could be squeezed out of the satellite states for example improved efficiencies raise tax revenue in the kingdom of Italy by 50% between 85 and 1811. Taxes were also simplified in Naples over 100 different taxes were replaced by single tax on land and industry.
• Dotations ( giving an individual in endowment, the right to collect the revenue from land sees in Italian, German or Polish territories) was an attempt to create a loyal and solid base of supporters. This was the case for Westphalia and Poland.
• States under direct French control enjoyed preferential treatment however the satellite states were primarily regarded as suppliers of raw materials and food for the French and we’re not allowed to develop manufacturing industries that competed with French products 

Question 8

The Continental system

Answer 8

• The preferential trade zone parts of the inner Empire did well. Belgian for example was able to take advantage of the band on British cotton and Belgian textile industry boomed.
• Mining also did well in the Rhineland area and the formation of the confederation of the Rhine helped integrate the economies of west Germany create a more cohesive economic unit.
• However the non-manufacturing centres of Europe suffered, for example the silk industry of Lombardy and Piedmont rapidly declined as all raw silk had to be sent to lyons in France. In areas where can miss a manufacturing were important to the local economy the results were catastrophic. They grand duchy and the Ligurian Republic for example we hit hard big textiles could not compete with the production in the Rhineland departments. Genoa lost to nice.

Question 9

Agriculture under the Napoleonic policies

Answer 9

• agriculture was less affected by Napoleonic policies. Italy for example was viewed as the granary of the Empire and almost all its rise crop went to France. In areas where largest scale commercial agriculture had developed there were profits to be made but Napoleonic policies made much less difference to the small scale subsistance farmers. 

Question 10

Issue with French economic policies

Answer 10

Buy 1810 to 11, including the blockade and tariff system were having a detrimental effect throughout the empire.

This was because the absence of overseas trade meant that manufactured goods had to be sold within continental Europe and there were insufficient markets, given that urban centres were suffering the loss of their own industrial capacity and crippled by heavy taxation. Overproduction brought a collapse in prices and the slump was aggravated by a bad harvest.
Napoleon’s policies cannot be blamed for all the empires economic troubles however particularly the British industrial supremacy had already challenged continental Europe before the advent of Napoleon. Furthermore since Europe was still primarily a rural/agricultural economic area with localised markets and only small skill industrial development, the French policies were not felt everywhere .

Question 11

Social policies

Answer 11

• The French believed in the superiority of their enlightened principles and where ever they went, so did revolutionary ideas of liberty and equality.
• The application of the Concordat of 1801 brought an end to secular privileges of the church and imposed religious toleration
• nobility did not disappear in its entirety, the regime saw landowners as important agents of social stability and many of noble class were given positions of power and influence in the local government of the imperial states
• The imperial raging made less effort to enforce the civil code after 1808 when loyalty and vinous to supply soldiers for the Napoleonic armies became more important than social
• The Empire also brought the spread of military conscription, military demands could provoke peasant hostility and rebellion for example after 1808 there was a growing discontent in the rural and less developed areas of Spain and the German Tyrel and Naples