Alexander Mikaberidze - Napoleon, War, Progress, and Global Order

Alexander Mikaberidze is Professor of History at Louisiana State University and the author of The Napoleonic Wars: A Global History https://www.amazon.com/dp/0199951063/. He explains the global ramifications of the Napoleonic Wars - from India to Egypt to America. He also talks about how Napoleon was the last of the enlightened despots, whether he would have made a good startup founder, how the Napoleonic Wars accelerated the industrial revolution, the roots of the war in Ukraine, and much more! Watch on YouTube https://youtu.be/E65CHSV6Ads, or listen on Spotify https://open.spotify.com/episode/1NX5C33PBkMHpyHkEI6p41?si=ZmUUbe74QmmyAlT_z_3UaA, Apple Podcasts https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/33-alexander-mikaberidze-napoleon-war-progress-and/id1516093381?i=1000569750616, or any other podcast platform. Episode website + Transcript here https://www.dwarkeshpatel.com/p/alexander-mikaberidze. Follow Professor Mikaberidze on Twitter https://twitter.com/AMikaberidze. Follow me on Twitter https://twitter.com/dwarkesh_sp for updates on future episodes. Subscribe to find out about future episodes! Timestamps: (0:00:00) Alexander Mikaberidze - Professor of history and author of “The Napoleonic Wars” (0:01:19) - The allure of Napoleon (0:13:48) - The advantages of multiple colonies (0:27:33) - The Continental System and the industrial revolution (0:34:49) - Napoleon’s legacy. (0:50:38) - The impact of Napoleonic Wars (1:01:23) - Napoleon as a startup founder (1:14:02) The advantages of war and how it shaped international government and to some extent, political structures. Please share if you enjoyed this episode! Helps out a ton! This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.dwarkesh.com https://www.dwarkesh.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:10Dwarkesh Patel?

  All right, today I have the pleasure of interviewing Professor Alexander Mika Beritz who is a professor of history and the Ruth Haring Noel Endowed Chair at Louisiana State University. And he's the author of The Napoleonic Wars: A Global History. This is absolutely fascinating book. It was unlike any other history book I've read in the sense that it was just global in a scope and you're covering such an interesting career in history. So first of all, can you give my audience a little bit of background on yourself and on the Napoleonic Wars?

• 0:42Speaker 01

  Yes, thank you so much for having me. 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 of Georgia in Eastern Europe. A small state sandwiched between Russia and Turkey with a rather complex and diverse and turbulent history. But as most small nations, it is oftentimes kind of lost in the pages of history. And of course, when I embarked on this career to become a professional historian, I've

• 1:24Speaker 01

  always wanted to see, you know, where 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 Caucasus 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 get a better understanding of the field.

• 2:05Speaker 01

  Because Napoleonic era is one of the most written historical periods. There are thousands and thousands of volumes, in fact. 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 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.

• 2:46Speaker 01

  And that is perfectly worthwhile enterprise, but I thought that it offers a very narrow snapshot of the period. Because Napoleonic revolutionary Napoleonic moment uh uh uh 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 it changes the trajectory uh uh that many of these world regions followed. And and I thought in fresher study was needed to to flesh that up.

• 3:20Dwarkesh Patel?

  And you know what I appreciated, you know, as like American of Indian origin is that you like you had almost a chapter in the book that was just dedicated to how the Napoleonic wars impacted, you know, the expansion of British rule in India. And also about you, obviously, the the impact on the Americas from Louisiana Purchase onwards. I'm curious, by the way, how how it's possible that so many volumes about Napoleon have been written. I think Andrew Roberts said that there's been one, on average, one new book about Napoleon a day since he died.

• 3:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:50Dwarkesh Patel?

  Oh, yeah. How are there how are there possibly that many Napoleonic scholars?

• 3:55Speaker 01

  Um, well, uh, it's it's a it's a very enticing field. I I compare Napoleon and 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 cutout. But oftentimes compare Napoleon to a siren. And uh, because for those who first approach the shores of Napoleonic history, they are drawn by the allure of that sweet song of Napoleonic legend, right? That the vision of a romantic kind of titan, the, the Prometheus,

• 4:37Speaker 01

  who's thought to bring about change and was ultimately uh defeated in exile to Iraq in the middle of nowhere. Uh, and, and I think Napoleonic legend exercise uh, uh such allure that there isn't always uh, uh enough people interested in it to write about it. But, but it has a downfall, uh, or kind of side effect, and that is,

• 5:01Speaker 01

  most of what is written, is written uh, uh on, on, on Europe uh for, for linguistic reasons. For example, to write the books of global nature, global historical narrative, you need to have diversity of uh, uh language skills. That includes not just the French and British, which by now is taken 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, I think that is oftentimes pushes people away from such a, a narrative.

• 5:43Speaker 01

  Um, then also that the events in Europe itself uh, in, in, in this period are such colossal scale, right? So we talk about the battles that involve, uh, for example, at Borodino, there are quarter million troops. At Leipzig, 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, not big enough.

• 6:19Speaker 01

  So I think that also plays a role and the charisma of these great 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 elsewhere. And as you pointed out, for India, this is the moment of tremendous importance and not to include the developments in India under the leadership of British East India Company led by Richard Wellesley from seventeen ninety eight to eighteen oh five, right?

• 7:01Speaker 01

  These seven years of crucial importance because in many respects, the foundation for what will be the Raj, right, is laid exactly at this time. And same applies to, let's say, extending our narrative to North America, South America, where, you know, this period saw the collapse of the Spanish imperial rule and the emergence of a new political reality that will continue to reverberate and can affect us to the present day, right? The fact that we have such a political, kind of a political reality of independent nation-states

• 7:39Speaker 01

  from Mexico down to Argentina, all are the, you know, part of the legacy of the Napoleonic period.

• 7:48Dwarkesh Patel?

  Can you talk more about the impact of the Napoleonic wars on India? Why was this so crucial for the British East India Company?

• 7:57Speaker 01

  Now, of course, the English presence in India predates the Revolutionary Period and by the start of Revolutionary Wars, and I remind the listeners, the French Revolutionary Wars started in April of seventeen ninety two and Britain joined the war in seventeen ninety three. So by then, British East India Company had already established presence in India, especially in the northeastern part of it, in Bengal. Uh, and of course, India, uh, oftentimes people forget just how huge and how diverse and how populous this this uh, subcontinent is.

• 8:37Speaker 01

  And notice that I use the term subcontinent, not region, because again, uh, it's it's enormous in in scale. In fact, we can, we, you know, the estimates uh, usually point that India at this time has a population well over a hundred twenty uh, million people. Uh, so in this would have been a a huge area uh, uh, for, or huge area for for the British as as market for their goods, but also as a source of the goods for their own commerce. And we know that uh, in before revolutionary wars, there was a vibrant trade going on uh, that in in many, in in many respects sustained the industrial, the the nascent industrial revolution in in Britain.

• 9:22Speaker 01

  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, Mughal Empire, until it experienced the decline in the mid eighteenth 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 heels all through the eighteenth century. And so the, what what, to me, the the, the interesting aspect of this is not necessarily

• 10:03Speaker 01

  the actual threat that existed, but it's the perceptions of the of of threat that uh, Britain saw, the British officials saw, not all of them. For example, uh, when we look at seventeen ninety eight, seventeen ninety nine period, um, 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 British East India Company officials

• 10:46Speaker 01

  are steadfastly arguing that the threat is real, that French are coming. And in fact, if you read the letters of Richard Wellesley, who was appointed as the governor general of British East India Company in seventeen ninety-eight, he speaks constantly of this French threat, as if it is real, as if it is imminent. Even though we know that France was not in a position to directly threaten the positions, the British positions in India at this time, right? The French hands are tied in Europe. But nonetheless, the perception is important because it is on, under this pretense

• 11:28Speaker 01

  of confronting the French threat, that Wellesley then embarks on empire building. And in the book, I refer to Wellesley as probably the most Napoleonic of this British statesmen of this period because his vision is that of an empire in India, which can be built within the context of confronting this alleged French threat. And so we see the wars, the campaigns that Wellesley waged against the local Indian states that refused to trot the British line. So I remind you of the war between the British and the Mysore, right?

• 12:10Speaker 01

  The infamous storming of Serengeti and the killing of its ruler, Tipu Sultan. Or 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 eighteen oh three, for example, you had that famous Battle of Assay, where Arthur Wellesley, right, Richard's younger brother and future greatest British military commander of the age, Duke Wellington, distinguished himself. And so these policies of using the French

• 12:53Speaker 01

  A scare to impose the British kind of interest on the local states are extremely successful in that by eighteen oh five, much of southern and eastern Indian continent is under British rule, not different shades of it, you know, direct or indirect rule, but nonetheless, it's under the British influence. And that process will only continue in the subsequent years so that by eighteen nineteen, you see the extension of the British authority in the north to areas like Udo in northern parts of the subcontinent and of course, the encroachment on the Maratha territory,

• 13:37Speaker 01

  which will be ultimately, right, consumed by eighteen nineteen eighteen in early twenties. And hence, we see the establishment of the British rule in India.

• 13:47Dwarkesh Patel?

  Is having your, 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 a sense, maybe you're like, I don't know, more diversified, but in another, you had to, as you just said, you had to, the British had to divert resources and attention to defending their stakeholder in India. And, you know, even in World War Two, Churchill has to worry about the Singapore, 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?

• 14:18Speaker 01

  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 resources that sustain your economy, your war effort. I mean, to kind of deviate from maybe Napoleonic era, you know, when we talk about that other great war, because Napoleonic wars for much of the nineteenth century was the great war, only to be superseded by World War 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.

• 15:03Speaker 01

  And certainly, you know, the expeditions to, for example, Iraq involved thousands of Indian forces. So that, you know, having an empire certainly helps in, in, in conducting the war.

• 15:17Speaker 01

  And and that is true in Napoleonic period because the trade that Britain conducted both with India and with China was um was extremely lucrative. And there are, you know, excellent studies done on the extent of this trade and on the on the value of the uh uh and the volume and value of of the commerce uh that was conducted uh with with with Asia, which is is one of the crucial uh um parts of the British economic uh endurance kind of uh you know uh resilience. Because think uh in eighteen, you know, once Napoleon consolidates his control of the continent,

• 16:01Speaker 01

  we we know that in eighteen oh sixteen, Barks on the system that we refer to as Continental blockade, uh which uh was designed to isolate the British or cut them uh off from from the uh continent i- in 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, on rely on markets elsewhere. And of course, uh uh have the ability, the naval capacity to to to ensure that its

• 16:42Speaker 01

  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 uh stories of Napole- 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 refer to the loss of Louisiana uh um in in eighteen oh three.

• 17:21Speaker 01

  Eighteen oh four, 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 grandeur, which will justify, for example, colonial enterprise or colonial projects that France will unleash in Algier in eighteen thirty and then Sub-Saharan Africa in later periods, right? As a part of that, the reconstruction of the imperial construct.

• 17:55Dwarkesh Patel?

  Did the continental system contribute to Britain having the Industrial Revolution first? There's a book by this developmental economist, Joseph Studwell, called How Asia Works, and he makes the case that these Asian tigers in the late twentieth century, they imposed a bunch of tariffs, whose main purpose was to enforce export discipline so that it would help their nascent industries, I guess, car making in Korea, for example. It would give them a leg up so that they could build a know-how within the country to manufacture these things, and then they could get at the tariffs. Did this kind of just artificially happen with the continental system? I mean, to what extent are the Napoleonic Wars and the Industrial Revolution linked?

• 18:38Speaker 01

  So in the book, I devote an entire chapter to what I call war through other means, and that is the economic side of the war. In fact, I wish I had 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 explore the economic dimensions of the war, which usually is ignored, even though it's absolutely instrumental to it. And there are a couple of things to kind of address right away. And one is that industrialization began in Britain before the war.

• 19:16Speaker 01

  We know that the the the elements of the industrial development are already present in Brit in Britain in seventeen sixty, seventy, seventy, certainly by seventeen eighties. Britain is far more industrialized than your the continental powers. The the second point is that France had prerequisites for industrialization. And there is a fascinating new study on on why the Industrial Revolution didn't play, didn't take place in France in in seventeen sixty, seventies and eighties like it did in Britain, and and and that's a separate kind of topic. What, however, once the Industrial Revolution took off in in Britain, it gave the British

• 19:59Speaker 01

  an enormous advantage in in terms of their economic parity, in terms of their economic or financial events, uh, uh, um, relations with with the continent. And it left, therefore, the continental powers with in in in this position where the only way they really can respond to 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 interests, not to mention to the industrial, the the

• 20:40Speaker 01

  nascent in in in in industries in in the territories that he controlled, which is why he comes up with this continental system. And I want to, and it's kind of my pet peeve, in that I oh, I am very adamant about distinguishing between continental blockade, which was a po- a policy designed to deal with the British commerce, and a continental system, which was a far more encompassing policy that Napoleon.

• 21:10Speaker 01

  Pursuit towards creating a new reality, political economic reality in Europe. Later on, on Saint Helena Island, when he's exiled, he does talk about his desire to create United States of Europe, effectively, an early version of European Union. But, you know, we have to bear in mind that Napoleon's vision of European Union was an imperial construct where France was supreme. But within that European Union, so to speak, right? Napoleon didn't want to use the terrorists, the protective barriers, as a way of promoting industrial growth.

• 21:50Speaker 01

  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, not vacuum, but bubble around certain areas of Europe, tried 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 his policies. There are some areas where it worked and in the post-war period, places like Belgium,

• 22:35Speaker 01

  Netherlands, southern Germany, northern France, northern Italy, the industrial development took off. And but also, but on the other hand, there are all areas where the war had a far greater impact and the continental system with its restrictions actually delayed the industrial development rather than promoted.

• 22:54Dwarkesh Patel?

  I was just looking at this paper from The Economist, Darren Asimoglu. I think it's called The Consequences of Radical Reform. And in it, he was making the case that if you look at the places that Napoleon conquered and, you know, reform within the Napoleonic codes, his claim is that after 1850, all of them, they all experienced more economic growth in the places that he didn't conquer. And I think he says in the paper that there were no cases where there was, that he couldn't identify any negative effects from this. I wonder if you agree, or was this just an unalloyed good?

• 23:31Speaker 01

  I think.

• 23:34Speaker 01

  I 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 of the areas that this uh the author was referring to as having the economic growth and all uh right, they had the pre uh 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.

• 24:17Speaker 01

  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 to and and many of my colleagues have done that. The Napoleonic wars actually hampered the industrial growth because Napoleon, you know, because of the direct effect of the war, right? The fighting and destruction, but also because of the uh taxes, requisitioning, occupational costs that the war brought on these regions. However, if you look beyond this kind of uh and and that's where in 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

• 25:02Speaker 01

  kind of uh uh you know, you you have to approach it very carefully because it 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 Belgian case, we talk about from seventeen ninety four until eighteen fourteen, right? There's a much longer duration in time. Compare that, for example, to Calabria in southern Italy, where the French arrive in eighteen or six, uh the face vociferous resistance from the local population, uh and they really can't overcome it until eighteen or ten. And then in eighteen fourteen, they are gone. So how much can you accomplish in four years?

• 25:46Speaker 01

  Or think about Poland, let's say, or in Spain, right? So there is far shorter 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 in many cases were helpful in changing this system.

• 26:13Speaker 01

  Now, what I mean by Napoleonic reforms, this is usually centralization of authority. This is professionalization of administration. This is enforcement of new administrative institutions. And of course, as you mentioned, the new legal framework, Napoleonic Code, was, you know, this transformation, this revolutionary change in through a legal code. But how long did this 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

• 26:52Speaker 01

  and much, much dependent on the willingness of the local population to accept this change.

• 27:00Dwarkesh Patel?

  And then, you know, in a previous life, you were a lawyer. I'm wondering how that experience or how that background has shaped your understanding of the impact of these reforms and these codes. And I have a 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, ones that are more technocratic, based on more rational principles, whether that's preferable. I wonder what kinds of lessons you draw on questions like that.

• 27:33Speaker 01

  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 uh as as uh as progressive, for example, on the issue of the equality of the women or the issue of the property, you know, kind of uh property rights of of of of of of certain, you know, children

• 28:18Speaker 01

  were born out of wedlock and all that. But if we look at at some of the core elements of the um Napoleonic regime or Napoleonic uh uh reforms, they are quite progressive. However, is progress always good thing? That's I usually can 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 intrusive manner and it changes the way of life that you're 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,

• 29:02Speaker 01

  Napoleonic reforms, as progressives might argue, right, they were, uh, they they they 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 factually threatened to uh create a system that held citizens more accountable. Now, today, we all like to complain about taxes and about the government overreach, right? So why are we kind of surprised that people in early eighteen hundreds would have been complaining about this? In in some of it, some of it might strike as quite quite, you know, um.

• 29:48Speaker 01

  Unusual, you know, not unusual, but you know, in a weird way is that, for example, one of the great legacies on 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 promoted a great vaccination program for smallpox, and he started with his own child. He vaccinated his troops and then kind of rolled this program 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.

• 30:33Speaker 01

  And there were parts of Europe where people suspected that vaccination was part of the government's kind of secret plan to control them, which is, which will strike us as a very modern thing, right? The conspiracy theories today are not that original.

• 30:54Dwarkesh Patel?

  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 centuries ago, who instilled a more centralized and I guess more administrative form of government?

• 31:13Speaker 01

  Partly, of course, we have to bear in mind that unlike the United States, let's say, or to a great degree, Britain, continental European history centers around strong authoritarian, monarchical rule. You know, here we see kind of dichotomy, for example, of the French absolutism with the British

• 31:38Speaker 01

  parliamentary and more, you know, limited, monarchical development. Or further east, we go, right, in Prussia, for example, we see the development of, again, absolutist tendencies in the Camerole system, or further to the east in Russia, of course, the autocratic, monarchical government that predates, of course, Napoleon. So there is a long history 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

• 32:18Speaker 01

  kind of in- increasing the centralization, the efficiency, the enforcement of the state. In France, we, for example, see that after the turbulent years of revolution, Napoleonic centralization and the enforcement completely changed the relationship between, you know, the people and the state. And that includes, for example, in areas like tax payments, right, tax collection, which increased exponentially as Napoleon actually set up the system that held people accountable for it.

• 32:55Speaker 01

  And that made, I think, the continental powers, or the continental societies, far more willing to accept the role of the state. Now, there is another kind of, you know, fold 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 eighteen fifty's with the Crimean War and then with the bigger conflicts of sixties and seventies. But nonetheless, you know, we have, you know, about four decades of peace. Well, we have to deal with this kind of guerrilla, eight hundred pound guerrilla in the room, and that is the British industrial might.

• 33:36Speaker 01

  And one of the ways we can deal with that is by maintaining the protective barriers of terrorists 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 List was the great proponent of, which indeed championed the role of the state in promoting economic prosperity, in promoting industrialization. And many European states followed exactly that model.

• 34:07Dwarkesh Patel?

  Another theory about how the economics here proceeded is maybe the public choice theory model from like Manfred Olson where, you know, he observed that, for example, after World War II, economic growth rates in Germany and Japan were increased by a lot. And his theory is just that you got rid of these old institutions and these built-in incentives that the old system had. And then maybe similarly in continental Europe, Napoleon gets rid of these guilds, he gets rid of these titles of nobility and these arcane, arcane systems. To what extent is public choice theory also a good model of what was happening at the time?

• 34:49Speaker 01

  Yes. And that's, I think, yeah, I would agree with that to a great deal in that ultimately, usually I end my lectures 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 godforsaken place in, right, in, in Atlantic. But the impact that he left is, stays with that in that the, in the post-Napoleonic period, the European powers have to grapple

• 35:27Speaker 01

  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 overthrew, we cannot reverse the clock. We cannot simply go back to pre-Napoleonic era and pretend that it didn't happen, right? So you have to accept the, 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

• 36:11Speaker 01

  southern and western Germany where Napoleon and certainly in 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 in places like in Poland or in southern Italy or in or in Spain, the Napoleonic impact in terms that of of of of the changes of the old regime was was far less pronounced than than in in the in the core areas of of Europe.

• 36:55Speaker 01

  And so, uh, 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? In this post-Napoleonic era. Uh, and and I here I I do want to point out that oftentimes we think about this post-Napoleonic reconstruction as this conservative art, you know, reactions, this art conservatism, you know, the reactionaries. Um, but we have to bear in mind that majority of these conservatives were not against the change. Even Metternich, who is usually perceived as this arch-conservative, uh, you know, villain,

• 37:41Speaker 01

  he is not averse to change. He's 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 gradually and in controlled environment. And that's essentially what what we see. Taking place in the decades after Napoleon is gone.

• 38:03Dwarkesh Patel?

  That's very interesting because, you know, Robert conquest has has these set of laws. And his second law is that any institution that is not explicitly right wing will eventually become left wing. And I don't know, it seems that like the course of Europe after Napoleon is somewhat like you have, you have a bloody revolution, you have this person who causes a massive amount of death and war. And then 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. You like, maybe intellectually, you would think that that view would get vindicated, at least at the time. But it seems like, no, even even given the immediate consequences of the French Revolution

• 38:44Dwarkesh Patel?

  and Napoleon, eventually, kind of the system he he and the revolution created endured and caught on the rest of Europe. Do you have any comments on like this this move in history where things, maybe left wing is not the right word, but I didn't modern is almost a tautology, but you maybe you see what I mean.

• 39:04Speaker 01

  Yes, I think the way I look at it is, and the way I kind of discuss it with my students is that I look at what the revolution promised and at its simplest, right, the revolution was about quest for equality. And that quest can be then can, you know, interpreted in a 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.

• 39:48Speaker 01

  But to me, it's it's the quest for these evolving notions of equality.

• 39:55Speaker 01

  So for example, when we talk about the politics, right, the political side of this equality, we know that revolution produces remarkable documents in August of seventeen eighty-nine, with Declaration of Rights of Men and a Citizen proclaiming in its 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? And now in French, the the the term is homme, but homme, 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 of Napoleon is the story of the struggle

• 40:40Speaker 01

  of various groups for the political equality. Because revolution, after the Declaration of Rights of Men, interpreted this provision as saying, well, 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 the 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.

• 41:22Speaker 01

  And then you'll see again universal male suffrage coming back in eighteen forty-eight and staying part of French political narrative. And the same 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 eighteen thirty-two, the Great Reform Bill, or eighteen sixties and eighteen eighties. It is also part of that quest for greater political equality. Same then, you know, if we're gonna expand our view, what about then social economic equality?

• 42:01Speaker 01

  Right? What about the treating our fellow citizens i- i- in 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 uh to answer these challenges. So in eighteen forty-eight, for example, French socialists um try to find a solution to the existing problem of the socioeconomic inequality by setting up what they refer to as national workshops.

• 42:43Speaker 01

  It's actually a state subsidized system where people could register 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 come uh, you know, come into the the public uh discussion. Uh 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 uh at its simplest about the equality of human beings.

• 43:15Dwarkesh Patel?

  And how is your um how how how did growing up in the former Soviet Union? How did how does that shape your um views about a sort of idealistic uh uh uh, you know, I have a revolution for equality and then um deferring to a sort of enlightened despot? Um how how how how is that shaped your views here?

• 43:34Speaker 01

  Well, um, my kids, um, I have two kids, uh two boys, and the oldest one is already reaching that age when he's studying this modern history. And and one of the other day, he uh kind of came to realization that I was born and raised in the evil empire. So he was quizzing me about what what it was like so far to be on the other side. I'm like, oh, thank you, son. Um, I think, of course, it it has a direct impact because I was born and raised in Soviet Union. And my father was a critic of the Soviet system and he. Uh, I remember him as a, as, as a young man, um.

• 44:13Speaker 01

  Uh, in like in the early eighties, kinda listening to secretly listening to the broadcasts of, of Voice of America or BBC. Which were kinda muffed, but uh, he would still listen. And this is some of my early kinda, you know, memories as a child. When my father would sneak out and kinda secretly listen to a, a, a rig, a radio receiver that he, he, he fashioned. Uh, and, and I think that kind of imperial, you know, that experience within imperial entity, uh, it, it does. It, it, it did have an impact on me. Um, uh, and, and certainly shaped me because Soviet Union collapsed when I was becoming.

• 44:53Speaker 01

  You know, my, my character, my, my kinda, my, my personality was being uh, uh, forged in, in nineties. And I lived through the, the debris of the so post 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, kinda post Napoleonic era. Which was a period of economic turbulence, economic uh, stagnation in many parts of Europe.

• 45:34Speaker 01

  Um, uh, not to mention the, the civil strife that revolution Napoleon unleashed in many parts of, of Europe. So I think, you know, for example, you know, just if nothing else, I would, uh, now I would oftentimes tell students that. You know, living through the nineties in, in, in Georgia was grappling with basic necessities. Such as standing in line for bread for two or three days, kinda waiting for a loaf, a piece of, you know, a loaf of bread. And, uh, you know, when I talk about the French experiencing, for example, in, during the revolution, this hardship. And trying to, uh, really find the sustenance and, and seek out, uh, like me, pieces of bread in, in various bakeries.

• 46:18Speaker 01

  Um, uh, I, I could. On some level, could relate to their misery, right? Could relate to their frustration.

• 46:26Dwarkesh Patel?

  I guess another aspect of this conflict is, so you know, I know very little about history, which is why it was very fun to read this book and to, I guess, venture forth and learn more about your history through the podcast. But one of the things that's interesting to me is that it seems that there's like these punctuated equilibrium in international relations and, 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 I.

• 47:10Dwarkesh Patel?

  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. Well, is this a pattern you see? And if you do, what is the explanation?

• 47:24Speaker 01

  Well, I mean, if we look at the conflict in Ukraine, and that's the conflict that, you know, that has a direct relevance to me because it's part and parcel of the 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 Crimea and the eastern provinces of Ukraine. But to me, it starts in 2008 when we had a war between Russia and Georgia for that for that very reason, right? Of the countries, of the group of people seeking a course of development that was that is different from the one that the Russian, you know, government has envisioned for them.

• 48:10Speaker 01

  So. To, so that's where I see, in a minute, in a kinda, i- 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 nineteenth century great power politics, which, as far as I'm concerned, should stay part of history rather than the reality. Uh, as you pointed out, in the post-war two period, we, we went to great length to fashion uh, an international system. Uh, to prevent the very imperial, so the, the, the very uh, kinda great power politics that dominated European, you know, the g- global, uh, the global, uh.

• 48:55Speaker 01

  Development in the later half of the nineteenth century, because look at effectively what Putin's uh, kinda grand strategy is, 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 eighteenth century, when, um, the right, in under her leadership, Russia partitioned. Uh, Polish Lithuanian Commonwealth, coincidentally, the very territory that, uh, involves, uh, the war today, right? You, uh, Ukraine, the Baltic States, so that's where I, I see the kinda connections. Uh, a- and to me, it is absolutely paramount to, to contain this imperial, uh, impulses and, and to.

• 49:39Speaker 01

  Ensure that the people have agency, that people have the ability to self-determine their fate, I mean, that's, you know, kinda to go back to your earlier question about my own experiences. I lived through the nineties, I lived through the, uh, national liberation movement, I lived through the civil war, I lived through this, our own Georgian efforts to figure out. Who we are and what, and what we wanna be, uh, uh, uh, but that's exactly the issue, and it's, it should be our decision, you know, as, as a group of people. Uh, to, to figure out whether we wanna be a Western nation, uh, whether our ideals are more attuned to European, or whether we would like to seek closer relationship with Russia.

• 50:22Speaker 01

  Uh, we should not be punished, uh, by an outside power for seeking, uh, a, 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 about the agency of the Ukrainian people.

• 50:38Dwarkesh Patel?

  What changed between before World War II and afterwards that didn't change after the Napoleonic Wars? You think that after the Napoleonic Wars, that if the international norms could change, they would have changed at that time to be like, okay, no more great conquests. But, you know, maybe it took to World War II. And then what has caused, what has caused this idea that you can have, you know, these kinds of, you can expand into what you perceive to be your zone of influence? So how do you explain these two different changes of norms?

• 51:06Speaker 01

  Actually, the interesting thing is the immediate post-Napoleonic era saw the creation of a new international security system. Absolutely remarkable. And there are my dear colleagues, like Professor Beatrice de Graaf from the University of Utrecht, has written fascinating studies. And we'll talk about just the last two, two years or so, exploring the impact of Napoleonic wars on crafting this new international system. And the hallmarks of this system was indeed the balance of power, where these great powers sought to maintain certain parity.

• 51:46Speaker 01

  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 the 1820s and 1830s. And kind of to draw a parallel to World War I or World War II, one of the things that we oftentimes forget that it is Napoleonic wars that pioneered new mechanism of dealing with the defeated power. And that includes occupational regimes, that includes development schedules of reparation payments. Yes, defeated powers before, right, had to pay war indemnities.

• 52:28Speaker 01

  But the Napoleonic, post-Napoleonic era saw a very different mechanism that involved occupation, that involved extraction of resources that is formalized and that is a kind of part of the coalition. Uh, which is very similar to what, for example, was done in in post World War II period.

• 52:48Speaker 01

  You know, in eighteen fifteen, for example, France is divided in the zones of occupation and European powers have occupational, you know, troops that occupying specific regions as a way of de, uh, de-bonapartize France. Just like in the post-World War II, right, we have Germany dividing the zones of occupation with the policy of denazification, right?

• 53:10Dwarkesh Patel?

  Why was this not implemented after World War One, the occupa- occupational? Was that just a ma- massive oversight?

• 53:16Speaker 01

  No, well, partly because, um, um, I think we have to bear in mind that unlike, uh, World War II, 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, 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, it, the sheer exhaustion of, of, of France and, 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 nineteen forty-five, when you have a grand alliance and that grand alliance is determined to, to carve out the zones of occupation, right?

• 54:00Speaker 01

  I mean, think about, uh, kind of, uh, United States in nineteen nineteen with its, uh, uh, self-imposed isolation is, is a very different entity from the nineteen forty-five United States that is uh, keen on, on, uh, um, you know, keeping its presence in Europe. Same applies for Russia in nineteen nineteen is not, is, is imploding, while in nineteen forty-five, it is, uh, 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 a military capacity to carve out a zone of occupation in Eastern Germany.

• 54:38Dwarkesh Patel?

  So another question I have of the Napoleonic Wars is, it seems that, so you know, in the Seven Years' War in 1756, you know, France loses. It's not that long before the Napoleonic Wars happen. And you know, but then France is fighting the Napoleonic Wars. It's like gone through a bloody revolution. It's a completely new regime. So in many ways, it should be in a weaker position, it seems, just from the politics of what's happening in France. And obviously, France absolutely dominates for like a decade 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 if a firm has good potential, but it

• 55:20Dwarkesh Patel?

  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. So is that the story here? Like, why did the French military and government just got, seemed to get so much more effective between these two wars?

• 55:36Speaker 01

  Yes, I think, again, there are multiple threats that come together in this period. So one of them, for example, is the France's ability to mass mobilize. And that is particularly 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 L'Événement, which involves mass mobilization of manpower, that involves development of a home front to support war effort. You know, in military history, we oftentimes grapple with this kind of concept

• 56:19Speaker 01

  of limited war. And I think, limited in the sense that conflict before the French Revolution were, you know, kind of isolated affairs that didn't affect the societies as a whole, right? So you have much smaller forces, you know, the conflicts with the, for the kind of obvious, clear, dynastic or political goals. Now, the French Revolution is different in this, in that it mobilized far greater percentage of the population. And, you know, if you read the text of the L'Événement's decree, it talks about young men registering and serving, children being, you know, participating in helping, in

• 57:03Speaker 01

  In produc- uh in production and manufacturing, women uh kind of uh uh uh supporting the uh home front and the even the elderly uh kind of uh providing that moral uh boost and and kind of inspiration and leadership for for the population. So i- it's a more encompassing vision of nation at war. And it is very difficult to defeat uh an entity like this. Uh uh uh in the 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

• 57:45Speaker 01

  on the economy, uh and armed with an ideology, uh that it it can overrun uh uh what we will, you know, can can they call the old regime forces. It doesn't mean that the old regime armies were inherently weaker or inherently kind of in the destined to lose, not at all. The fact that it took a decade for the revolution to prevail over the old regime, right, and until eighteen oh two, when the revolutionary wars are formally over, or or testifies to the resilience of the old regime. But it is a it is also a a a conflict in which the

• 58:24Speaker 01

  old regime has to respond, has to kind of tweak itself. Uh 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 a- a- a- an individual who could multitask like, un- unlike anyone you really can can, you know, encountering in pages of history books. Um, you know, his ability to control at the height of the empire, uh uh virtual continent, an entire continent before the time of phones and internet and mass, right, and instant communication is just staggering.

• 59:10Speaker 01

  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 a rampage as it did in eighteen oh five to eighteen oh nine period. Uh, without Napoleon, because he brings so much to the table. Wellington, I think, has that famous statement that Napoleon was equal to forty thousand men on the battlefield, right? And that he brought so much to the table. Um, and, um, the interesting thing is that Napoleon is not necessarily the only one that France had.

• 59:50Speaker 01

  In fact, that revolutionary decade produced a number of brilliant military commanders. And it produced a number of 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 a is a brilliant financial wizard that, as far as I'm concerned, essentially bankrolled Napoleon for much of his reign. And most crucially, ensured rapid French reconstruction in the post-Napoleonic era. So it's, it's dealing with these individual agencies that also makes these periods fascinating.

• 1:00:33Speaker 01

  Because you, you find the characters that are simply amazing.

• 1:00:38Dwarkesh Patel?

  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, he'd be a startup founder.

• 1:00:49Dwarkesh Patel?

  The, the long hours, the, the, the ability to micromanage and to multitask. The, um, obviously the leadership and the ability to aspire. And then also, most importantly, maybe the, um, the, the, the sort of the risk, uh, the risk taking there, right? Where you, if you see something, well, I mean, a startup founder has to, because they're probably going to 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, not necessarily increase the odds you make some money. Uh, so, um, yeah, just the risk taking, especially, it seems to me that, what, what do you think about this? Would Napoleon, I don't know, be going to CEO like Tesla?

• 1:01:32Speaker 01

  I'll have the decision of Napoleon as Elon Musk, right?

• 1:01:36Speaker 01

  There is a fascinating movie, it's a kind of light comedy called Emperor's New Clothes that envisions Napoleon escaping from Saint 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 starts a business in Paris of selling bread and using his military genius kind of strategy, he comes to dominate the baking industry, baking business in Paris. So Napoleon, yes, somebody already envisioned him as the startup guy.

• 1:02:21Speaker 01

  Oh wait, what was his name? Emperor's New Clothes. In a wonderful Yan home reprising the role of Napoleon and he's quite good at it. So he does have a mindset for that. Napoleon has ability, first of all, let me put it that way, by nature, he was a very gifted man with the almost photographic memory. So he retained minutia of detail and I've spent better part of quarter of century examining his documents and going through the archives and dealing with the paperwork that he left behind and it's prodigious. We just finished a collective effort of publishing a kind

• 1:03:03Speaker 01

  of compilation of his personal letters and we had to stop at forty-four thousand and that doesn't account for the government decision, the government paperwork that he reviewed and then signed on. And you know, in my books on eighteen twelve, you can see him, you know, deep in Russia, he's governing empire that stretches from Spain to Poland and from Denmark to Croatia, right? And he deals with minutia of the details. So he would have been, in that sense, a micromanaging CEO. Again, I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing because it has its pros and cons, but he was a microman- Have you seen the videos?

• 1:03:47Dwarkesh Patel?

  Have you seen the videos of Elon Musk, uh, going through the minutia of these Tesla plant? And then also like the raft running or something?

• 1:03:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly what I'm saying. Napoleon would 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 kinda, oh, on a page, this, call, you know, footnote that. You found, you found, yeah. There is a fascinating moment when, uh, when he's in Moscow. Uh, he actually noticed that a small Italian was sent on the wrong road in the countryside in central Italy. Who does that kind of thing, right? They're kinda keeping that, um, that, that, uh, level of, of, uh, of detail. Or as an emperor, he actually, uh, supervised what we can say, I think, a modern police state.

• 1:04:38Speaker 01

  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, uh, he required weekly reports on what people, average people, kinda 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, you know, going through and in learning what Alex said on Thursday and what Warkes said on Friday. Right? And that's expression of public, uh, public sentiment. Um, so, no, he, he had, uh, all the pre-conditions for it.

• 1:05:20Speaker 01

  And, uh, kind of, at the last point, he loved technology. And, and he, he supported technology. He'd support, for example, he was the one who, uh, set up prizes for technological improvements that benefited, uh, French military for, you know, it's a famous story of, uh, him, uh, right? Uh, kinda, uh, uh, uh, setting awards for developing new ways of preserving food, which led to conservation, you know, the, uh, kinda, uh, jars, uh, that we are now consuming, right? It actually come from Napoleon, Akira. Or it is Napoleon who, for example, conducted or supported experiments on developing submarine technology. In fact, in the middle of Paris, on the Seine River, they tested submarines.

• 1:06:02Speaker 01

  Now, it didn't work out and, uh, the submarines were leaking, so he didn't adopt it. But nonetheless, it, it shows his willingness to embrace it. This technological development, he tried to stay abreast of it also.

• 1:06:15Dwarkesh Patel?

  Yeah, it's similar with, I think, many other important leaders in history. I think Churchill was a big, he was a big aviator and I think he crashed at least once. And also, he he saw the importance of tanks early on, I think, while he was in India or something. So, yeah, that's very interesting. Now, you mentioned earlier that the this era in history in France brought forth a lot of young, great young leaders and a lot of young talent. Was it just that the old people got killed during the revolution? Or was there something else going on?

• 1:06:50Speaker 01

  No, not necessarily. No, revolution was bloody, but not that bloody. No, there is a

• 1:06:58Speaker 01

  the revolution was about opening careers to talent. And I think that's one of the great legacies of 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 if there is one constant in the inconstancy of human nature, and that is that, you know, the nepotism and corruption stays with us. But to a far greater degree, merit played a role. And so that see, you see that in the people Napoleon promoted and surrounded himself with were, again, there, his cabinet is quite capable.

• 1:07:42Speaker 01

  And he stays so throughout the empire. And not just in military, as I said, but it's in finance and administration, in science. It's the ability to, 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 largely his, right? The women were not given the equality through his talent and 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.

• 1:08:24Speaker 01

  But Napoleon makes sure that by the time he's gone, that the system is already entrenched. That, yes, monarchy will be restored. Bourbons will be back. But even Bourbons 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 merit.

• 1:08:48Dwarkesh Patel?

  What happened to this model of the sort of enlightened despot? It seems that that's less common today. Maybe the most recent one would have been somebody like Li Huan Yu, who was a similar model to Napoleon. But what happened to figures like this in our government?

• 1:09:05Speaker 01

  So in my own research, and certainly in this book, I'm making an argument, 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 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 establish, much of what he tried to introduce, equality, 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,

• 1:09:50Speaker 01

  tried also, to various degrees of success, implementing in their countries. But Napoleon, I think, is the last of them and probably the most successful in that his system survived. And the reason why he's most successful, and Frederick or Joseph, is because of revolution. Okay? Now, Napoleon did not support the radicalism of revolution. And we see that throughout his life, that even as a young man, when he witnessed revolutionary events in Paris, that he consistently came out against or expressed opinion against the radicalism of the crowd.

• 1:10:31Speaker 01

  And that, to me, is kind of an element in his mindset that tells that... He is not a revolution on horseback as such, but enlightened despotism.

• 1:10:50Speaker 01

  Once he passed away, right, once he's 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 or as acutely as Napoleon did it. But that's because circumstances have kind of changed and evolved. But we still see, for example, Prussian development in eighteen twenties and thirties that are part of that. What I would say is part of that enlightened rational reform movement.

• 1:11:34Speaker 01

  And even later on, in post-Cromean period. Alexander the Second, the Russian Emperor's great reforms can be perceived to be as part of that steady gradual introduction of change that will modernize the state. So, you know, I think you can make an argument connecting those dots.

• 1:11:56Dwarkesh Patel?

  And then what happened to that former government? It seems that other than Singapore, it's kind of a lost.

• 1:12:05Speaker 01

  No, I mean, I wouldn't say. Would you consider, for example, Soviet state as that? Because it is a statist approach that is ushering in rapid transformation of society. I think it evolved, it's changed its nature. Singapore is a unique case in that it was it was both kind of liberal but authoritarian in that sense, right? It was kind of controlled liberal environment. But Soviet system was authoritarian, but.

• 1:12:41Speaker 01

  More radical in its transformations. So it's, I think, is a part of evolutionary process 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 Latin American examples where this enlightened, you know, kind of enlightened reform movements led spearheaded by an individual might be, might be still relevant.

• 1:13:11Dwarkesh Patel?

  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 access to positions based on their merit. Is that possibly one of the advantages of war, which is that you have to, if the weak perish, then the nations have a very strong incentive to make sure their systems and their government are as efficient as possible. If you look at, let's say, the US, it's still a meritocracy, maybe, maybe in the, in like private markets, but there's, the average age of congressmen and presidents seems to keep increasing.

• 1:13:55Dwarkesh Patel?

  And maybe that has something to do with, it's not like titles and nobility anymore, but it is a greater, greater levels of accreditation. Is this one of the defenses of war, which is that it forces countries to become more efficient than they need to?

• 1:14:07Speaker 01

  No, I think that's a, I think that's a challenging question to deal with, in a sense, because, you know, in the late 19th century, you know, social Darwinists, for example, argued that war was a great perjure of societies that rejuvenates it. So, and I'm not sure that we want to kind of go back to that, to that, to that argument. You know, the war, I mean, the sheer nature of the war is that, that it makes things possible that in peacetime would be unthinkable. It is a great, it has a great homogenizing effect. It suppresses some of the sharper edges, or in some areas, it actually makes those sharper edges even more pronounced.

• 1:14:52Speaker 01

  And certainly, when we talk about it with 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 that started in seventeen ninety two, France would have, it's my argument, would have continued on the path of a gradual reform movement towards the constitutional limited monarchy rather than rush towards a 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 crucial and certainly within that context, right, in the context of war,

• 1:15:34Speaker 01

  there are a lot of things that revolutionaries thought were justifiable. For example, suspension of hobbyist corporates, for example, arrest and persecution of their political opponents, but also instituting great government controls. Think about law of maximums, for example, that Jacobins introduced during the terror. All that is in the context of that fear, of that anxiety, of that emergent situation that war cultivates. That's where I see the impact of it. And of course, the war also creates conditions where bright, talented, however you wanna, whatever adjective you wanna put it, individuals have an opportunity to distinguish.

• 1:16:17Speaker 01

  Now, for example, you know, kind of to go back to what you said

• 1:16:23Speaker 01

  about the war being this kind of great perjurer. It certainly had a role in weeding out many officers in the French Corps. Many of them immigrated, left the army. Some of them failed in the tasks that revolution governments set for them and were punished dearly so for it. We have several cases, like General Cusine or General Bourne or 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 this environment in which you have to deliver, you have to be at your best.

• 1:17:08Speaker 01

  Or in an environment in which people who are willing to take the risk are pushed forward. And that's in many respects how Napoleon got his start, right? In seventeen ninety-three, 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 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 himself?

• 1:17:53Speaker 01

  Or the other generals like uh oh that that went on to make great careers?

• 1:17:58Dwarkesh Patel?

  Uh, it seems that one of the reasons that the uh the the the revolutionary and Napoleonic idea spread a lot was that also at the time that France was the seat of um uh seat of intellectual uh discourse um at the time. Uh, to 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, the all the elites in Russia are talking in French. Um, what what what gave France its cultural dominance at the time?

• 1:18:29Speaker 01

  That that's a longer kind of structural uh historical process. Um, you know, we can go back to seventeenth century and see the the rise of dominant uh France as a dominant uh both uh political entity in Western Europe and a cultural kind of entity in in in Europe as a whole. I think it's a creation of Louis XIV's era. The the the grandeur of the French monarchy, the opulousness, the luxury of it, the the diversity and the richness of of French offerings. Uh, and of course, you know, this is where I think it gets really interesting in the sense that uh France is oftentimes envisioned as an absolutist uh monarchy with a kind of tight controls and everything.

• 1:19:12Speaker 01

  But on the other hand, uh, in the eighteenth century, we see a diverse range of opinions uh expressed within France by the French writers. On one hand, you you can have, you you can find anti-enlightenment writers. But alongside you will see Voltaire, you will see Rousseau, or the less known ones like Holbach, who was an atheist, who was writing critical works against the organized religion and they envisioning this technocratic utopias. Um, 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 replicate to a certain to a lesser

• 1:19:55Speaker 01

  degree. I think the other country that was successful in doing it, of course, Britain, but you know, which had a very vibrant and rich intellectual life at this time.

• 1:20:05Dwarkesh Patel?

  I want to be respectful of your time. So is there, the book is The Napoleonic Wars of Global History? And yeah, if you want to mention your Twitter handle.

• 1:20:17Speaker 01

  It's just A, A, yeah, my, my first name and last name. So it's pretty straightforward. If you can spell my last name, because it's, you'll find me.

• 1:20:26Dwarkesh Patel?

  You know, when I was doing research for the book, there were many times when I had to like look up your, I was like, maybe look, trying to look up older interviews or something. And every time I had to go to Amazon and like make sure I copy the name right.

• 1:20:39Speaker 01

  My students call me Dr. Am, which, which make me a kind of a character from the James Bond movie. But it's easier for them to recall, to remember it.

• 1:20:48Dwarkesh Patel?

  Sure. Yeah. And then, yeah, any other, I don't know if there's like a, some final note or some final point that you want to close on, something that stuck out from the conversation?

• 1:20:59Speaker 01

  No, I think, you know, this, this book represents kind of 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 a 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

• 1:21:43Speaker 01

  The more in our day nowadays, we live in such an interconnected world that that transnational and comparative approach is absolutely essential to your success in really in any field of career that you pursue and certainly in politics and business and and law. And so I encourage your listeners to to pick up books like that, books written with the global history in mind and broaden their horizons.

• 1:22:19Dwarkesh Patel?

  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. So it was super interesting to get that that total perspective. So yeah, it's a super fascinating book and this is a super fun conversation. Thanks so much for coming on the podcast.

• 1:22:41Speaker 01

  Thank you. I appreciate that. Thank you for the opportunity.

• 1:22:44Dwarkesh Patel?

  I hope you enjoyed this podcast. If you did, and we 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.