--:-- Dwarkesh Patel: All right, today I have the pleasure of interviewing Professor Alexander Mikaberidze, 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 an absolutely fascinating book. It was unlike any other history book I've read in the sense that it was just global in its scope. And you're covering such an interesting period in history. So first of all, can you give my audience a little bit of background on yourself and on the Napoleonic Wars?
--:-- Alexander Mikaberidze: 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, 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 on the pages of history.
--:-- And of course, when I embarked on this career to become a professional historian, I've always wanted to see where my people 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 the Caucasus were not properly addressed. And so the immediate cause and spark to write this book was a desire to correct the wrong. But it also then grew from there to get a better understanding of the field, because the 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 volumes have been written just about him. So there has to be a really good reason to write another book about this topic.
--:-- And gradually my realization was that almost everything that has been written about this period is written from the French and British points of view and focused on the great transformations taking place inside Europe. And that is a perfectly worthwhile enterprise, but I thought that it offers a very narrow snapshot of the period because the revolutionary Napoleonic period is the moment when we see modernity setting. And not just in Europe, but gradually extending to various parts of the world. It changes the trajectory that many of these world regions followed. And I thought a fresher study was needed to flesh that out.
--:-- Dwarkesh Patel: And, you know, what I appreciated, as an American of Indian origin, is that you had almost a chapter in the book that was dedicated to how the Napoleonic Wars impacted the expansion of British rule in India, and also about the impact on the Americas from the Louisiana Purchase onwards. I'm curious, by the way, how it's possible that so many volumes about Napoleon have been written. I think Andrew Roberts said that there's been one new book about Napoleon a day since he died?
--:-- Alexander Mikaberidze: Yeah. Oh, yeah.
--:-- Dwarkesh Patel: How are there possibly that many Napoleonic scholars?
--:-- Alexander Mikaberidze: Well, it's a very enticing field. I compare Napoleon to a siren. For those who first approach the shores of Napoleonic history, they are drawn by the lure of that sweet song of Napoleonic legend, right? The vision of a romantic kind of titan, the Prometheus who's thought to bring about change and was ultimately defeated and exiled to a rock in the middle of nowhere. I think the Napoleonic legend exercises such a lure that there is always enough people interested in it to write about it.
--:-- But it has a downfall or side effect, and that is most of what is written is written on Europe for linguistic reasons. For example, to write a book of a global nature, a global historical narrative, you need to have a diversity of language skills that includes not just the French and British, which by now is taken for granted, but Spanish and German and Russian. And if you expand your narrative even further to the east, then you have to involve the Ottoman and Iranian historical traditions as well. And of course, that is a colossal challenge and a thing that oftentimes pushes people away from such a narrative.
--:-- Also, the events in Europe itself in this period are of such colossal scale. We talk about the battles that involve, for example, at Borodino, a quarter million troops. At Leipzig, there are well over half a million troops fighting for the future of Europe. That by comparison, dealing with events in the Russo-Iranian war, where you have on average 10,000 to 15,000 men engaged, it's kind of not sexy enough, right? Not big enough. So I think that also plays a role. And the charisma of these great personalities that were engaged also kind of skews it towards a Eurocentric narrative.
--:-- And that's exactly the point that I was trying to make in the book: that should not be the reason to avoid our discussion elsewhere. And as you pointed out, for India, this is the moment of tremendous importance. Not to include the developments in India under the leadership of the British East India Company led by Richard Wellesley from 1798 to 1805—these seven years are of crucial importance because, in many respects, the foundation for what will be the Raj is laid exactly at this time. And the same applies to extending our narrative to North America or South America, where this period saw the collapse of the Spanish imperial rule and the emergence of a new political reality that will continue to reverberate and affect us to the present day. The fact that we have such a political reality of independent nation-states from Mexico down to Argentina are all part of the legacy of the Napoleonic period.
--:-- Dwarkesh Patel: Can you talk more about the impact of the Napoleonic Wars on India? Why was it so crucial for the British East India Company?
--:-- Alexander Mikaberidze: Of course, the English presence in India predates the Revolutionary Period. And by the start of the Revolutionary Wars—and I remind the listeners, the French Revolutionary Wars started in April of 1792 and Britain joined the war in 1793—by then, the British East India Company had already established a presence in India, especially in the northeastern part of it in Bengal. And of course, India, oftentimes people forget just how huge and how diverse and how populous this subcontinent is. Notice that I use the term subcontinent, not region, because it's enormous in scale. In fact, the estimates usually point that India at this time has a population of well over 120 million people. This would have been a huge area for the British as a market for their goods, but also as a source of goods for their own commerce. We know that before the Revolutionary Wars, there was a vibrant trade going on that in many respects sustained the nascent industrial revolution in Britain. So from the British point of view, India is a crucial asset, or at least the presence in India is a crucial asset.
--:-- But it is an asset that from the British point of view is constantly under threat from other powers, both local—such as the Mughal Empire, until it experienced decline in the mid-18th century, and then the Maratha Confederation—and external threats, most notably the French, who've been kind of nibbling at their heels all through the 18th century. So to me, the interesting aspect of this is not necessarily the actual threat that existed, but the perceptions of threat that British officials saw. Not all of them. For example, when we look at the 1798, 1799 period, you have some British officials, such as Granville, who was a foreign secretary, arguing that the direct threat to British presence in India is exaggerated and embellished, and that Britain should focus its efforts on confronting France in Europe. And then you have colonial officials, the British East India Company officials, steadfastly arguing that the threat is real, that the French are coming. In fact, if you read the letters of Richard Wellesley, who was appointed as the governor general of the British East India Company in 1798, 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 British positions in India at this time. The French hands are tied in Europe.
--:-- But nonetheless, the perception is important because it is under this pretense of confronting the French threat that Wellesley then embarks on empire building. In the book, I refer to Wellesley as probably the most Napoleonic of the 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. So we see the wars, the campaigns that Wellesley waged against the local Indian states that refused to trot the British line. I remind you of the war between the British and the Mysore, the infamous storming of Seringapatam and the killing of its ruler Tipu Sultan, or the subjugation of the Nizam of Hyderabad who is forced to accept this subsidiary relationship with the British, or the confrontation ultimately between the British forces and the Maratha Confederation, during which, in 1803, you have that famous Battle of Assaye, where Arthur Wellesley, Richard's younger brother and future greatest British military commander of the age, the Duke of Wellington, distinguished himself.
--:-- These policies of using the French scare to impose British interest on the local states are extremely successful in that by 1805, much of southern and eastern Indian subcontinent is under British rule. Different shades of it, direct or indirect rule, but nonetheless, it's under British influence. That process will only continue in the subsequent years, so that by 1819, you see the extension of British authority in the north to areas like Oudh, in northern parts of the subcontinent, and the encroachment on the Maratha territory, which will be ultimately consumed by 1818 and early 1820s. And hence, we see the establishment of British rule in India.
--:-- Dwarkesh Patel: Is having a global empire, a bunch of colonies, is that helpful when you're engaged in a war with another power? I mean, in some sense, maybe you're more diversified. But in another, as you just said, the British had to divert resources and attention to defending their stakehold in India. And even in World War II, Churchill has to worry about Singapore being 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?
--:-- Alexander Mikaberidze: No, of course. 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. To deviate from the Napoleonic era, when we talk about that other great war—because the Napoleonic Wars for much of the 19th century was the great war, only to be superseded by World War I—think about the British imperial involvement in World War I. When we talk about Britain at war, we really mean the empire. It needs to be pointed out that more Indian troops served in that war than the actual British troops. And certainly the expeditions to, for example, Iraq, involved thousands of Indian forces. So having an empire certainly helps in conducting the war.
--:-- And that is true in the Napoleonic period because the trade that Britain conducted both with India and with China was extremely lucrative. There are excellent studies done on the extent of this trade and on the volume and value of the commerce that was conducted with Asia, which is one of the crucial parts of British economic endurance and resilience. Because once Napoleon consolidated his control of the continent, we know that in 1806 he embarks on the system that we refer to as the Continental Blockade, which was designed to isolate the British or cut them off from the continent in terms of their ability to sell goods. One of the reasons why Britain was able to survive this economic war was precisely because it could rely on its colonial presence, rely on markets elsewhere, and have the naval capacity to ensure that its commercial routes, its lifelines, continue to sustain its war effort.
--:-- And the reverse is true for France. That is one of the crucial stories of the revolutionary Napoleonic era: the collapse of what we call the first French empire. France loses virtually every possession it has outside Europe. That is in India, that is broadly in the Indian Ocean, certainly the Caribbean. And of course you refer to the loss of Louisiana in 1803, 1804. So that means that by comparison, France finds itself in a much weaker position in the years to come. That later on will sustain this narrative of restoration of national grandeur, which will justify colonial enterprises or colonial projects that France will unleash in Algiers in 1830, and then Sub-Saharan Africa in later periods, as a part of the reconstruction of the imperial construct.
--:-- Dwarkesh 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 20th century, they imposed a bunch of tariffs whose main purpose was to enforce export discipline so that it would help their nascent industries, like car making in Korea, for example. It would give them a leg up so that they could build know-how within the country to manufacture these things and then they could get rid of the tariffs. Did this kind of just artificially happen with the Continental System? To what extent are the Napoleonic Wars and the Industrial Revolution linked?
--:-- Alexander Mikaberidze: 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 it. That's one of the topics I'm working on nowadays, exploring the economic dimensions of the war, which is usually ignored even though it's absolutely instrumental to it.
--:-- There are a couple of things to address right away. One is that industrialization began in Britain before the war. We know that the elements of industrial development are already present in Britain in the 1760s, 1770s. Certainly by the 1780s, Britain is far more industrialized than the continental powers. The second point is that France had prerequisites for industrialization. There is a fascinating new study on why the Industrial Revolution didn't take place in France in the 1760s, 1770s, and 1780s like it did in Britain. But that's a separate topic.
--:-- However, once the Industrial Revolution took off in Britain, it gave the British an enormous advantage in terms of their economic parity, in terms of their economic or financial relations with the continent. It left the continental powers in a position where the only way they really can respond to the British threat or economic threat is by creating barriers, tariffs. Napoleon understood that opening up the market, letting British goods flow, would be absolutely catastrophic to French interests, not to mention to the nascent industries in the territories that he controlled, which is why he comes up with this Continental System.
--:-- And I want to—this is my pet peeve—I am very adamant about distinguishing between the Continental Blockade, which was a policy designed to deal with British commerce, and the Continental System, which was a far more encompassing policy that Napoleon pursued towards creating a new political economic reality in Europe. Later on, on St. Helena Island, when he's exiled, he does talk about his desire to create a United States of Europe, effectively an early version of the European Union. But we have to bear in mind that Napoleon's vision of a European Union was an imperial construct where France was supreme. But within that European Union, so to speak, Napoleon did want to use the tariffs, the protective barriers, as a way of promoting industrial growth.
--:-- And that's where the Napoleonic Wars is interesting. On one hand, the fighting, the military devastation that takes place in places like Spain, like Germany, like Russia, does affect local manufacturing, does affect local industries. But on the other hand, Napoleon, by creating this kind of bubble around certain areas of Europe, tried to promote industries within the safety so that the British couldn't compete with them directly. We see the haphazard impact of his policies. There are some areas where it worked, and in the post-war period, places like Belgium, Netherlands, southern Germany, northern France, northern Italy, the industrial development took off. But on the other hand, there are areas where the war had a far greater impact, and the Continental System, with its restrictions, actually delayed the industrial development rather than promote it.
--:-- Dwarkesh Patel: I was just looking at this paper from the economist Daron Acemoglu. I think it's called "The Consequences of Radical Reform." In it, he was making the case that if you look at the places that Napoleon conquered and reformed within the Napoleonic Code, his claim is that after 1850, all of them experienced more economic growth than the places he didn't conquer. I think he says in the paper that there were no cases where they could identify any negative effects from this. I wonder if you agree, or was this just an alloyed good?
--:-- Alexander Mikaberidze: I think it's a generalized statement. If you dig deeper, I think you'll see a more complex reality. One thing is that many of the areas that the author was referring to as having economic growth had the preconditions for economic prosperity, for industrialization, before Napoleon showed up. Usually the case studies for that are the Low Countries, right? Belgium, the Dutch Republic, the Rhineland, the northern Italy areas around Turin and Milan. But those were already urbanized, developed regions that were on the way to industrialization. In fact, in those areas, you can argue—and many of my colleagues have done—that the Napoleonic Wars actually hampered industrial growth because of the direct effect of the war, the fighting and the destruction, but also because of the taxes, requisitioning, and occupational costs that the war brought on these regions.
--:-- However, if you look beyond this, in the book what I'm arguing is that the impact of Napoleon needs to be quantified. You have to approach it very carefully because it depends on the particular region and on the duration of the French presence. The areas I just mentioned stayed under French control for much longer. For example, in the Belgian case, we talk about from 1794 until 1814. That's a much longer duration in time. Compare that to Calabria in southern Italy, where the French arrive in 1806. They face vociferous resistance from the local population, and they really can't overcome it until 1810. And then in 1814, they are gone. So how much can you accomplish in four years? Or think about Poland, or in Spain. There is a far shorter duration of the Napoleonic impact, and there is only so much you can accomplish in that few years.
--:-- So that's where I would argue that yes, the introduction of Napoleonic reforms, in many cases, were helpful in changing the system. By Napoleonic reforms, I mean centralization of authority, professionalization of administration, enforcement of new administrative institutions, and of course, as you mentioned, the new legal framework, the Napoleonic Code—this transformation, this revolutionary change through a legal code. But how long did they stay? That's the question. What's the actual impact on the ground? That's where you see, once you scratch the surface, that the impact is not as uniform and is much dependent on the willingness of the local population to accept this change.
--:-- Dwarkesh Patel: In a previous life, you were a lawyer. I'm wondering how that experience or that background has shaped your understanding of the impact of these reforms and these codes. And especially to the question of a perennial debate about whether institutions and laws that have been shaped naturally through tradition and through history are better, or ones that are more technocratic based on more rational principles. I wonder what kinds of lessons you draw on questions like that.
--:-- Alexander Mikaberidze: That's a complex question, but it's an interesting question to ponder. In my own courses, when I teach students, I usually ask them to look at what Napoleon tried to implement on the legal side of it with the Napoleonic Code, to go through the provisions. There is a lot that can be qualified as progressive for this period, if we set aside important issues on which Napoleon was not as progressive—for example, the issue of the equality of women or the issue of the property rights of certain children born out of wedlock. But if we look at some of the core elements of the Napoleonic reforms, they are quite progressive.
--:-- However, is progress always a good thing? I usually pose that question to students. Usually the answer is, "Oh yeah, of course, progress is a good thing." But what if the progress comes in an intrusive manner and it changes the way of life that you're used to, that you're comfortable with? Then the question becomes whether the progress is actually a good thing. What I mean by this is that in places like Spain or Italy or Poland, Napoleonic reforms, as progressives might argue, threatened to bring about a more centralized, therefore more intrusive power of the state. It threatened to bring about more effective tax collection, more effective administration. It effectively threatened to create a system that held citizens more accountable. Today, we all like to complain about taxes and about government overreach. So why are we surprised that people in the early 1800s would have been complaining about this?
--:-- Some of it might strike as quite unusual, but for example, one of the great legacies of Napoleon is the vaccination program. I think that is especially relevant in the last two years, right? The government's effort to vaccinate, to boost, and all this. Even today, we know that people were resisting it. Napoleon promoted a great vaccination program for smallpox. He started with his own child. He vaccinated his troops and then rolled this program out to the territories that he occupied. But in many areas, people resisted vaccination because it represented government overreach, because it represented government telling people you've got to vaccinate. There were parts of Europe where people suspected that vaccination was part of the government's secret plan to control them, which will strike us as a very modern thing. The conspiracy theories today are not that original.
--:-- Dwarkesh Patel: Today, there's a big discrepancy between how Americans and Europeans see the role of the state. 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?
--:-- Alexander Mikaberidze: Partly. Of course, we have to bear in mind that unlike the United States, or to a great degree Britain, continental European history centers around strong authoritarian monarchical rule. Here we see a dichotomy, for example, of French absolutism with British parliamentarian, limited monarchical development. Or the further east we go, in Prussia, we see the development of absolutist tendencies in the Cameralist system. Or further to the east in Russia, of course, the autocratic monarchical government that predates Napoleon. So there is a long history of a strong statist approach to it.
--:-- What Napoleon tried to do was make the state efficient. That's actually one of the most fascinating things about him—increasing the centralization, the efficiency, the enforcement of the state. In France, we see that after the turbulent years of revolution, Napoleonic centralization and enforcement completely changed the relationship between the people and the state. That includes, for example, in areas like tax payments, tax collection, which increased exponentially as Napoleon set up the system that held people accountable for it. That made the continental powers or the continental societies far more willing to accept the role of the state.
--:-- There is another fold to this. After the Napoleonic period, once the war is over and we're at a period of peace that will last several decades—until the 1850s with the Crimean War and then with the bigger conflicts of the 60s and 70s—we have about four decades of peace. But we have to deal with this 800-pound gorilla in the room, and that is British industrial might. One of the ways we can deal with that is by maintaining the protective barriers of tariffs and by increasing the role of the state in economic development. Your listeners can read up on the economic theories that Friedrich List was the great proponent of, which indeed championed the role of the state in promoting economic prosperity and promoting industrialization. Many European states followed exactly that model.
--:-- Dwarkesh Patel: Another theory about how the economics here proceeded is the public choice theory model from Mancur Olson, where he observed that, for example, after World War II, economic growth rates in Germany and Japan increased by a lot. His theory is that you got rid of these old institutions and the built-in incentives that the old system had. Then maybe similarly in continental Europe, Napoleon gets rid of these guilds, he gets rid of these titles of nobility and these arcane systems. To what extent is public choice theory also a good model of what was happening at the time?
--:-- Alexander Mikaberidze: Yes. I would agree with that to a great deal. Ultimately, I usually end my lectures in my Napoleonic history courses by saying that ultimately Napoleon is a loser in that he lost the war. He lost the empire. He ended his life on that godforsaken place in the Atlantic. But the impact that he left stays with us. In the post-Napoleonic period, the European powers have to grapple with his legacy. Even though his changes, for example, are reversed in Italy where 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 the pre-Napoleonic era and pretend that it didn't happen.
--:-- Alexander Mikaberidze: So you have to accept 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. In some areas, like in southern and western Germany, and certainly in the Netherlands, in Belgium, and in northern Italy, 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.
--:-- For example, we know that in places like Poland, or in Southern Italy, or in Spain, the Napoleonic impact in terms of the changes of the old regime was far less pronounced than in the core areas of Europe. 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, in this post-Napoleonic era.
--:-- And here I do want to point out that oftentimes we think about this post-Napoleonic reconstruction as this conservative reaction, these arch conservatives and reactionaries. But we have to bear in mind that the majority of these conservatives were not against change. Even Metternich, who is usually perceived as this arch conservative villain, is not averse to change. He's averse to the revolutionary pace of change. In the post-Napoleonic era, these great powers were willing to accept reforms and changes that came gradually, in a controlled environment. And that's essentially what we see taking place in the decades after Napoleon is gone.
--:-- Dwarkesh Patel: That's very interesting because Robert Conquest has these set of laws, and his second law is that any institution that is not explicitly right-wing will eventually become left-wing. It seems like the course of Europe after Napoleon is similar. 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, 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 might think that view would get vindicated, at least at the time. But it seems like no, even given the immediate consequences of the French Revolution and Napoleon, eventually the system he and the revolution created endured and caught on in the rest of Europe. Do you have any comments on this move in history where things—maybe "left wing" is not the right word, but "modern" is almost a tautology—but maybe you see what I mean?
--:-- Alexander Mikaberidze: Yes. The way I look at it, the way I discuss it with my students, is that I look at what the revolution promised. At its simplest, the revolution was about a quest for equality. That quest can then be interpreted in a variety of ways. It can be political equality with suffrage and voting, it can be economic equality, social equality, gender equality, all of this.
--:-- To me, the revolution, Napoleon, and then the post-Napoleonic period is not necessarily this left-wing/right-wing or liberal/conservative dynamic. We can use whatever terminology we like. But to me, it's the quest for these evolving notions of equality.
--:-- For example, when we talk about the political side of this equality, we know that the revolution produced remarkable documents in August of 1789 with the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the 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 statement. But it's also a problematic statement because it's so vague. What does it mean to be equal in their rights? And what does it mean to be "men"? In French, the term is *homme*, but *homme*, even though it was used in the context of men, can be interpreted as meaning human beings.
--:-- The story of the revolution and Napoleon is the story of the struggle of various groups for political equality. The revolution, after the Declaration of the Rights of Man, interpreted this provision as saying, "Well, it's equality of those men who are self-reliant, who are well-off, who cannot be influenced." So therefore, they instituted property qualifications and let only the affluent vote. Well, what about those who are below the threshold?
--:-- You see that struggle during the revolution, the Napoleonic era, leading to Napoleon proclaiming universal male suffrage. After Napoleon is overthrown, that system is reversed to a much stricter property qualification. Then you see universal male suffrage coming back in 1848 and staying part of the French political narrative. The same kind of quest for political equality can be traced in many of these other European powers that were affected by Napoleon, or even in Britain. Think about the British electoral reforms of 1832, the Great Reform Bill, or the 1860s and 1880s. It is also part of that quest for greater political equality.
--:-- Then, if we expand our view, what about social and economic equality? What about treating our fellow citizens more equitably when it comes to wages, working conditions, what we now call the social welfare system? These are the ideas the revolutionaries were grappling with, Napoleon was grappling with, and in the post-Napoleonic period, they all were trying to find a way to answer these challenges. In 1848, for example, French socialists tried to find a solution to the existing problem of socio-economic inequality by setting up what they referred to as national workshops—a state-subsidized system where people could register and draw sustenance from the state. It is at this time when we see the concept of the "right to work" come into public discussion. So that's how I look at it.
--:-- And then again, we can look at gender equality. We can look at issues like slavery, which is at its simplest about the equality of human beings.
--:-- Dwarkesh Patel: Having grown up in the former Soviet Union, how has that shaped your views about an idealistic revolution for equality and then deferring to a sort of enlightened despot? How has that shaped your views here?
--:-- Alexander Mikaberidze: My kids—I have two boys, and the oldest one is already reaching that age when he's studying modern history. The other day, he came to the realization that I was born and raised in the "evil empire," so he was quizzing me about what it was like, Father, to be on the other side. I'm like, "Well, thank you, son."
--:-- Of course, it has a direct impact because I was born and raised in the Soviet Union. My father was a critic of the Soviet system. I remember him as a young man in the early 80s secretly listening to the broadcasts of Voice of America or BBC, which were kind of muffled, but he would still listen. These are some of my early memories as a child, when my father would sneak out and secretly listen to a radio receiver that he fashioned.
--:-- I think that kind of experience within an imperial entity did have an impact on me. It certainly shaped me because the Soviet Union collapsed when I was becoming my character, my personality was being forged in the 90s. I lived through the debris of the post-Soviet era with its economic devastation, its civil strife, its economic collapse.
--:-- In that sense, in many respects, I can relate to that generation that lived through the Napoleonic era, saw the collapse of the empires, and then lived through the post-imperial, post-Napoleonic era, which was a period of economic turbulence and stagnation in many parts of Europe, not to mention the civil strife that revolution and Napoleon unleashed.
--:-- For example, I would oftentimes tell students that living through the 90s in Georgia meant grappling with basic necessities, such as standing in line for bread for two or three days, waiting for a loaf of bread. When I talk about the French experiencing hardship during the revolution, trying to find sustenance and seek out pieces of bread in various bakeries, I could on some level relate to their misery and their frustration.
--:-- Dwarkesh Patel: I guess another aspect of this conflict is—I know very little about history, which is why it was very fun to read your book and to venture forth and learn more about it through this podcast. But one of the things that is interesting to me is that it seems there are these punctuated equilibriums in international relations. You have these long periods of peace, and then you have these periods where there are massive wars, massive death, borders get reshuffled. From the Seven Years' War to the Napoleonic Wars, and then from there to World War I. And then maybe we can draw that line to today, where since World War II, we've had peace in Europe, and now we have the conflict in Ukraine. Is this a pattern you see? And if you do, what is the explanation?
--:-- Alexander Mikaberidze: Well, if we look at the conflict in Ukraine, that's a conflict that has direct relevance to me because it is part and parcel of the Russian imperial project. 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. To me, it starts in 2008 when we had a war between Russia and Georgia for that very reason—countries, groups of people seeking a course of development that is different from the one the Russian government has envisioned for them.
--:-- If you look at the rhetoric that comes from Moscow and the statements by President Putin or his ministers, they all have the echoes of 19th-century great power politics, which, as far as I'm concerned, should stay part of history rather than reality. As you pointed out, in the post-World War II period, we went to great lengths to fashion an international system to prevent the very imperial, great power politics that dominated global development in the latter half of the 19th century.
--:-- Look at what Putin's grand strategy effectively is: to carve out spheres of influence, not unlike what Catherine the Great did in the late 18th century when, under her leadership, Russia partitioned the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth—coincidentally, the very territory that involves the war today: Ukraine, the Baltic states. That's where I see the connections.
--:-- To me, it is absolutely paramount to contain these imperial impulses and to ensure that people have agency, that people have the ability to self-determine their fate. To go back to your earlier question about my own experiences: I lived through the 90s, I lived through the national liberation movement, I lived through the civil war, I lived through our own Georgian efforts to figure out who we are and what we want to be. But that's exactly the issue. It should be our decision as a group of people to figure out whether we want to be a Western nation, whether our ideals are more attuned to Europe, or whether we would like to seek a closer relationship with Russia. We should not be punished by an outside power for seeking a course that disagrees with its vision. The same applies to Ukraine. To me, the war in Ukraine is about the agency of the Ukrainian people.
--:-- Dwarkesh Patel: What changed between before World War II and afterwards that didn't change after the Napoleonic Wars? Do you think that after the Napoleonic Wars, if the international norms could change, they would have changed at that time to be like, "Okay, no more great conquest," but maybe it took until World War II? And then what has caused this idea that you can expand into what you perceive to be your zone of influence? How do you explain these two different changes of norms?
--:-- Alexander Mikaberidze: Actually, the interesting thing is that the immediate post-Napoleonic era saw the creation of a new international security system. It was absolutely remarkable. My dear colleague Professor Beatrice de Graaf from the University of Utrecht has written fascinating studies, and we talked about this just in the last two years or so, exploring the impact of the Napoleonic Wars on crafting this new international system. The hallmarks of this system were indeed the balance of power, where these great powers sought to maintain a certain parity. The goal was international cooperation to prevent political instability in Europe. Hence, we see the great power cooperation on issues of suppression of revolutionary cycles in the 1820s and 1830s.
--:-- To draw a parallel to World War I or World War II, one of the things we oftentimes forget is that it was the Napoleonic Wars that pioneered new mechanisms for dealing with the defeated power. That includes occupational regimes, that includes schedules of reparation payments. Yes, defeated powers before had to pay war indemnities, but the post-Napoleonic era saw a very different mechanism that involved occupation, that involved extraction of resources that is formalized and is part of the coalition. This is very similar to what was done in the post-World War II period.
--:-- In 1815, for example, France is divided into zones of occupation, and European powers have occupational troops occupying specific regions as a way of de-Bonapartising France. Just like in the post-World War II period, we had Germany divided into zones of occupation with the policy of denazification.
--:-- Dwarkesh Patel: Why was this not implemented after World War I, the occupational policy? Was that just a massive oversight?
--:-- Alexander Mikaberidze: No. I think we have to bear in mind that unlike World War II, the war didn't directly reach Germany. It was mostly fought in northern France, in Belgium, and in the Rhineland area, but Germany itself remained intact for much of it. By the end of the war, the sheer exhaustion of France and Britain, the collapse of Russia, the collapse of Austria and other powers, certainly created a reality that was very different from 1945, when you have a grand alliance that is determined to carve out zones of occupation.
--:-- Think about the United States in 1919 with its self-isolation—it is a very different entity from the 1945 United States that is keen on keeping its presence in Europe. The same applies to Russia. In 1919, Russia is imploding, while in 1945 it is quite strong, or at least on its way to recovering from the war, and it certainly has the military capacity to carve out a zone of occupation in Eastern Germany.
--:-- Dwarkesh Patel: Another question I have about the Napoleonic Wars: In the Seven Years' War in 1756, France loses. It's not that long before the Napoleonic Wars happen. And when France is fighting the Napoleonic Wars, it's 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 a decade afterwards.
--:-- In financial terms, you can think of it like in business, there's private equity where if a firm has good potential but has a lot of assets under management and bad leadership, you can have another firm that buys it out and runs it better. Is that the story here? Why did the French military and government just seem to get so much more effective between these two wars?
--:-- Alexander Mikaberidze: Yes. I think there are multiple threads that come together in this period. One of them is France's ability to mass mobilize. That is particularly clear in the 1793-95 period when, in response to being confronted by the European coalition, France begins a system we refer to as *levée en masse*, which involves mass mobilization of manpower and the development of a home front to support the war effort.
--:-- In military history, we oftentimes grapple with the concept of limited war. "Limited" in the sense that conflicts before the French Revolution were isolated affairs that didn't affect society as a whole. You had much smaller forces fighting for obvious, clear dynastic or political goals. The French Revolution is different in that it mobilized a far greater percentage of the population.
--:-- If you read the text of the *levée en masse* decree, it talks about young men registering and serving, children participating in production and manufacturing, women supporting the home front, and even the elderly providing moral boost, inspiration, and leadership for the population. It's a more encompassing vision of a nation at war. It is very difficult to defeat an entity like this. France showed that as a nation that can mobilize greater manpower, put greater government controls on the economy, and is armed with an ideology, it can overrun what we call the old regime forces.
--:-- It doesn't mean that the old regime armies were inherently weaker or inherently destined to lose. Not at all. The fact that it took a decade for the revolution to prevail over the old regime, until 1802 when the Revolutionary Wars are formally over, testifies to the resilience of the old regime. But it is also a conflict in which the old regime has to respond, has to tweak itself.
--:-- Then, moving from structural issues to more individual issues: Napoleon—whether you like him or not, even his greatest critics admit that he was a brilliant individual, very capable, a workaholic, an individual who could multitask unlike anyone you really encounter in the pages of history books. His ability to control, at the height of the empire, a virtual continent—an entire continent before the time of phones, internet, and instant communication—is just staggering.
--:-- Napoleon does play an important role because of his sheer brilliance on the battlefield. It's hard to imagine France going on a rampage as it did in the 1805 to 1809 period without Napoleon, because he brings so much to the table. Wellington has that famous statement that Napoleon was equal to 40,000 men on the battlefield.
--:-- And the interesting thing is that Napoleon is not necessarily the only one that France had. That revolutionary decade produced a number of brilliant military commanders. It produced a number of talented men in bureaucracy and finance. In fact, one of the books I want to write, which is part of that economic side of history, is about a brilliant financial wizard who, 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. Dealing with these individual agencies also makes these periods fascinating, because you find characters that are simply amazing.
--:-- Dwarkesh Patel: I wonder what you think of this. I'm in tech circles, and it seems to me that if Napoleon was alive today, he'd be a top founder. As you mentioned, the long hours, the ability to micromanage and multitask, obviously the leadership and the ability to inspire. And then also, most importantly, the risk-taking. A startup founder has to—they're probably going to fail, so they're just trying to maximize the expected value, increase the odds that you have a trillion-dollar company, not necessarily that you make any money. So just the risk. What do you think about this? Would Napoleon become the CEO of a company like Tesla?
--:-- Alexander Mikaberidze: I love the vision of Napoleon as Elon Musk. There is a fascinating movie, a light comedy called *The Emperor's New Clothes*, that envisions Napoleon escaping from St. Helena Island in disguise, leaving a double. Before he can return to France, his double dies and is buried with all the honors. The real Napoleon finds himself caught in this conundrum of trying to prove himself. What he does is start a business in Paris selling bread, using his military genius strategy, and he comes to dominate the baking business in Paris. So somebody already envisioned him as the startup guy. Ian Holm reprises the role of Napoleon, and he's quite good at it.
--:-- Napoleon does have that mindset. First of all, by nature he was a very gifted man with an almost photographic memory, so he retained the minutiae of detail. I've spent the better part of a quarter century examining his documents, going through the archives, dealing with the paperwork he left behind. It's prodigious. We just finished a collective effort of publishing a compilation of his personal letters, and we had to stop at 44,000. And that doesn't account for the government decisions and government paperwork that he reviewed and signed.
--:-- In my books on 1812, you see him deep in Russia, governing an empire that stretches from Spain to Poland and from Denmark to Croatia, dealing with the minutiae of these 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—it has its pros and cons. But he was a micromanager.
--:-- Dwarkesh Patel: Have you seen the videos of Elon Musk going through the minutiae of these things? That's what I'm saying. And also the rapture.
--:-- Alexander Mikaberidze: Yes, that's exactly what I'm saying. Napoleon would have been that. And the worst thing is, I don't know how good Elon's memory is. Napoleon is brilliant. He would be kind of on a page, calling out a footnote.
--:-- There is a fascinating moment when he's in Moscow. He actually noticed that a small battalion was sent on the wrong road in the countryside in central Italy. Who does that kind of thing? Keeping that level of detail.
--:-- Or as an emperor, he actually supervised what we can call a modern police state. The extent of police surveillance of the French population is stunning. As part of it, he required weekly reports on what average people, common people, would say in the streets. Police agents would compile these reports from all across France, and he would receive digests. So on top of everything else he would be doing, he would sit down and go through and learn what Alex said on Thursday and what Dwarkesh said on Friday. It was an expression of public sentiment.
--:-- No, he had all the preconditions for it. And lastly, he loved technology and supported technology. He set up prizes for technological improvements that benefited the French military. There's the famous story of him setting awards for developing new ways of preserving food, which led to canning. The kind of jars we now consume actually come from Napoleon. Or it is Napoleon who conducted or supported experiments on developing submarine technology. In the middle of Paris on the Seine River, they tested submarines. It didn't work out—the submarines were leaking—so he didn't adopt it. But nonetheless, it shows his willingness to embrace technological development. He tried to stay abreast of it.
--:-- Dwarkesh Patel: It's similar with many other important leaders in history. Churchill was a big aviator—I think he crashed at least once—and he also saw the importance of tanks early on while he was in India or something. So that's very interesting.
--:-- Now, you mentioned earlier that this era in French history brought forth a lot of young, great 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?
--:-- Alexander Mikaberidze: No, not necessarily. The revolution was bloody, but not that bloody. No, the revolution was about opening careers to talent. I think that's one of the great legacies of the revolution and Napoleon: they created a system that valued merit. Yes, connections still play a role. If there is one constant in the inconstancy of human nature, it is that nepotism and corruption stay with us. But to a far greater degree, merit played a role.
--:-- You see that in the people Napoleon promoted and surrounded himself with. His cabinet was quite capable, and it stayed so throughout the empire. And not just in the military, as I said, but in finance, administration, and science. It was the ability for a person from a humble background to go to a school, to distinguish himself through his talent and merit, and rise to the top. That's what matters.
--:-- That is what is missing in many other areas of Europe at this time—in parts of Spain, southern Italy, Austria, and Russia. There was far less opportunity for a commoner to rise to the top. But Napoleon made sure that by the time he was gone, the system was already entrenched. Yes, monarchy would be restored, the Bourbons would be back. But even the Bourbons had to accept the Charter, this constitutional arrangement, one of the principles of which would be equality before the law and this acceptance of careers open to merit.
--:-- Dwarkesh Patel: What happened to this model of the enlightened despot? It seems that that's less common today. Maybe the most recent one would have been somebody like Lee Kuan Yew, who is a similar model to Napoleon. But what happened to figures like this in our government?
--:-- Alexander Mikaberidze: 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 in 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, tried also to various degrees of success implementing in their countries. Napoleon, I think, is the last of them and probably the most successful in that his system survived.
--:-- And the reason why he's more successful than Frederick or Joseph is because of revolution. 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, he consistently came out against or expressed opinion against the radicalism of the crowd. And that, to me, is an element in his mindset that tells that he's not a revolution on horseback as such, but enlightened despotism.
--:-- Once he passed away, once he's off the historical stage, even though we are not talking about enlightened despotism as such, the core of it still is there. It's the government trying to bring about changes, 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 evolved. But we still see, for example, Prussian development in the 1820s and 30s that are part of that enlightened rational reform movement. And even later on in the post-Crimean period, Alexander II, the Russian emperor's great reforms, can be perceived as part of that steady, gradual introduction of change that will modernize the state. So I think you can make an argument connecting those dots.
--:-- Dwarkesh Patel: And then what happened to that form of government? It seems that other than Singapore, it's kind of a lost—
--:-- Alexander Mikaberidze: No, I mean, I wouldn't say it's lost. Would you consider, for example, the 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 both kind of liberal but also authoritarian in that sense—a kind of controlled liberal environment. But the Soviet system was authoritarian, but more radical in its transformations. So I think it's a part of the evolutionary process of what's happening. 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 these enlightened reform movements led, spearheaded by an individual, might be still relevant.
--:-- Dwarkesh Patel: And 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 in private markets, but the average age of congressmen and presidents seems to keep increasing. And maybe that has something to do with—it's not like titles and nobility anymore, but it is a greater and greater level of their accreditation. Is this one of the defenses of war, which is that it forces countries to become more efficient?
--:-- Alexander Mikaberidze: No, I think that's a challenging question to deal with. In the late 19th century, social Darwinists, for example, argued that war was a great purger of societies that rejuvenates it. And I'm not sure that we want to go back to that argument.
--:-- The war—I mean, the sheer nature of the war is that it makes things possible that in peacetime would be unthinkable. It is a great homogenizing effect. It suppresses some of the sharper edges, or in some areas it actually makes those sharper edges even more pronounced. Certainly when we talk about the French Revolution, for example, without the war, the revolution would not have radicalized as rapidly or to the extent that it did. Without the conflict that started in 1792, France would have—it's my argument—continued on the path of a gradual reform movement towards a constitutional limited monarchy, rather than rush towards the radical republicanism, terror, and violence, which then beget more violence, more cycles of political instability, and ultimately led to military dictatorship. That's where the war is crucial.
--:-- And certainly within that context, in the context of war, there are a lot of things that revolutionaries thought were justifiable. For example, suspension of habeas corpus. For example, arrest and persecution of their political opponents, but also instituting great government controls. Think about the 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 individuals have an opportunity to distinguish themselves. For example, to go back to what you said about the war being this kind of great purger—it certainly had a role in weeding out many officers in the French corps. Many of them emigrated, left the army. Some of them failed in the tasks that the revolutionary government set for them and were punished dearly for it. We have several cases like General Custine or General Bournonville and others who failed to achieve the mission that the government set for them, and they were recalled and condemned and executed for it. So it certainly creates this environment in which you have to deliver, you have to be at your best, or an environment in which people who are willing to take the risk are pushed forward.
--:-- And that's, in any respect, how Napoleon got his start, right? In 1793, he's a lowly nobody in the French army, and yet he's the one who is willing to take charge of artillery command in the town of Toulon, which is besieged by the army. He comes up with a plan that brings the city to its knees, and the rest is history. And all is done within this war environment. Who knows how things would have turned if there was no war and whether Napoleon would have been able to distinguish himself, or the other generals that went on to make great careers.
--:-- Dwarkesh Patel: It seems that one of the reasons that the revolutionary and the Napoleonic ideas spread a lot was that at the time, France was the seat of intellectual discourse. Why was that? Maybe today, America has that sort of cultural influence that France had at the time. When you read War and Peace, all the elites in Russia are talking in French. What gave France its cultural dominance?
--:-- Alexander Mikaberidze: That's a longer, kind of structural historical process. We can go back to the 17th century and see the rise of France as a dominant political entity in Western Europe and a cultural kind of entity in Europe as a whole. I think it's a creation of Louis XIV's era—the grandeur of the French monarchy, the opulence, the luxury of it, the diversity and the richness of French offerings.
--:-- And of course, this is where I think it gets really interesting, in the sense that France is oftentimes envisioned as an absolutist monarchy with tight controls and everything. But on the other hand, in the 18th century, we see a diverse range of opinions expressed within France by French writers. On one hand, 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 writing critical works against organized religion and envisioning these technocratic utopias. So that is a unique circumstance that France was able to craft and cultivate that other countries were unable to replicate, or were able to replicate to a lesser degree. I think the other country that was successful in doing it, of course, was Britain, which had a very vibrant and rich intellectual life at this time.
--:-- Dwarkesh Patel: I want to be respectful of your time. So the book is *The Napoleonic Wars: A Global History*. And if you want to mention your Twitter handle—it's just your first name and last name, so it's pretty straightforward if you can spell my last name. My students call me Dr. Amp, which makes me a character from a James Bond movie, but it's easier for them to remember it.
--:-- Alexander Mikaberidze: Sure.
--:-- Dwarkesh Patel: Is there some final note or some final point that you want to close on? Something that stuck out from the conversation?
--:-- Alexander Mikaberidze: No, I think this book represents a humble effort to showcase what history can do in a modern context. And that is to move away from traditional boundaries, to adopt a wider lens at looking at events—more transnational, more comparative. It's perfectly fine to do national histories and to look at the historical developments of a particular country. But to me, it is far more rewarding to see how countries developed in relationship with each other, how events in one part of the world reverberate in another. Because in our day, nowadays, we live in such an interconnected world that a transnational and comparative approach is absolutely essential to your success in really any field of career that you pursue—and certainly in politics, business, and law. And so I encourage your listeners to pick up books like that, books written with the global history in mind, and broaden their horizons.
--:-- Dwarkesh 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 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.
--:-- Alexander Mikaberidze: Thank you. I appreciate that. Thank you for the opportunity.
--:-- Dwarkesh Patel: I hope you enjoyed this podcast. If you did and want to help support it, the most helpful thing you can do is share it on social media and with your friends. Other than that, please like and comment on YouTube and leave good reviews on podcast platforms. Cheers and thanks for watching.
