No / Napoleon: The End of Glory tells the story of the dramatic two years that led to Napoleon's abdication in April 1814. Though crucial to European history, they remain strangely neglected, lying between the two much better-known landmarks of the retreat from Moscow and the battle of Waterloo. Yet this short period saw both Napoleon's loss of his European empire, and of his control over France itself. In 1813 the massive battle of Leipzig - the bloodiest in modern history before the first day of the Somme - forced his armies back to the Rhine. The next year, after a brilliant campaign against overwhelming odds, Napoleon was forced to abdicate and exiled to Elba. He regained his throne the following year, for just a hundred days, in a doomed adventure whose defeat at Waterloo was predictable. The most fascinating - and least-known - aspect of these years is that at several key points Napoleon's enemies offered him peace terms that would have allowed him to keep his throne, if not his empire, a policy inspired by the brilliant and devious Austrian foreign minister Metternich. Napoleon: The End of Glory sheds fascinating new light on Napoleon, Metternich, and many other key figures and events in this dramatic period of European history, drawing on previously unused archives in France, Austria, and the Czech Republic. Through these it seeks to answer the most important question of all - why, instead of accepting a compromise, Napoleon chose to gamble on total victory at the risk of utter defeat? / Leverhulme Trust

no / The eight-hour meeting at Dresden between Napoleon and Metternich on 26th June 1813 is a famous moment in modern French and European history. It marked a decisive stage in Austria’s tortuous path from ally to enemy of France, and thus played a crucial part in Napoleon’s downfall. Yet it still remains unclear exactly what transpired during the interview—the three published accounts, two by Metternich himself and one by Napoleon’s secretary Baron Fain, are contradictory and incomplete. There are, however, two further accounts of the Dresden meeting, one unpublished, the other almost completely neglected since its publication in 1933. The first is a revealing letter from Metternich to his wife Eleonore two days after the interview. The second is a narrative of the meeting taken down from Napoleon’s own words by his Grand Equerry Caulaincourt just a few hours after it ended. This sheds important new light on some of the key issues discussed. In particular, it clarifies the central question of whether or not Metternich offered concrete peace terms to Napoleon. Finally, the question of how far, if at all, the wider French public supported Napoleon’s determination not to conclude a ‘dishonourable’ peace in 1813 is examined.

Book Summary: World at War: Understanding Conflict and Society is an essential source of reference material on the military conflicts that have defined global history from antiquity to today. Through absorbing investigations of how the World War I peace settlement led to World War II, or insightful comparisons of U.S. past involvement in Southeast Asia with the Afghanistan War, this database encourages study and research that goes beyond isolated events to identify causal relationships, chart historical developments, and analyze the role conflict itself plays in society. Content quality is maintained by an expert advisory board, comprised of educators and historians including Dr. Spencer Tucker (the award-winning author of titles such as The Encyclopedia of Middle East Wars and American Civil War: The Definitive Encyclopedia and Document Collection).This advisory board also serves to vet the database's original journal articles, which expose researchers to scholarly argumentation on controversial topics in global military history.

Book Summary: Wars create important turning points in human history, defining our leaders and changing the lives of ordinary families and citizens. Whether fighting for independence, forging alliances, making a play for dominance, or battling a global threat, nations shape history—and the world—when they go to war. World at War: Understanding Conflict and Society presents overviews of 50 wars, rebellions, and revolutions, both those commonly taught and those less so, and provides additional analysis of causes and consequences and portraits of opponents. The effect is to elucidate the global impact of these military conflicts that have defined our world from antiquity to today such that students and researchers may develop a deeper, critical appreciation of both the history of the world and the human costs of war.

The Napoleonic invasion of Iberia shattered the Spanish empire in 1808. The French emperor occupied Spain and forced Ferdinand VII to abdicate the throne. Once the war against the French began, most vassals also rejected the Spanish imperial government in Madrid that had recognized the change of dynasty. The implosion of the Crown severely tested the hierarchical, centralized, and interdependent nature of the empire. Historians of the Spanish Bourbon empire have rightly argued that the invasion catalyzed the emergence of the new nations from 1810 onward. Many of them, however, have failed to notice the concurrent and extraordinary efforts to reconstitute the empire--a critical history that contextualizes the decisions Spanish Americans faced in this tumultuous period. / History

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This dissertation explores the influence of late eighteenth-century British imperial and global paradigms of thought on the formation of British policy and strategy during the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. It argues that British imperial interests exerted a consistent influence on British strategic decision making through the personal advocacy of political leaders, institutional memory within the British government, and in the form of a traditional strain of a widely-embraced British imperial-maritime ideology that became more vehement as the conflict progressed. The work can be broken into two basic sections. The first section focuses on the formation of strategy within the British government of William Pitt the Younger during the French Revolutionary Wars from the declaration of war in February 1793 until early 1801. During this phase of the Anglo-French conflict, British ministers struggled to come to terms with the nature of the threat posed by revolutionary ideology in France, and lacked strategic consistency due to acute cabinet-level debates over continental versus imperial strategies. The latter half of the work assesses Britain’s response to the challenges presented by Napoleonic France. Beginning with the debates surrounding Anglo-French peace negotiations in late 1801, the British increasingly came to define Napoleonic France as a regime harboring imperial aspirations that represented an explicit threat to British imperial interests. By defining the Napoleonic regime as an aspirational imperial power, British opponents of the Peace of Amiens provided the intellectual framework for the hegemonic struggle between land and sea powers that would define the Anglo-French struggle until its conclusion in June 1815. While Britain ultimately proved successful in defeating France in Europe, the expanse of the conflict also exposed the strengths and weaknesses of British force projection outside of Europe at the beginning of the nineteenth century. / History

Världen har genom historien formats och stöpts om av krig och konflikter. Dagens globala värld är inget undantag med inbördeskrig som ett ständigt återkommande fenomen. Våldsyttringar inom stater har sedan andra världskriget varit den största källan till konflikter och bidrar med flest antal offer. Inbördeskrig har drabbat en tredjedel av världens länder under 1900- talet och en femtedel har upplevt minst 10 år av inbördeskrig från 1960. Konflikter runt om i världen påverkar den internationella politiken och hur alla människor lever, och god kunskap om konflikters struktur är därmed ytterst viktig.  De flesta studier på området har behandlat s.k. inter-state wars, d.v.s. krig mellan stater. Studier rörande s.k. intra-state wars, konflikter mellan regeringsmakten i en stat och icke-statliga grupperingar, är dock inte lika vanliga. Under den senare delen av 1900-talet har inbördeskrig varit den form av konflikt som orsakat störst skada och lidande. 1996 publicerade David T. Mason och Patrick J. Fett artikeln ”How Civil Wars End: A Rational Choice Approach”. I artikeln undersöker författarna uppfattningen att det är svårare att fredsförhandla i inbördeskrig än i mellanstatliga krig. Detta då offer och förövare efter krigets slut fortsatt måste leva sida vid sida. I krig mellan stater drar parterna sig tillbaka till respektive territorier vilket gör att en eventuell fredsprocess anses relativt enklare att uppnå. Frågan är vilka faktorer som leder till fredssamtal alternativt till en seger för en av parterna?

This thesis treats of the use and meaning of the Greek concept of eleutheria (freedom) and the cognate term autonomia (autonomy) in the early Hellenistic Period (c.337-262 BC) with a specific focus on the role these concepts played in the creation and formalisation of a working relationship between city and king. It consists of six chapters divided equally into three parts with each part exploring one of the three major research questions of this thesis. Part One, Narratives, treats of the continuities and changes within the use and understanding of eleutheria and autonomia from the 5th to the 3rd centuries. Part Two, Analysis, focuses on the use in action of both terms and the role they played in structuring and defining the relationship between city and king. Part Three, Themes, explores the importance of commemoration and memorialisation within the early Hellenistic city, particularly the connection of eleutheria with democratic ideology and the afterlife of the Persian Wars. Underpinning each of these three sections is the argument that eleutheria played numerous, diverse roles within the relationship between city and king. In particular, emphasis is continually placed variously on its lack of definition, inherent ambiguity, and the malleability of its use in action. Chapter one opens with the discovery of eleutheria during the Persian Wars and traces its development in the 5th and early 4th centuries, arguing in particular for a increasing synonymity between eleutheria and autonomia. Chapter two provides a narrative focused on the use and understanding of eleutheria in the years 337-262. It emphasises continuity rather than change in the use of eleutheria and provides a foundation for the subsequent analytical and thematic chapters. Chapter three analyses eleutheria itself. It emphasises the inherent fluidity of the term and argues that it eschewed definition and was adaptable to and compatible with many forms of royal control. Chapter four looks at the role of eleutheria within the relationship between city and king. It elaborates a distinction between Primary and Secondary freedom (freedom as a right or freedom as a gift) and treats of eleutheria as a point of either unity or discord within a city‘s relationship with a king. Chapter five explores the connection between freedom and democracy and looks at how the past was used to create and enforce a democratic present, specifically in constructing both Alexander‘s nachleben as either a tyrant or liberator and the validity of Athenian democratic ideology in the 3rd century. Chapter six concludes the thesis by returning to the Persian Wars. It analyses the use of the Wars as a conceptual prototype for later struggles, both by kings and by cities. Exploring the theme of the lieu de mémoire, it also outlines the significance of sites like Corinth and Plataia for personifying the historical memory of eleutheria.

Both African writers and literary critics have long used the ideology of "Négritude" and the political commitment it generated as the theoretical basis for their works. However, since independence in Africa, this common practice started to lose momentum due to a shift in the social and political realities. Furthermore, in recent decades, new generations of African writers have moved away from the "Négritude" movement's beliefs. Nevertheless, there are still some nostalgic writers and critics who cling to this historic movement that shaped African literature and thought for half a century. The above two trends paved the way for my starting hypothesis: is it still possible to evaluate what Abiola Irele calls the "African imagination" in the narrative, and especially novels, without the traditional criteria of political commitment and ideology? To answer this fundamental question, I define my analytical method as a "politiscopie." This neologism is formed in the image of the word "radioscopie." "Politiscopie" combines the stem for politics, "politi-," with the suffix "-scopie," from the Latin scopium (instrument for viewing) and the Greek skopein (to look at). And I define "politiscopie" as the analytical examination of political discourse in literary text. This examination is stripped of the conscious or unconscious analytical tendency that I call "l'humeur idéologique des critiques," or "the ideological mood of critics. "This dissertation is divided into two parts and an introduction, in which I define political discourse based on L'archéologie du savoir by Michel Foucault. The first part--chapters one and two--is a "politiscopical" examination, an examination of political discourse in African novels since 1990. I discuss the explicit and implicit political discourse present in the considered novels. In the second part--chapters three and four, I attempt to tease out the triangular relationship between Africa, the writer, and the relevant political realities. I investigate the political representation of Africa by the new generations of African writers, and then I look at the impact of distance on those writers to see whether the location of the authors--abroad or on the African continent--affects the way they treat African political debates.