British historian David Andress wrote the following on his twitter account about the commemoration of the bicentenary of Napoleon's death:
"The world as a whole would have been better off if he, like a number of less lucky generals of his generation, had been cut in half by a cannon-ball some time in the later 1790s"
Then he goes on to compare himself favorably to Napoleon:
"Today's small satisfaction - realising that I have now outlived Napoleon, AND managed not to embroil a continent in a decade of futile and murderous war at the same time."
When a historian harbors this kind of feelings towards a historical figure can they still be trusted with their research? Where do we draw the line between a historian and a propagandist?
I'm inclined to agree with Jean Tulard when he says that as a historian he doesn't judge but merely presents facts and explains the reason behind actions.
Confirmation bias...so hard to overcome
@john fortune the problem is that some people are doing the latter, whilst hiding behind the former. You can argue that there is a fine line between a historian who admires Napoleon and a Napoleon admirer who reads history. It’s the same difference between the scientists who carried out an experiment and drew conclusions from the evidence, and one who has a conviction and looks for evidence to confirm it.
I would suggest there is a distinction to be made between absolving an individual as "a man of his times” from acts that today we might agree were morally reprehensible ( surely a question of context and scale), and adopting the position that from a contemporary standpoint those acts were therefore excusable.
@Kevin F. Kiley The accusations are neither made up or unfounded, but have been discussed, evidenced and referenced here and other forums many many times. @Zack White exhorts me to not compare anyone with Holocaust deniers, so I’ll recuse myself from this element of the debate.
@Mo Cheikh No, but I wouldn’t expect vegetarians to hold up a meat eater as a paragon of virtue, without at least recognising and acknowledging it.
@Mo Cheikh my criticism is not of Napoleon. It’s of those who do not apply your reasoning, but perpetuate the norms of the time because of their modern bias. There is no moral equivalence in being a brilliant anything. He was a great DJ they say, a brilliant charity fundraiser. We know he slept with some underage girls, but it was the 70’s, he was just a man of his time. Or he made great films. The casting couch? Sure, he was a man of his time, it was the 80’s they were all doing it. We can all see it’s a laughable defence that no one would mount. So why should 150 years extra make any difference? I know we shouldn’t compare Napoleon to Adolf, and I know how angry it makes people who rightly see Napoleon as ‘purer’ and more worthy of admiration. I wouldn’t make that comparison either. But how ridiculous the same defence is when applied to him also. Anti-Semite? But surely, he was just a man of his time. Yes, Napoleon was a ‘man of his time’. But that doesn’t make him, or his conduct, any more palatable. Otherwise we do devalue those prisoners, we are dismissing the murder of Toussaint. We are indeed confirming that Black Lives don’t Matter (as much). I admire your well thought out, empathetic and reasoned response. But for those of us who have given it less thought, I think we need to take a long, cold hard look at ourselves, if we think we can simply dismiss the misconduct of a ‘great man’. That kind of cognitive bias, however unconscious, is not OK.
@David Tomlinson
"if the prisoners at Jaffa were white Europeans" I can't speak to the mass of those killed after the surrender at Jaffa, but I believe that the troops condemned for alleged breach of previous parole after being diverted to the defence of the city were Albanians and thus, as trans-Pontic Muslims, were fairly white and fairly European. However, given that they were presumably all classed as 'Turks,' (ditto Bosnians, ditto Circassians, etc.) this perhaps was not a point generally acknowledged.
Mo,
The term “Nabulione fawner” is used as a pejorative (as is the term 'fanboy') for anyone who admires, or is sympathetic to, Napoleon and the Grande Armee. And, no, you're not one. Excellent posting by the way.
I continue to find it amazing, historically speaking, that Napoleon is frequently labeled a dictator and the absolute rulers in Europe and Russia are not. I wonder why that is?
Napoleon's reforms undoubtedly put France head and shoulders above Prussia, Russia, Austria, and Great Britain in civil rights, equality before the law, education, religious freedom, etc., yet Napoleon is the 'dictator' not Alexander, Frederick William, or Francis.
"The world as a whole would have been better off if he, like a number of less lucky generals of his generation, had been cut in half by a cannon-ball some time in the later 1790s"
I wonder if he thinks about what would have happened if the Brumaire coup had not taken place and either Jacobin fanatics or royalists had taken over instead? The coup was going to happen whether or not Napoleon had been involved. Napoleon was not the originator of the idea, Directer Sieyes was...
"Today's small satisfaction - realising that I have now outlived Napoleon, AND managed not to embroil a continent in a decade of futile and murderous war at the same time."
Napoleon was not the instigator of the wars that began with the British repudiation of the Treaty of Amiens...nor was he the one who allied themselves with the Austrians (again) to attack France from the east in 1805...the Coalitions that were raised against France during the period were financed in large part by Great Britain.
I believe he has written one book on the French Revolution:
Amazon.com: The Terror: The Merciless War for Freedom in Revolutionary France (FARRAR, STRAUS) (9780374530730): Andress, David: Books
"For two hundred years, the Terror has haunted the imagination of the West. The descent of the French Revolution from rapturous liberation into an orgy of apparently pointless bloodletting has been the focus of countless reflections on the often malignant nature of humanity and the folly of revolution.
David Andress, a leading historian of the French Revolution, presents a radically different account of the Terror. In a remarkably vivid and page-turning work of history, he transports the reader from the pitched battles on the streets of Paris to the royal family's escape through secret passageways in the Tuileries palace, and across the landscape of the tragic last years of the Revolution. The violence, he shows, was a result of dogmatic and fundamentalist thinking: dreadful decisions were made by groups of people who believed they were still fighting for freedom but whose survival was threatened by famine, external war, and counter-revolutionaries within the fledging new state. Urgent questions emerge from Andress's trenchant reassessment: When is it right to arbitrarily detain those suspected of subversion? When does an earnest patriotism become the rationale for slaughter?
Combining startling narrative power and bold insight, The Terror is written with verve and exceptional pace-it is a superb popular debut from an enormously talented historian."