There is little need to emphasize the importance of this period in the transformation of the political and social system and consciousness of France and of the wider European world.  The protracted wars of 1792-1815 and the almost continuous Anglo-French conflict similarly had far-reaching effects on the military and economic development of European states.  The period thus provides an excellent subject for an option in the Preliminary Examination since it offers a set of clear problems within a well defined chronological context. It also introduces undergraduates to some general issues and themes that they are likely to encounter elsewhere in the syllabus.

The emphasis of this option is on the nature of the conflicts that brought instability during the 1790s and on the character of the Napoleonic settlement after 1799.  Undergraduates will be asked to reflect on the relationship between these two phases.  The paper examines the process of revolutionary politics and the mechanisms of the Napoleonic system.   Undergraduates will also study the multiple threads of the revolutionary political discourse, exploring the emergence of liberal, radical and conservative systems of thought, as well as examining the elements of Bonapartist and Imperial ideology.  Furthermore, the paper raises the practical difficulties experienced in trying to give stable political and institutional form to theory and ideal.  One central issue here is the emergence of revolutionary and Napoleonic myths and the dichotomy between ‘myth’ and ‘reality’.  Finally, undergraduates will be asked to assess the degree, nature, and significance of the changes undergone by France between the Ancien Régime and the Bourbon Restoration.

With these aims in view, the prescribed texts include the famous polemical writings of the Abbé Sieyès and Edmund Burke, a selection of French revolutionary documents (acts, speeches, proceedings, and the like), and selections from Napoleon’s letters and from the Memorial of Saint Helena by the Count de Las Cases.  Such texts will enable undergraduates to measure contemporary perceptions against those of historians since that time.