Matthew Downey
DPhil Student - St Hugh's College
matthew.downey@history.ox.ac.uk
Research Topic: The Napoleonic Legacy and British Political Reform, 1821-1852
Supervisor: Simon Skinner & Alex Middleton
My research seeks to assess how the ideas associated with the Napoleonic legend influenced the politics of reform in Britain from 1821 to 1852. The enduring image of Napoleon in British political history is as an enigmatic and flexible ideological figure, useful in political rhetoric due to his various legacies as revolutionary, dictator, conqueror, and legislator. Between Napoleon’s death in 1821 and the rise of Louis-Napoleon as Emperor Napoleon III in 1852, France saw two successful revolutions that highly influenced the contemporaneous reform discourse in Britain. My research will illuminate how representations of Napoleon relating to liberty, authority, legitimacy, and tyranny influenced the politics of reform in mid-19th-century Britain, including Catholic emancipation, the abolition of slavery, 1832 Reform Act, Irish Nationalism, and Chartism. Napoleon was invoked by Thomas Attwood at the first meeting of the Birmingham Political Union in January 1829, representing the organisation of a grassroots popular reform movement, "By the downfall of Napoleon, [the French] had gained a feature of constitutional liberty." My research will enhance scholarship on the interconnected political-intellectual sphere in 19th-century Europe, and the external influences on what have been construed as quintessentially British constitutional developments.
This research will provide a valuable contribution to the historical scholarship of liberalism and parliamentary reform by analysing the practical consequences of engagement with ideas that obscure the boundaries between democracy and autocracy. It will establish an historical foundation for further research into the ways that authoritarian influences can cross international boundaries to impact liberal reform efforts. This is no antiquarian project, given a current context in which as liberal democratic societies seek to understand and address the influences of rising authoritarianism.
Publications
- Academic Articles
- “Axis’ Allies: European Fascism and Anti-Imperial Politics in the British Empire, 1933-1945.” Eurasiatique, 14 (April 2026).
- “The North British Society of Halifax, Nova Scotia and the Social Dominance of Imperial Scottishness.” Ascendant Historian, 1 (2021): 25-34.
- Conference Papers
- “Palmerston, Bonapartism, and Public Opinion: How Tension Allowed for Strength in the Anglo-French Relationship 1851, 1858” Cambridge Modern British History Workshop Cambridge, UK (November 2023).
- Bonapartism Post-Bonaparte?: British Political Culture and the Ideological Conceptualisation of Bonapartism, 1830-1848. London International History Students Conference London, UK (June 2022).
- “The Sub-National Assertion of Sovereignty: Portrayals of the EU in the Rhetoric of Nationalist Movements in the UK Following the 2016 Brexit Referendum: Northern Ireland, Scotland, and Wales.” Nordic Political Science Association Congress Reykjavik, Iceland (August 2021).
- Essays
- “Charging Forward: The Crimean War and how it shaped pre-Confederation Canada.” Canada’s History (November 2026).
- “National Service and Canadian Security: Lessons from Scandinavia and Elsewhere.” Eastern Europe and Transatlantic Network (October 27, 2025).
- “L’Empire, c’est la paix: The Trump Campaign for the Nobel Peace Prize.” Open Canada (August 7, 2025).
- “American Caesar: Positioning Trump and Pence in a New Rome.” Open Canada (December 10, 2024).
- “Napoleon Complexes: Putin, Macron, and the Bonaparte Legacy.” Open Canada(November 4, 2024).
Prizes and Funding
- SHRC Canada Graduate Research Grant, Doctoral – 2026-2029
- Borders in Globalization Summer Fellowship - 2024
- Alexander and Phyllis MacLeod Baird Memorial Prize in Scottish History – 2020
- Harper Scholarship in History – 2020
- Joyce Family Foundation Scholarship - 2020
- Michiel Horn and Cornelia Schuh Scholarship – 2020
Before beginning my DPhil I completed my master's degree at the London School of Economics, where I was awarded a distinction for my dissertation, 'Image and Ideology: Bonapartism and British Political Culture, 1832-1848.'
