1803 and why, despite this, has the responsibility so often been pinned on
Bonaparte?
Some of the explanations for war in 1803 can be dismissed at the
outset. The French historian Coquelle, for instance, argued that
Napoleon consciously set his course for war as he hoped to achieve his
imperial crown thereby. This falls down on all fronts: the dynamic
towards empire was internal events in France, not the international scene
and, as has been demonstrated, Napoleon made repeated efforts to avoid
war. Pieter Geyl alleged that France had got a good deal at Amiens and
that Britain had already gone as far as she intended to go with Bonaparte.
According to this argument, the British had already granted him a
position of great power on the Continent, and his 'gratitude' was to
intervene in Switzerland, annex Piedmont, interfere in Italy and keep
troops in Holland. By so doing he made enemies of people who thought
that Britain had been foolish and generous in the first place, and the
peace of Amiens dangerous and humiliating. Napoleon, it is said,
observed the letter of Amiens but not its spirit. Other apologists for the
British return in effect to Addington's own 'sabre-rattling' thesis and
allege that Sebastiani's ideas, outlined in Le Moniteur were an attempt to
blackmail England, by claiming that if the First Consul was forced to go
to war with Britain, he would retaliate by conquering the whole of
Europe.
Still others claim that Napoleon's apparent ambitions for empires in
the East and West seriously alarmed London. It was not so much the
expedition to Haiti, of which the British, for their own cynical reasons,
secretly approved but the prospect of a Caribbean triangle of influence
stretching from New Orleans to Cayenne via Santo Domingo. Then there
were the Oriental ambitions at which Sebastiani hinted. Finally, it is
claimed that Napoleon should not have closed Continental markets to
British goods, as this was the one thing a trading nation could not
tolerate. The one area where the 'provocation' argument rings true is in
Napoleon's refusal of a commercial treaty and the introduction of
economic and financial measures discriminating against the English.
The problem with all these attempts to fasten the responsibility for war
on Napoleon in 1803 is that they make the error of imagining that the
national self-interest of England was 'natural' and that of France
unnatural. Why are 'national frontiers' unacceptable but a Belgium in
hands friendly to Britain part of the natural order of things? Why was it
legitimate for Britain to insist on a balance of power in Europe but not for
France to insist on a balance of power and colonial trade in the rest of the
world? If Napoleon's actions in Piedmont and Switzerland are construed
marcin
(Marcin)
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