The Shadow Emperor
A Biography of Napoleon III
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- 19,99 €
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- 19,99 €
Publisher Description
This is the definitive biography, and the first in twenty years, of Louis-NapolÈon III, whose controversial achievements have notoriously divided historians. Here, pre-eminent NapolÈon Bonaparte expert and Pulitzer Prize-nominated historian Alan Strauss-Schom focuses on his successor Louis-NapolÈon, overshadowed for too long by his more romanticized forebear.??Strauss-Schom employs years of primary source research to explore the massive cultural, social, economical, financial, international, and military impact of France's most polarizing emperor. Louis-NapolÈon completely revolutionized the state and the economy, but amid gross financial scandals. His expansion of the French Empire was praised by the French military and resisted by the socialists. He expanded the railways to rival England's; created new transoceanic steamship lines and a modern navy; introduced a new banking sector supported by seemingly unlimited venture capital; and even oversaw the creation of the first large department stores.??NapolÈon III wanted to surpass the legacy of his famous uncle, NapolÈon I. In The Shadow Emperor, Alan StraussSchom sets out his true legacy.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Napoleon III, emperor of France from 1852 to 1870, is most often presented in English-language sources as a figure of fun or pathos, a simulacrum of his world-striding uncle, Napoleon Bonaparte. Historian Strauss-Schom inverts these stereotypes in an excellent biography, portraying Napoleon III as a builder and a reformer, a planter of forests, and a reclaimer of wasteland. He reconstructed and redefined Paris. He created jobs and sponsored department stores, overhauled educational and financial systems, and encouraged scientific and technical research. In these pages, he emerges as the underwriter of modern France. Yet, unlike his uncle, a man of war and statecraft, Napoleon III was a mediocre diplomat and an ineffective commander. He came to power at a time when Europe's map was being redrawn, and he frequently misjudged international situations: his imperial ambitions generated unwanted confrontations with Britain; his Italian policies enabled unification, but did not complete the process; above all, he was repeatedly and spectacularly outmaneuvered by Prussia's Otto von Bismarck. Napoleon III's failures led directly to his own downfall and to France's displacement as Europe's primary power. This work's perceptive synthesis of recent research will interest scholars, and its engaging presentation and fast-paced narrative will attract general readers.
