posted
This is my 1815th post (under this pseudonym). I thought that I’d do something connected with Waterloo. As you may very well know, that was the final 'bye-bye' message England gave Napoleon. The whole battle was interesting, Prussia getting late to the battle… Napoleon trying to separate England from Prussia and quickly getting rid of them before facing Austria and Russia.
But there's more to it. Napoleon was one remarkable man; whether you agree with him or not, no-one in their right mind (was Napoleon's mind right? Hard to tell) could possibly say that character – Napoleon's, Nelson's or Wellesley's – had nothing to do with the results of those battles that changed Europe forever. Europe before the Vienna conference and Europe after the Vienna conference was not the same Europe.
Waterloo ended a period, a mini-era in France, that started on 14/07/1789, a date that passed a mere 4 days ago; Waterloo was the final blow to Napoleon – a name that will linger in people's minds for a very long time; Waterloo showed how Europe had managed to face Napoleon and France; and Waterloo marked a change in the dynamics around the continent.
Let's have a thread in honour of that change, and put our thoughts down here. I put down the introductory post, now I want to hear other thoughts about the whole period. Napoleon is no remote person in history, and the French Revolution – which was one of the elements that led him to rise – affects us to this very day.
Posts: 2978 | Registered: Oct 2004
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posted
I think this is an important thing to realize: That social and economic forces (cf. Marx) and deep underlying ecological forces (cf. Jared Diamond) make cultural dominance possible or even likely, but events are still shaped in important ways by the choices and actions of determined and capable individuals.
I think, for instance, we can safely say that with or without Abraham Lincoln, with or without the Civil War as fought, no part of America would have slavery today. Eventually, international social pressure and economic forces and/or widespread resistance or revolution by slaves would have brought an end to the practice.
But to say the end of slavery was "inevitable" does not change the fact that it happened when it did and as it did solely because of Abraham Lincoln's character - his choices, his ability to manipulate and assuage various powerful people, his grim determination to see the war through to victory, and his intention from the start to use the war that had been thrust upon him as a means of liberating slaves and abolishing the loathsome practice.
But let's also point out that even the abolition of slavery was not INEVITABLE. One can conceive of a world in which slavery makes little economic sense on a large scale, but was still practiced on a domestic level. It was because of Christian anti-slavery efforts in Britain that Britain, with its powerful fleet, declared war on the slave trade and abolished slavery within its own borders that the abolition of slavery began to become a recognized marker of civilized nations. Again, the choices of individuals resulted in the general abolition of a practice that had been nearly universal in human history: the ownership of one person by another.
Ditto with Napoleon. While certain things were inevitable once the monarchy fell in France, what was NOT inevitable was that (a) France would win its war against the invading monarchies and (b) that France would then go on to conquer most of Europe and rewrite the map - AND the expectations of the people. Nor was it inevitable that an emperor who tried to establish new Bonaparte monarchies throughout Europe would end up spreading the egalitarian ideals of the French Revolution.
If there had been no Napoleon, there probably would have been wars and map changes, and the idea of democratic revolution would have spread anyway, but ... that does not change the fact or make it trivial that Napoleon alone, by force of his military brilliance and excellent self-promotion, united France in wars of conquest that transformed European culture and politics for generations to come.
Posts: 2005 | Registered: Jul 1999
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posted
Thanks for replying, sir. I never thought this would get a reply. I put it on the wrong side.
I must say that I agree with you, though it can be a problem to draw the border between inevitability and singles' effects upon the world. Especially since there's a grey area, and the world is affected by singles.
Posts: 2978 | Registered: Oct 2004
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I never thought this would get a reply. I put it on the wrong side.
