HIST 412A Seminar: Napoleon and the Napoleonic Era
Napoleon: the third son of a minor Corsican family, the man of average height and extraordinary intelligence, the artillery officer willing to fire on Frenchmen, a strategist both brilliant and ruthless, a Jacobin emperor, a maker of laws, the paradigm of the self-made man, the destroyer of the Holy Roman Empire, a man without shame or self-doubt, the leader brought in to prevent terror at home and export it abroad. And his era: the weakening of the Spanish empire and the start of the Latin American independence movement, the triumph of enslaved peoples in Haiti, the fall of the old European order, the blossoming of romanticism, nationalism, and modernity. Students will each choose one research topic that relates to their particular interests in this transformative period and write a 15-20 page junior seminar research paper.
Prerequisite
Open to History majors and minors only