Why the Battle of Waterloo was fought
smithsonianmag.com
smithsonianmag.com
"If Napoleon had remained emperor of France for the six years remaining in his natural life, European civilization would have benefited inestimably. The reactionary Holy Alliance of Russia, Prussia and Austria would not have been able to crush liberal constitutionalist movements in Spain, Greece, Eastern Europe and elsewhere; pressure to join France in abolishing slavery in Asia, Africa and the Caribbean would have grown; the benefits of meritocracy over feudalism would have had time to become more widely appreciated; Jews would not have been forced back into their ghettos in the Papal States and made to wear the yellow star again; encouragement of the arts and sciences would have been better understood and copied; and the plans to rebuild Paris would have been implemented, making it the most gorgeous city in the world."
Some arguable points, but Napoleon was... shall we say, capricious. It seems naive to think that all this would have happened the way it's put there.
Still, it makes for fun speculation. If you like that, you should read Creasy's "15 Decisive Battles in the History of the World," at least if you don't mind a bit (well, more than a bit) of Anglocentrism. There's a lot of this "if things had gone the other way" stuff and it's great conversation fodder.
Also, Hugo's narrative of Waterloo in "Les Miserables" is wonderful and worth reading if you are at all intrigued.
In Napoleon's mind, he wasn't as much conquering Europe as liberating it from the clutches of nobility. Napoleon viewed himself as a better kind of dictator than the other European monarchs: one who rose to power through his own merit and who selected men for tasks based on their abilities, not their bloodlines. This narrative was decidedly less popular outside of France -- which had essentially executed all of its nobility in the preceding decades, so there was nobody left to disagree. But it really was a war of ideals over who should rule: an arbitrary (and increasingly inbred) line of inherited nobility, or the best man for the job?
If Napoleon had won at Waterloo, Europe would have saved itself a century of war. But the USA would also not exist in its current form -- much of the reason for the rise of American dominance in the 20th century was because Europe was rebuilt after WWII by the American war machine cranking out large quantities of steel and industrial machinery.
And who knows how the 20th century would have turned out without the US as a global superpower. Maybe without war and famine in 19th century Europe, there's never a migration and the central US remains as uninhabited as Siberia. It's fun to think of the "what if?" questions,
That said, the US was a sparsely-populated backwater outpost at the time with only about 7 million inhabitants (a million of whom were slaves). For comparison, the population of Europe during the same time was close to 140 million. We simply didn't have the manpower, infrastructure or money to meaningfully contribute to a European conflict at the time.
1 Napoleon wins in Europe does a deal with UK give me Europe and you can have the Americas oh and I want Lousiana back one of my cousins wants to be a king.
or
2 Napoleon stays true his ideals and backs slave rebellions in the south and caribbean
What reason would Napoleon have to attempt (and probably fail; the American navy was not nearly as much of a pushover as you state the army to have been) to launch a trans-Atlantic campaign against what was historically an ally and a strong cultural/political influence?
Not sure what this statement is about. It was British who abolished the slave trade, and pressured the rest of the world to follow.
1792: Denmark–Norway declares transatlantic slave trade illegal after 1803 (though slavery continues in Danish colonies to 1848).[36]
1793: Upper Canada (Ontario) abolishes import of slaves by Act Against Slavery.
1794: France abolishes slavery in all its possessions. (However, slavery is restored by Napoleon in 1802.)[37]
China had meritocracy long before Europe, with public exams open to anyone for civil service in the empire.
Now that I think about it, I really should have written my senior thesis on comparisons between the 21st century US and Qing China after the gilded age of the Qianlong emperor...
You are literally suggesting that it's impossible to learn from history.
Even further, if we can't speculate about the past, with everything we know now, then we can't possibly change the future. That is, you can't possibly predict if any decision will lead to a good outcome or not.
E.g we can't know if starting a war will be good. Or that you should prevent global warming.
As someone above mentioned, you can't even say that genocide is bad.
"Thank god we tightened up security or there would be another 9/11!"
Humanity is better off because Germany lost, but Britain? Not so much.
IMO it's impossible to say what the long term result of a German victory would have been.
Only the last paragraph briefly discuss the title, as if the author could have predicted the future for 150 years. But as the french proverb says: "avec des si on mettrait Paris en bouteille" [1]
[1] http://www.wordreference.com/fren/Avec%20des%20si,%20on%20me...
The article reads a little weirdly, in fact, as if large chunk of it were missing before the abrupt change of subject at the end. But it's still a fine historical piece.