Alexander Mikaberidze - Napoleon, War, Progress, and Global Order

**Dwarkesh Patel** (0:10)
All right, today, I have the pleasure of interviewing Professor Alexander Mikaberidze, who is a Professor of History and the Ruth Herring Knoll Endowed Chair at Louisiana State University. And he's the author of The Napoleonic Wars, A Global History.
This is an absolutely fascinating book. It was unlike any other history book I've read in the sense that it was just global in its scope, and you're covering such an interesting career in history. So first of all, can you give my audience a little bit of background on yourself and on the Napoleonic Wars? Yes.

**Alexander Mikaberidze** (0:43)
Thank you so much for having me. It's a delight to be here.
I'm originally from a country of Georgia, and I usually tell people that no, it's not the state of Georgia, right? It's the country of Georgia in Eastern Europe. A small state sandwiched between Russia and Turkey with a rather complex and diverse and turbulent history. But as most small nations, it is oftentimes kind of lost on the pages of history. And of course, when I embarked on this career to become a professional historian, I've always wanted to see where my people kind of fit in the largest scheme of things.
And I was oftentimes frustrated, especially working on the Revolutionary Napoleonic Era, that the huge transformations that this period witnessed in caucuses were not properly addressed. And so the immediate cause and kind of spark to write this book was desire to kind of wrong, to correct the wrong. But it also kind of then grew from their to get a better understanding of the field because Napoleonic Era is one of the most written historical periods. There are thousands and thousands of volumes. In fact, Napoleon is probably the most written about historical figure period. The last estimate was that at least three, maybe 400,000 volumes have been written just about him.
So there has to be a really good reason to write another book about this topic. And gradually my realization was that almost everything that has been written about this period is written from the French and British points of view and focused on the great transformations taking place inside Europe. And that is perfectly worthwhile enterprise, but I thought that it offers a very narrow snapshot of the period because Napoleonic, revolutionary Napoleonic period is the moment when we see the modernity setting in not just in Europe, but gradually extending to various parts of the world. It changes the trajectory that many of these world regions followed. And I thought in fresher study was needed to flesh that out.

**Dwarkesh Patel** (3:21)
And what I appreciated as like American of Indian origin is that you had almost a chapter in the book that was just dedicated to how the Napoleonic Wars impacted the expansion of British rule in India. And also about obviously the impact on the Americas from the Louisiana purchase onwards.
I'm curious, by the way, how it's possible that so many volumes about Napoleon have been written. I think Andrew Roberts said that there's been one, on average, one new book by Napoleon a day since he died.

**Alexander Mikaberidze** (3:50)
Yeah. Oh, yeah.

**Dwarkesh Patel** (3:52)
How are there possibly that many Napoleonic scholars?

**Alexander Mikaberidze** (3:56)
Well, it's a very enticing field. I compare Napoleon and you told me that the video will be recorded, right? So you see the wall behind me, which has parts of the British propaganda, part of the French propaganda, and of course the gift from my students, Napoleon's cutout, but oftentimes compare Napoleon to a siren.
And because for those who first approach the shores of Napoleonic history, they are drawn by the lure of that sweet song of Napoleonic legend, right? That the vision of a romantic kind of tightened the Prometheus who's thought to bring about change and was ultimately defeated in exile to Iraq in the middle of nowhere.
And I think Napoleonic legend exercise such a lure that there isn't always enough people interested in it to write about it. But it has a downfall or kind of side effect. And that is most of what is written is written on Europe for linguistic reasons. For example, to write the books of global nature, of global historical narrative, you need to have diversity of language skills that includes not just the French and British, which by now is taken for granted, but Spanish and German and Russian. And if you expand your narrative even further to the East, then you have to involve the Ottoman and Iranian historical traditions as well. And of course, that is a colossal challenge. And I think that is oftentimes pushes people away from such a narrative.