Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
Pages: 375
•
Trim: 6 x 9
978-1-5381-0829-1 • Hardback • September 2017 • $121.00 • (£93.00)
978-1-5381-0831-4 • eBook • September 2017 • $114.50 • (£88.00)
Sam A. Mustafa is professor of history at Ramapo College of New Jersey.
Contents
Abbreviations Used in the Notes
Acknowledgments
Preface
Notes on Citation, Spelling, and Usage
Chapter 1: I Have Come to Occupy Your Land
Chapter 2: A Kingdom on Paper
Chapter 3: König Lustik
Chapter 4: Coin and Purse
Chapter 5: Sword and Shield
Chapter 6: Law and Order
Chapter 7: The Challenge
Chapter 8: Minds and Souls
Chapter 9: Fatherlands and Patriots
Chapter 10: Subjects and Rebels
Chapter 11: The False Dawn and the Horizon
Chapter 12: Collapse
Chapter 13: Restoration
Chapter 14: Epilogue: Was Bleibt?
Bibliography
Napoleon's Paper Kingdom does what a good scholarly history should do: it draws on the available sources, presents a well-developed thesis to a wide potential audience, and provides much-needed insight to this neglected area of Napoleonic scholarship.
— American Historical Review
Building on French and German scholarship and utilizing extensive archival and published sources, Mustafa has produced a much-needed English-language history of the kingdom.
— Journal of Modern History
Sam Mustafa is to be heartily congratulated on his outstanding new work chronicling the history of the ephemeral Kingdom of Westphalia in Napoleonic Germany. Despite its importance in both the story of the Napoleonic era and the broader sweep of Germany’s national development, Westphalia has not been the subject of a comprehensive, professional historical analysis for more than a century. Mustafa has filled this astonishing gap in sterling fashion, meeting the highest expectations of scholarship while being eminently readable. His book is a series of firsts: the first serious study since the late 1800s, the first ever in English, and the first to provide an assessment outside the strictures of either Prussian historical biases or post-Napoleonic romanticism. Combining careful consideration of the historiography with unprecedented primary research and a mastery of the secondary literature, he presents a thoughtfully nuanced view of a kingdom that sat at the center of Germany for six tumultuous years and whose brief existence continues to proffer powerful interpretive insights for the Napoleonic epoch and the evolution of Germany as a state and society.
— Colonel (retd) John H. Gill, author of Thunder on the Danube: Napoleon's Defeat of the Habsburgs
Sam Mustafa’s groundbreaking study is the first complete and scholarly history of the Kingdom of Westphalia since the nineteenth century. Drawing from years of intensive research in state archives, Napoleon’s Paper Kingdom covers all the complex facets of government, religious, and social affairs of Napoleon’s model state. It is a seminal book, well-researched and highly recommended for all historians and readers interested in the Napoleonic period.
— Wolf D. Gruner, University of Rostock
This well-researched history of the Kingdom of Westphalia examines the perspectives of its French architects and its German subjects. Mustafa highlights Napoleon’s plan for the kingdom, the practice of its governance, and day-to-day life within Westphalia. Outstanding chapters address the expansion of Westphalia, the significance of the wars, the many colorful characters who sought to make the state work, and those who opposed it. Very accessible to the general public, this book is an excellent contribution to our understanding of Napoleonic state-building and warfare and the diverse fate of Germans living under French rule.
— Katherine Aaslestad, West Virginia University
First book on this subject in English
First grand narrative and complete treatment of the topic in any language in over 120 years.
Questions current historiography about Germans in the Napoleonic Era by revisiting primary sources
Draws on archival sources from five regions of Germany and hundreds of memoirs and first-person accounts
A scholarly book written in accessible, jargon-free prose for all readers interested in the Napoleonic era