Theories of how Napoleon would have been triumphant

[WarGod]

I read alot of 19th century warfare. I also read alot of napoleon and his victories. But I always had this question what if he never invaded Russia. lets say napoleon did these things: He used that huge force instead of invading russia but to crush Spainish rebels.
He did not send a huge force in Haiti to fight the black rebels.
How would europe be different? What would happen to Great Britain? Would they pressure Russia to open an eastern front? What you guys think?

[riksavage]

Originally Posted by WarGod

I read alot of 19th century warfare. I also read alot of napoleon and his victories. But I always had this question what if he never invaded Russia. lets say napoleon did these things: He used that huge force instead of invading russia but to crush Spainish rebels.
He did not send a huge force in Haiti to fight the black rebels.
How would europe be different? What would happen to Great Britain? Would they pressure Russia to open an eastern front? What you guys think?

The British Empire grew out of the ashes of Imperial France. With the demise of Napoleon The Royal Navy was free to dominate the worlds sea lanes ultimately leading to the expansion of the British Empire, with the noted exception of North America, where the Seven Years War (British defeat of the French) sowed the seeds of the American War of Independence.

Also a critical factor was the Industrial Revolution in England - Napoleon actually unknowingly contributed to the British War effort, his troops uniforms were made from cotton material woven in English mills.

[Twickiwi]

Originally Posted by riksavage

The British Empire grew out of the ashes of Imperial France. With the demise of Napoleon The Royal Navy was free to dominate the worlds sea lanes ultimately leading to the expansion of the British Empire, with the noted exception of North America, where the Seven Years War (British defeat of the French) sowed the seeds of the American War of Independence.

Also a critical factor was the Industrial Revolution in England - Napoleon actually unknowingly contributed to the British War effort, his troops uniforms were made from cotton material woven in English mills.

Napoleon was strategically focused on continental Europe, in the same way the Bourbons had been, only more so. His sanctioning of the Louisiana Purchase shows he wasn't interested in a French global empire that much and the concept of La France Outre Mer is a late 19th Century concept maybe fed by envy of the British. We tend to think of the British Empire as a huge success for the British, but we have the benefit of hindsight.

Most early 19th Century europeans considered the real action as taking place in Europe and the future inexorably being Eurocentric. Also after a golden age of Indian exploitation, the Empire proved more cost than it was worth hence the imperial going out of business sale 1945-1980 of management takeovers and share-splits: decolonialisation. Napoleon's cost-benefit analysis of French-America was sound if not ultimately correct.

Napoleon's defining characteristic (which he shared with Hitler) was that his ambitions expanded with success. If he hadn't been so successful at Austerlitz maybe he could have come to an arrangement with the Prussians and Austrians and eventually achieved detente with the British and split the difference in the Iberian Peninsular.

Alternatively he could have undergone a personality transplant and settled for politically dominating the Western Meditereanean and Rhineland, rather than setting up Spain, Italy and Western Germany as vassal states. It would have needed a personality transplant because Napoleon always favoured radical strategies (something else he shared with Hitler).