The Napoleonic Mediterranean by Michael Broers

Author:Michael Broers [Broers, Michael]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, Europe, France, General, Historical Geography, Political Science, Political Process, Leadership, Modern, Law, Legal History, Revolutionary, Business & Economics, Economic History, Social History, International Relations, Diplomacy, Political Ideologies, Fascism & Totalitarianism, Military
ISBN: 9781786720870
Google: QbmKDwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 2016-11-30T01:44:08+00:00

5

THE NAPOLEONIC JUDICIAL SYSTEM IN THE ILLYRIAN PROVINCES, 1809–13 AN EXERCISE IN INCONGRUITY?1

‘Illyria’ was the farthest-flung component of the first Napoleonic empire, even if it was not the last imperial acquisition. That dubious privilege belonged to the four ‘shadow’ departments of Catalonia, where the process of annexation began in 1812, several years after the provisional incorporation of the Illyrian provinces under direct rule from Paris. Nevertheless, nowhere else in the ‘Grand Empire’ was further geographically or culturally from the French imperial core than ‘Illyria’. These heterogeneous territories proved ‘alien territory’ for the French, in every sense, yet imperial ideology insisted on the complete application there of the laws of the empire, embodied by the Civil and Criminal Codes and the French system of judicial administration. Thus, the experience of the Illyrian Provinces exemplifies the Napoleonic obsession with the imposition of uniformity on diversity.

The imposition of the French legal edifice on ‘Illyria’ had two aspects to it: on one level, the nature of this new system was equally alien to every part of the new provinces; no corner of ‘Illyria’ had any previous experience of a legal order remotely like that of Napoleonic France. On another, the task of imposing legal unity was undertaken in regions whose ancien régimes had been very different from each other, for the former Venetian territories of the Dalmatian coast and the Habsburg lands of the ‘Illyrian’ interior had little in common in their institutional histories. The task the French set themselves reached far beyond simply substituting one system for another, however alien that system was. Rather, they had to get local magistrates and elites, more generally, to work together who had little in common themselves. It never occurred to the French to abandon their ideological commitment to legal uniformity, even in the face of the intrinsic incongruity that was their Illyrian march.

Nevertheless, by the time the French entered ‘Illyria’, they had acquired almost two decades of experience as imperial expansionists and administrators. As was sometimes the case in Catalonia, in the same years, the thoughts of the French on the ground in ‘Illyria’ and, perhaps even more, in Paris, showed many signs of an imperial regime that was maturing and more attuned to compromise with certain local conditions. Pragmatism was more evident in some aspects of the French approach to ‘Illyria’ than had hitherto been the case in the non-French parts of the empire. However, such attitudes always remained specific, pragmatic concessions to the glaring incongruities with which the new rulers were confronted, and they were regarded as purely temporary expedients, halfway houses to complete assimilation into the imperial norm. Yet, the very existence of such relative flexibility is not insignificant, particularly when set in the chronological context of the late empire, when the experience of imperialism was beginning to be garnered by a new generation of imperial administrators. These green sprigs of pragmatism notwithstanding, what stands out remains the determination of the French to adhere to their cherished concept of ‘one state, one law’, and their unshakeable belief in the superiority of their own legal system.

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