The Emperor’s Caesar: Napoleon III, Karl Marx and the History of Julius Caesar

Richardson, E.

doi:10.1515/9783110473490-006

The Emperor’s Caesar: Napoleon III, Karl Marx and the History of Julius Caesar

Richardson, E.

Authors

Professor Edmund Richardson edmund.richardson@durham.ac.uk
Professor

Contributors

Thorsten Fögen
Editor

Richard Warren
Editor

Abstract

In 1865, Napoleon III, Emperor of the French, published his History of Julius Caesar. The book was a sweeping appropriation of the legacy of Caesar, who was conscripted in Napoleon III’s battle to rebuild the glory of France. Napoleon’s Caesar attracted notice not so much as a narrative of the ancient past, but as a heavily symbolic statement of national and imperial intent. It was designed to validate – to audiences around the world – Napoleon’s personal power, his imperial system, and his ambitions for France. Reactions to it were filtered through discourses of nationalism, from America to Germany. For Walter Bagehot (1889 [vol. 2]: 440), “Julius Caesar was the first who tried on an imperial scale the characteristic principles of the French Empire as the first Napoleon revived them, as the third Napoleon has consolidated them.” This chapter explores the grand ambitions of this unique history and its reception across the world – particularly in Karl Marx’s Der achtzehnte Brumaire des Louis Bonaparte. The legacy of Caesar became an intensely contested battleground, following the publication of Napoleon’s work – but the History of Julius Caesar ultimately became a marker of the limitations, rather than the extent, of the Emperor’s power.

Citation

Richardson, E. (2016). The Emperor’s Caesar: Napoleon III, Karl Marx and the History of Julius Caesar. In T. Fögen, & R. Warren (Eds.), Graeco-Roman antiquity and the idea of nationalism in the 19th century : case studies (113-130). De Gruyter. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110473490-006

Acceptance Date	Nov 30, 2015
Online Publication Date	May 23, 2016
Publication Date	May 23, 2016
Deposit Date	Feb 20, 2016
Publicly Available Date	Jan 26, 2018
Publisher	De Gruyter
Pages	113-130
Book Title	Graeco-Roman antiquity and the idea of nationalism in the 19th century : case studies.
ISBN	9783110471786
DOI	https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110473490-006