War and Family in the Napoleonic Empire

FAIN: FB-51840-05

Jennifer Ngaire Heuer
President and Fellows of Middlebury College (Middlebury, VT 05753-6004)

From state-sponsored weddings of veterans to speeches decrying threats to French homes, the Napoleonic Empire used an ideology of family to promote war. This book-length project traces the development of this ideology to illuminate how the French government legitimated a mass mobilization unprecedented in European history. But if familial images validated war, war also dramatically impacted familial relations. By examining these dynamics, I call into question the adequacy of current accounts of gender in Napoleonic France that focus on political and legal changes without considering the militarization of society.