Jacket for 'Impact of Napoleon: Prussian High Politics, Foreign Policy and the Crisis of the Executive, 1797-1806'

Publishers

UK - Cambridge University Press

Impact of Napoleon: Prussian High Politics, Foreign Policy and the Crisis of the Executive, 1797-1806

By Brendan Simms

Published Jan 2010

An examination of Prussia’s response to Napoleon and Napoleonic expansionism in the years before the crushing defeats of Auerstadt and Jena, this text covers a period of German history as untypical as it was dramatic. Between the years 1797 and 1806 the main fear of Prussian statesmen was French power, rather than revolution from below. This threat spawned a foreign policy debate characterised by geopolitical thinking: the belief that Prussian policy was conditioned by her unique geographic situation at the heart of Europe.