The Napoleonic Wars: A Global History

Alexander Mikaberidze's landmark history of the Napoleonic Wars as a genuinely global conflict — extending far beyond the European theater to the Americas, Middle East, Africa, and Asia.

Against Euro-centric Napoleonic history: standard accounts focus on European campaigns and diplomatic settlements. Mikaberidze documents how the Napoleonic Wars reshaped global trade, colonial power, slave rebellions (Haiti), Middle Eastern politics, and Latin American independence movements. The wars' global reach — British naval dominance, French empire-building, Spanish colonial collapse — makes them genuinely the first world war. A major revision of the standard interpretation.