Napoleon's wars were only a preliminary step in his larger plan to establish a rational state which would increase the pace of society's modernization. Napoleon's Integration of Europe studies the implications of this project for the relationship between France and the rest of Europe. Through a systematic comparison of the experiences of French domination in the majority of European states, Stuart Woolf examines the problems encountered by French bureaucrats in ruling a progressively expanding empire, and explores, through the eyes of the populations subjected to French rule, the nature of collaboration and resistance.

Napoleon's Integration of Europe not only chronicles the history of France, but also the histories of Italy, Germany, Belgium, Holland, Switzerland, Poland, and Spain, at a crucial moment in the development of each. The first comparative study of Europe in the Napoleonic era, it provides an in-depth look at an early exercise in imperialism--in fact, the first attempt to create a single Europe.