Bonapartism ( ) is the political ideology supervening from Napoleon Bonaparte and his legacy. The term is used in the narrow sense to refer to people who hoped to restore the House of Bonaparte and its style of government. In this sense, a Bonapartiste was a person who either actively participated in or advocated for imperial political factions in 19th-century France. Although Bonapartism emerged in 1814 with the first fall of Napoleon, it only developed doctrinal clarity and cohesion by the 1840s.

The term developed a broad definition used to mean political movements that advocate for an authoritarian centralised state, with a military strongman and charismatic leader with relatively traditionalist ideology.

Beliefs

Marxism and Leninism developed a vocabulary of political terms that included Bonapartism, derived from analysis of the career of Napoleon Bonaparte. Karl Marx, a student of Jacobinism and the French Revolution, was a contemporary critic of the Second Republic and the Second Empire.

Noted political scientists and historians greatly differ on the definition and interpretation of Bonapartism. Sudhir Hazareesingh's book The Legend of Napoleon explores numerous interpretations of the term.

Bonapartist claimants

List of Bonapartist claimants to the French throne since 1814 Those who ruled are indicated with an asterisk. Claimant Portrait Birth Marriages DeathNapoleon I*1814–18151815–1821 15 August 1769, AjaccioSon of Carlo Buonaparteand Letizia RamolinoJoséphine de Beauharnais9 March 1796No childrenMarie Louise, Duchess of Parma11 March 18101 child 5 May 1821Longwood, Saint HelenaAged 51Napoleon II*1811–1832 20 March 1811, ParisSon of Napoleon Iand Marie Louise of Austria Never married 22 July 1832ViennaAged 21Joseph Bonaparte(Joseph I)1832–1844 7 January 1768, CorteSon of Carlo Buonaparteand Letizia RamolinoJulie Clary1 August 17942 children 28 July 1844FlorenceAged 76Louis Bonaparte(Louis I)1844–1846 2 September 1778, AjaccioSon of Carlo Buonaparteand Letizia RamolinoHortense de Beauharnais4 January 18023 children 25 July 1846LivornoAged 67Napoleon III*1846–1873President of France (1848–1852)Emperor of the French (1852–1870) 20 April 1808, ParisSon of Louis Bonaparteand Hortense de BeauharnaisEugénie de Montijo30 January 18531 child 9 January 1873ChislehurstAged 64Napoléon, Prince Imperial(Napoleon IV)1873–1879 16 March 1856, ParisSon of Napoleon IIIand Eugénie de Montijo Never married 1 June 1879Zulu KingdomAged 23Prince Napoléon-Jérôme Bonaparte(Napoleon V)1879–1891(disputed) 9 September 1822, TriesteSon of Jérôme, King of Westphaliaand Catharina of WürttembergPrincess Maria Clotilde of Savoy30 January 18593 children 17 March 1891RomeAged 68Victor, Prince Napoléon(Napoleon V)1879–1926(disputed until 1891) 18 July 1862, Palais-RoyalSon of Prince Napoléon-Jérôme Bonaparteand Princess Maria Clotilde of SavoyPrincess Clémentine of Belgium10/14 November 19102 children 3 May 1926BrusselsAged 63Louis, Prince Napoléon(Napoleon VI)1926–1997 23 January 1914, BrusselsSon of Victor, Prince Napoléonand Princess Clémentine of BelgiumAlix de Foresta16 August 19494 children 3 May 1997PranginsAged 83Charles, Prince Napoléon(Napoleon VII)1997–present(disputed) 19 October 1950, Boulogne-BillancourtSon of Louis, Prince Napoléonand Alix, Princess NapoléonPrincess Béatrice of Bourbon-Two Sicilies19 December 19782 childrenJeanne-Françoise Valliccioni28 September 19962 children (1 adopted) Jean-Christophe, Prince Napoléon(Napoleon VIII)1997–present(disputed) 11 July 1986, Saint-Raphaël, VarSon of Charles, Prince Napoléonand Princess Béatrice of Bourbon-Two Sicilies Countess Olympia von und zu Arco-Zinneberg 17 October 20191 child

Marxism In Marxist theory, the term "Bonapartism" was coined to describe the political trajectory of Napoleon III, the nephew of Napoleon I, who was known as Louis (Napoleon) Bonaparte before his coronation as Emperor., Marxists website Karl Marx was a student of Jacobinism and the French Revolution, as well as a contemporary critic of the Second Republic and Second Empire. He used the term to refer to a situation in which counter-revolutionary military officers seize power from revolutionaries, and use selective reformism to co-opt the radicalism of the masses. In the process, Marx argued, Bonapartists preserve and mask the power of a narrower ruling class. He believed that both Napoleon I and Napoleon III had corrupted revolutions in France in this way. Marx offered this definition of and analysis of Bonapartism in The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, written in 1852. In this document, he drew attention to what he calls the phenomenon's repetitive history with one of his most quoted lines, typically condensed aphoristically as: "History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce."

See also

Caesarism List of political systems in France Poujadism

References

Bibliography

Further reading Alexander, Robert S. Bonapartism and revolutionary Tradition in France: the Fédérés of 1815 (Cambridge University Press, 2002) Baehr, Peter R., and Melvin Richter, eds. Dictatorship in history and theory: Bonapartism, Caesarism, and totalitarianism (Cambridge University Press, 2004) Dulffer, Jost. "Bonapartism, Fascism and National Socialism." Journal of Contemporary History (1976): 109–128. In JSTOR

Mitchell, Allan. "Bonapartism as a model for Bismarckian politics." Journal of Modern History (1977): 181–199. In JSTOR Bluche, Frédéric, Le Bonapartisme, collection Que sais-je ?, Paris, Presses universitaires de France, 1981. Choisel, Francis, Bonapartisme et gaullisme, Paris, Albatros, 1987.

External links Mouvement Bonapartiste