Napoleons political effect on Europe was definitely his biggest effect. This is because of all of the countries that he conquered. He didn't only conquer European countries, but he definitely focused on those ones and also those had the greatest impact. He had power over many European countries, such as France, Italy, Spain, Switzerland and many others. He also strongly influenced Austria and Prussia. Napoleon would conquer these countries and then change the way their government work. He created Meritocracy, which is a way of government in which social class depended on skill and not wealth. When Madam de Stael talks about how Napoleon had an influence on government, she says "His system was to encroach (Intrude) daily upon France's liberty and Europe's independence...By alternating between cunning and force he has subjugated (Conquered) Europe." Here, she's talking about how she viewed the doings of Napoleon. She was more a part of the Old French Government so she wasn't really ready for the change. But Marshal Michel Ney was all for Napoleon, he said "To the emporer Napoleon, our sovereign, belongs alone the right to rule over our beautiful country." So there were many views on what Napoleon was doing to the government. But eventually Napoleon changed the government system for the better, which allowed people to benefit, which is why his impact on political changes were so great.
Napoleon also had a great effect on Europe's economy. Napoleon expanded trade routes and allowed countries to trade with countries that they weren't able to trade with before. He did this by creating new canals and roads, this allowed trade to happen faster and easier. So this fast and easy trading allowed Europe to start making lots and lots of money really fast. Now that Europe was making all of this money, Napoleon established the Bank of France. This was balancing out the money in France which was make money less of a problem. This gave Napoleon a good view from his country, people were really starting to like him more and more because of how much of a great impact he had on Frances economy. This shows how much of a great impact Napoleon had on France's government.
Napoleon also had a very big social effect on Europe. When Napoleon created Meritocracy, he gave everyone a chance to move up in social class. The social classes were based off of skill and not money, or what family you were born into. The middle class was in love with this idea, and the middle class consisted of 98% of people in Europe. But the higher classes weren't too happy about this. Due to Napoleons change in the way things worker, they actually had to do work! It was quite an outrage. People were loving Napoleon but at the same time they were hating him. in The Lost Voices of Napoleonic Historians it says "Avoiding the large collection of Napoleonic memoirs and those authors who fall into either the hero-worship or anti-Napoleon categories, a review of the handful of the thousands of out-of-print biographies is useful, especially when focusing on those historians who freely shared their opinions about Napoleon." This shows how Napoleon created tons of different opinions and views on him not only back then, but even today.
So Napoleon did all that he could to change things in Europe. Whether it was socially, economically, or politically. He did manage to influence all of those things though. Whether you hated him or loved him, he had one of the greatest impacts on Europe as a whole in all of history.
http://www.historyteacher.net/APEuroCourse/WebLinks/WebLinks-NapoleonicAge.htm
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