What impact did Napoleon Bonaparte have on today’s world?

Napoleon Bonaparte was Director, Consul, and eventually Emperor of France from 1799-1814, and then 1814-1815 (more on that later). Historians regard Napoleon as an egotistical military genius whose greed for power drove him to conquer almost all of Europe and then lose it again within 15 years. 

His lasting effects on today's world include his Napoleonic Code, his influence on Haitian and Latin American independence movements, and his sale of the Louisiana Territory to the United States. 

One of Napoleon’s major effects on today’s world is through his Napoleonic Code. The Code was one of the first times since the fall of the Roman Empire that any European nation’s laws were codified, or written down in an official document. Before that time, the laws in many European countries were contained in many documents—or not written down at all—making it almost impossible to enforce laws uniformly throughout the country.

As Napoleon conquered areas Germany and Eastern Europe, he brought the Code with him. The Code was also exported to French colonies in the Caribbean and Latin America. Later on, after Napoleon’s empire fell, parts of the Code remained in those areas and became the basis for their own law codes. Therefore, many of the legal traditions in today’s Europe, Caribbean and Latin America started with the Napoleonic Code.

What was in the Napoleonic Code? This document is similar to the US Constitution, in that it describes the rights of the individual. It guarantees the equality of most adult French males (as in the Constitution, while yet preserving slavery).

However, the Napoleonic Code actually removed a lot of individual rights that had previously been guaranteed French citizens after the French Revolution. Most notably, the Code placed limits on freedom of speech and the press. Women were considered children in the eyes of the law and were not allowed to own property or have the legal custody of their own children. Finally, slavery, which had been abolished (ended) 10 years previously, was re-introduced into French colonies in the Caribbean.

One of those colonies was Haiti, which became the site of the largest and most successful slave revolts in history. The Code was partly responsible for the Haitian Revolution, in which Haiti became independent and France lost an important colony.

This loss was one reason behind the second of Napoleon’s most influential actions—the sale of the Louisiana Territory to the United States. The Louisiana Purchase doubled the size of the US, adding the much of the Plains and Midwest to the national map.

Additionally, when Napoleon invaded Spain in 1808—six years after the Haitian Revolution—Spain was left unstable, opening the door for unhappy Spanish colonists in South America to revolt. Napoleon, then, also effects today’s world by influencing independence movements in Haiti and much of South America.

Napoleon was eventually defeated by a coalition of European countries, led by England, in 1814. He was sent to a prison on the island of Elba, in the Mediterranean Sea, not far from mainland France. Napoleon was able to use his charisma to convince his prison guards to help him escape back to France. Once there, he rallied his former troops to support him and was able to re-conquer France for a period of 100 days.

He was famously defeated for the final time when he attempted to invade Waterloo, Belgium. To this day, an event that causes someone’s personal or professional downfall is called “his Waterloo.”

You can find a short biography of Napoleon in .