ABSTRACT
In Europe, the beginning of the nineteenth century was marked by the dramatic rise to power of Napoleon Bonaparte. By the age of thirty, the Corsican-born Napoleon had demonstrated his brilliance as a military general. In 1799 he was named first consul of the French republic; in 1804 he was crowned emperor. Positivism became a strong influence upon many nineteenth-century intellectuals, including the French professor of history Jules Michelet. The People is an unsurpassed portrait of nineteenth-century France and, by extension, of European society in general. In it Michelet examines the social classes of France from the lowliest workers to the most powerful and the most wealthy aristocrats. Positivism also was a strong influence upon many nineteenth-century writers and artists, including the French artist Honore Daumier. The most important nineteenth-century socialist theorists were Pierre-Joseph Prou'dhon, Karl Marx, and Friedrich Engels. The scientific debate over the nature of light occupied much attention in nineteenth-century laboratories and lecture rooms.
