ABSTRACT
In the period from the French Revolution (1789) until the Congress of Vienna (1814-15) Europe underwent an extensive reorganisation. The patchwork of early modern states made way for a more modern system of nation states. At the time, it was not the European Union itself, but one of the major European powers – France, to be more precise – that was the driving force behind European integration. Between approximately 1799 and 1815, France was ruled by Napoleon Bonaparte. Later in his life, as an exile on the island of St Helena, he declared that he had striven to found ‘a grand federative European system (…) conformable to the spirit of the age, and favourable to the progress of civilisation.’ From the perspective of Paris at the time, integration was inextricably bound up with ‘modernisation’, i.e. the transition from a traditional to a modern form of society.
