The 2022 Besterman Lecture: 'Napoleon’s Nemesis: Madame de Staël and the Origins of Liberalism'

Wikipedia:

Anne Louise Germaine de Staël-Holstein (22 April 1766 – 14 July 1817), commonly known as Madame de Staël, was a French woman of letters and political theorist, the daughter of banker and French finance minister Jacques Necker and Suzanne Curchod, a leading salonnière. She was a voice of moderation in the French Revolution and the Napoleonic era up to the French Restoration.[3] She was present at the Estates General of 1789 and at the 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen.[4] Her intellectual collaboration with Benjamin Constant between 1794 and 1810 made them one of the most celebrated intellectual couples of their time. She discovered sooner than others the tyrannical character and designs of Napoleon.[5] For many years she lived as an exile – firstly during the Reign of Terror and later due to personal persecution by Napoleon.

In exile, she became the centre of the Coppet group with her unrivalled network of contacts across Europe. In 1814 one of her contemporaries observed that “there are three great powers struggling against Napoleon for the soul of Europe: England, Russia, and Madame de Staël.”

Video Title: The 2022 Besterman Lecture: ‘Napoleon’s Nemesis: Madame de Staël and the Origins of Liberalism.’ Source: Voltaire Foundation Oxford. Date Published: November 28, 2022. Description:

The Voltaire Foundation warmly invites you to the 2022 Besterman Lecture: ‘Napoleon’s Nemesis: Madame de Staël and the Origins of Liberalism’ by Professor Helena Rosenblatt, CUNY. 

Among studies devoted to Napoleon, few give much attention to Germaine de Staël (1766-1817). Yet Madame de Staël was one of Napoleon’s most formidable opponents and played a decisive role in his downfall. On the eve of the Battle of Leipzig (1813), she was perhaps the most famous woman in Europe. So powerful was she that the emperor felt the need to censor her writings, harass her with his police, and, finally, exile her from France. Uncowed, she turned her home in Switzerland into an anti-Napoleonic bastion and devoted herself to assembling the coalition that would eventually defeat him. Not satisfied with that, she wrote a book meant to ensure that nothing similar to his rule would ever happen again. 

The intertwined lives of Madame de Staël and Napoleon are not only the story of two fascinating individuals at a key moment in history. They are also the story of the emergence of a particular kind of liberalism that seems endangered today and of two types of democracy that are once again battling it out, one liberal and the other illiberal. 

The lecture took place on Thursday 17 November, 5.00pm, at Examination Schools, East Writing School, Oxford.