Napoleons Plan eines Zentralarchivs

Jeremy D. Popkin bespricht: MARIA PIA DONATO. L’archivio del mondo: Quando Napoleone confiscò la storia.
Maria Pia Donato. L’archivio del mondo: Quando Napoleone confiscò la storia. (Storia e Società.) Rome: Editori Laterza, 2019. Pp. xiii, 170. Paper €19.00.
in: The American Historical Review, Volume 125, Issue 5, December 2020, Pages 1979–1980, https://doi.org/10.1093/ahr/rhz789 (Toll access)

“L’archivio del mondo: Quando Napoleone confiscò la storia, Maria Pia Donato’s slim volume on the “archive of the world,” Napoleon’s effort to centralize the historical records of the European continent and its overseas empires in the capital of his empire, touches not just on a little-known historical episode but also on central issues in what the author calls “the cultural history of archives” (ix; translation mine, here and throughout). […]
Donato’s extensively documented monograph adds to our picture of the Napoleonic Empire’s ambitions and of the difficulties the emperor had in achieving them. One issue she does not discuss is the significance of the archival records generated by the Napoleonic regime itself in the territories it annexed. […] While L’Archivio del mondo is thus not a complete history of the Napoleonic archive project, it is a useful addition to the literature on the European dimension of Napoleon’s reign and an elegant demonstration of the truth of Michel Foucault’s thesis on the relationship of archives and power.”

Die Autorin berichtet über die Ergebnisse ihrer Forschungen auf Italienisch:

https://www.letture.org/l-archivio-del-mondo-quando-napoleone-confisco-la-storia-maria-pia-donato

Auf Deutsch ist in jüngerer Zeit wohl nur

Leopold Auer, Die Verschleppung der Akten des Reichshofrats durch Napoleon, in: Thomas Olechowski/ Christian Neschwara/ Alina Lengauer (Hg.), Grundlagen der österreichischen Rechtskultur. Festschrift für Werner Ogris zum 75. Geburtstag, Wien, Köln, Weimar 2010, S. 1-13

erschienen.

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