Las guerras napoleónicas en los Balcanes

Abstract

In order to understand the pan-European scope of Napoleon’s campaigns it is necessary to study the political context and strategic location of the Balkans in the early 19th century from an international relations perspective: rivalry between Ottoman, Austro-Hungarian and Russian empires, the First Serbian Uprising in 1804, along with the creation of the Third Coalition against France, which was defeated at the Battle of Austerlitz (1805). The consequences of the Napoleonic Wars on three different Balkan territories are examined. The territories are the Illyrian Provinces, where the French grip on the Balkans was affirmed for a brief time, Serbia, and Bosnia and Herzegovina. The purpose of this essay is to show that the rise of nationalist ideology in the Balkans was the result not of Napoleon’s campaigns but of the particularities of the imperial political systems of the Ottomans and the Austro-Hungarians.