Napoleonismn.
/nəˈpəʊlɪənɪz(ə)m/, U.S. /nəˈpoʊliəˌnɪz(ə)m/, /nəˈpoʊljəˌnɪz(ə)m/ 1. Attachment to or support for the policy or dynasty of the Napoleons. Cf. Bonapartism n.
ΘΚΠ
society > authority > rule or government > oppression > [noun] > tyranny, despotism, or autocracy > military despotism
Napoleonism1814
praetorianism1855
society > authority > power > [noun] > pursuit of power
power-seeking1855
Napoleonism1966
power trip1968
1814 J. Mackintosh Jrnl. 25 Nov. in Mem. Life Sir J. Mackintosh (1835) II. v. 314 Madame de ——'s is one of the head-quarters of Napoleonism.
1831 T. Arnold Let. 20 Mar. in A. P. Stanley Life & Corr. T. Arnold (1844) I. 266 The whole power of the nation [sc. England] would be heartily put forth to strangle in the birth the first symptoms of Napoleonism.
1865 Sat. Rev. 14 Jan. 35/2 Napoleonism will be..at least an intermittent fever with the French.
1944 Jrnl. Hist. Ideas 5 458 [Carlyle] gives as examples of hero-worship..Rousseau and Cromwell, and Napoleon. Napoleonism, however, was to his mind unjust and false.
1966 New Statesman 28 Oct. 828/1 The military life had the advantage of absorbing what could easily have been insidious at this stage: the premature dream of glory, the stupefying effects of youthful Napoleonism.
1991 Jrnl. Mod. Hist. 63 575 By the 1900s only sentimental ‘Napoleonism’ remained—the eagle without beak and claws.
2.
a. The policies or principles of Napoleon I or Napoleon III; spec. the method of government associated with Napoleon I; the assumption of absolute control over subject peoples or countries.
ΘΚΠ
society > authority > rule or government > politics > French politics > [noun] > policies of specific politician or support of
Fayettism1793
Napoleonism1849
Boulangism1888
Blanquism1922
Francoism1938
Pétainism1941
Gaullism1950
neo-Gaullism1955
Mitterrandism1979
1849 Littell's Living Age 20 Jan. 140/1 The emissaries of Napoleonism announced the transfer of all taxes from the backs of the latter [sc. the poor].
1870 Fortn. Rev. Dec. 640 To substitute Bismarckism for Napoleonism would be a very small gain to civilisation.
1913 Amer. Jrnl. Sociol. 18 442 The orderly progress of social science in Germany was..arrested for a long time by necessary concentration upon the disturbing problems of revolution and Napoleonism.
1930 Jrnl. Mod. Hist. 2 579 The French Revolution had got side-tracked; Napoleonism had hypnotized men.
1993 Public Interest Jan. 120 Might not parliamentary government in the diverse, populist American context resemble more the French Third and Fourth Republics, with alternating Napoleonism and multi-party deadlock?
b. Conduct or behaviour likened to that of Napoleon I.
ΚΠ
1934 Amer. Polit. Sci. Rev. 231 He sees in the Third Reich not..the cheap Napoleonism which he forecast for the twentieth-century world, but a noble expression of German grandeur and might.
1970 Guardian Weekly 6 June 2 Without our nation standing up against Russia's modern day mad dog Napoleonism Europe itself would not remain independent through the 1970s.
2000 Guardian (Nexis) 27 Sept. (Home Pages section) He did not concede either..to another class of critic, those who accuse him of Napoleonism.
This entry has been updated (OED Third Edition, June 2003; most recently modified version published online March 2022).
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n.1814