Napoleon's forces invaded Spain in 1808, but two years went by before they overran the southern region of Andalucia. Situated at the farthest frontier of Napoleon's "outer empire," Andalucia remained under French control only briefly--for two-and-a-half years--and never experienced the normal functions of French rule. In this groundbreaking examination of the Peninsular War, Charles J. Esdaile moves beyond traditional military history to examine the French occupation of Andalucia and the origins and results of the region's complex and chaotic response.
Disillusioned by the Spanish provisional government and largely unprotected, Andalucia scarcely fired a shot in its defense when Joseph Bonaparte's army invaded the region in 1810. The subsequent French occupation, however, broke down in the face of multiple difficulties, the most important of which were geography and the continued presence in the region of substantial forces of regular troops. Drawing on British, French, and Spanish sources that are all but unknown, Esdaile describes the social, cultural, geographical, political, and military conditions that combined to make Andalucia particularly resistant to French rule.
Esdaile's study is a significant contribution to the new field sometimes known as occupation studies, which focuses on the ways a victorious army attempts to reconcile a conquered populace to the new political order. Combining military history with political and social history, "Outpost of Empire" delineates what we now call the cultural terrain of war. This is history that moves from battles between armies to battles for hearts and minds.

The men who fought in Napoleon's Grande Armee built a new empire that changed the world. Remarkably, the same men raised arms during the French Revolution for liberte, egalite, and fraternite. In just over a decade, these freedom fighters, who had once struggled to overthrow tyrants, rallied to the side of a man who wanted to dominate Europe. What was behind this drastic change of heart? In this ground-breaking study, Michael J. Hughes shows how Napoleonic military culture shaped the motivation of Napoleon's soldiers. Relying on extensive archival research and blending cultural and military history, Hughes demonstrates that the Napoleonic regime incorporated elements from both the Old Regime and French Revolutionary military culture to craft a new military culture, characterized by loyalty to both Napoleon and the preservation of French hegemony in Europe. Underscoring this new, hybrid military culture were five sources of motivation: honor, patriotism, a martial and virile masculinity, devotion to Napoleon, and coercion. Forging Napoleon's Grande Armee vividly illustrates how this many-pronged culture gave Napoleon's soldiers reasons to fight.