Napoleon, Charlemagne, and Lotharingia: Acculturation and the boundaries of Napoleonic Europe

This article attempts to redefine the parameters of Napoleonic hegemony by applying two models to the territories of the Napoleonic empire: one develo ped by Nathan Wachtel, predicated on levels of acculturation and assimilati on to the imperial core; the second, derived from the work of Braudel and B runet, which detects a European core, based along the Rhine-Rhone axis, a m acro-region with a long, if submerged, history. This study concludes that t he acceptance of Napoleonic reforms was achieved only in a core region, alr eady predisposed to them.