Parole chiave
Come citare
Abstract
Political practices during the Napoleonic era are often overlooked by historiography: the evidence is the lack of interest in the electoral process, despite the fact that it involved millions of people in Europe between the Consulate and the Empire. This research – the result of cross-referencing sources kept among Rome, Paris, and the Vatican – reconstructs for the specific case of Rome the administration’s preparatory activity for the electoral machine activation, the numbers of Roman citizens’ participation and the actual procedures for conducting the elections. From the French government’s perspective, the elections represented the natural outcome of the ordre constitutionnel installation in the recently annexed department, as well as a moment to test its effectiveness. From the bottom, the electoral process was experienced by the Roman citizenship as an experiment of a modern representation system.