I’m sure this question has been asked a bunch of times on the board, but as I’m re-reading the Hornblower and Sharp’s series atm I thought I’d ask a what if. Let’s say that history played out exactly as it did until Napoleon pushed things to war with Russia. Instead, the French and Napoleon never invade Russia at all, but instead focus on Spain and Portugal and the British on the peninsula. What would have happened? Is there any possibility that the French could have maintained their European empire if they had done this? And if so, for how long? Could the French ever have gotten the British to stop the war and stop the trade blockade and eventually have peace?
Surprisingly no posts. Am bumping it because I am interested and there are a lot historians on this forum. Maybe you all just missed it.
France had the problem that no matter what it did, it would always have a hostile/ unfriendly neutral power on the eastern border of it’s empire. There was simply nowhere Napoleon could stop.
First of all, an examination of the imperial wars of the time can’t restrict itself to the Napoleonic Wars. You really have to keep working backwards, especially to the Seven Years’ War.
France’s imperial ambitions were, necessarily, constrained by its ability to project power overseas. The loss of Canada in the Seven Years’ War (called the French and Indian War in the USA; the Wikipedia article on it, bizarrely, claims that Canadians call it the Anglo-French Rivalry; they absolutely do nothing of the sort) led inexorably to the need to sell the Louisiana territories to the USA, and the eventual marginalization of French power to the small/pointless (Martinique, etc.) or close to France anyway (Algeria.)
Canada and thus North America was lost for lack of naval power; the French handed the British their asses several times early in the war, but could not sustain support for New France because of a lack of fighting power on the high seas. And of course when the Napoleonic Wars rolled around, well, Trafalgar and all that.
Having now kept France on the continent, it’s hard to see how France keeps an “empire” growing. European-only “empires” don’t have a long track record of success post-Rome. There is no end to the war to keep that empire unless you can establish a clear and natural boundary that makes sense to you and your rivals; that’s why Great Britain went in and out of war internally until the kingdoms were united, and then could become a mighty imperial power afterwards. If you try to win an empire on the continent, there is, as Lumpy points out, nowhere to stop until you get to China, and dominance of the high seas allows the UK to make war at times and places of its own choosing. The ongoing pain and blood of the Peninsular campaigns is a direct byproduct of the balance of naval power. It’s not like the British had a really compelling reason to fight over Spain; they fought there because it was a place they could kill Frenchmen and there wasn’t much the French could do about it.
An alternative history scenario where France becomes as great, or greater, an imperial power as the UK is one in which France can become the greatest naval power in the world. That cuts the UK off from the Continent, allowing France to focus its efforts on its eastern frontier. It allows France to continue colonizing overseas, keeping pressure on the UK abroad and exploiting the colonies for economic gain.
Whether or not that level of naval dominance was possible is hard to say.
On one hand, there is no reason in terms of industry or manpower why they couldn’t have, or why by accident of birth or circumstance the French had gotten the superadmiral and the British had never gotten Lord Nelson.
On the other, one could make a strong argument that the UK was, by the 18th century, inevitably going to end up being the naval superpower because of its geography and history. An island nation has an obvious reason to prioritize naval power.
Not sure. If Napoleon had not given Galicia to the new state of Poland and had married Alexander’s sister, Catherine, as planned, Alexander might have remained pro-French.
He would then not have boycotted the blockade of England and Napoleon would not have invaded.
How long would the empire have survived?
Dunno, probably not that long past the emperors’ death I suppose
I think one question would be if the rise of nationalism would still play out in the same way. If it did, then I don’t see the Empire lasting longer than 1840 due to the nationalistic rebellions that certainly would have occurred in Germany.
However, if there weren’t such a sweeping rise in the idea of nationalism, then France would have had time to bolster its strong alliances in western Germany, given time to let the pro-republican factions there develop.
It all depends on the timely arrival of Blackadder at Waterloo.
Don’t worry, American’s don’t really call it the French and Indian War either (I mean I know it’s an alternate name for the Seven Years War but I don’t know anyone who actually uses it).
It was called the French & Indian War when they taught me about it in grade school in the United States. 
Americans absolutely call it that, when referring to the subset of the Seven Years War that took place in North America. And indeed there is logic in doing so, since some of the most important fighting in North America, involving the death of General Braddock and the launch of the military career of George Washington, took place before the Europeans got around to declaring war on each other and starting the seven year clock running in 1756.
Actually, It’s been called the French and Indian War in every US-centric history course I’ve taken, from grade school to high school. It wasn’t until I was in AP European History that we “officially” learned it as the Seven Years’ War - I mean, most of us had made the connection between the two early on, but as a rule of thumb, I’ve found that Americans are more likely to call it the French and Indian War when they talk about the campaigns in North America, while the worldwide war was the Seven Years’ War, if an American is worrying what to call it at all.
YMMV, of course, depending on age and location. I went to school in Louisiana and Kansas and graduated high school in 2009.
I was taught the French and Indian war in high school down too. It wasn’t until college that I realized it was the same as the Seven Years War.
I think there were 2 or 3 more wars of the period that had American names differing from the European ones…Memory a little foggy here but one was called the War of Spanish Succesion.