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The phrase "a nation of shopkeepers", commonly attributed to Napoleon, is a reference to England or the United Kingdom. There is reason to doubt that Napoleon ever used it. No contemporaneous French newspaper mentions that he did. The phrase was first used in an offensive sense by the French revolutionary Bertrand Barère de Vieuzac on June 11, 1794 in a speech to the National Convention: “Let Pitt then boast of his victory to his nation of shopkeepers”.〔A.M. Adams, ‘’A View of Universal History’’ (London, 1795), vol III, 312.〕 Later, during the Napoleonic wars, the British press mentioned the phrase, attributing it either to “the French” or to Napoleon himself.〔''Notes and Queries'', September 1865, page 191 (), accessed 10 June 2015.〕 A later, explicit source is Barry Edward O'Meara, who was surgeon to Napoleon during his exile in St. Helena.〔Barry Edward O'Meara, ''Napoleon in Exile'', (London, 1822) vol 2, page 52.〕 If O'Meara is to be believed, Napoleon said: There may be grounds to doubt the veracity of this account.〔1. While some contemporaries regarded O’Meara as a reliable source (e.g. ‘’The Edinburgh Review’’, vol 37, 1822, p.165), others thought he was duplicitous (e.g. Colburn’s ‘’United Service Magazine’’, 1843, Part III, 371: “he could not look an honest man directly in the face”). 2. The political sentiments attributed to Napoleon are typical of an 1820s British Radical (O’Meara was ), but not of an Emperor of the French. 3. If Napoleon had really meant at the time to describe the English as a rich nation of merchants it is rather difficult to see why he would have used the expression “shopkeepers”, denoting petty retailers. 4. The lack of an attested contemporaneous French source.〕 The supposed French original as uttered by Napoleon (''une nation de boutiquiers'') is frequently cited, but it has no attestation. O'Meara conversed with Napoleon in Italian, not French. There is no other source. After the war English newspapers sometimes tried to correct the impression. For example the following article appeared in the ''Morning Post'' of 28 May 1832:〔Page 3〕 ENGLAND A NATION OF SHOPKEEPERS In any case the phrase did not originate with Napoleon, or even Barère. It first appears in a non-pejorative sense in ''The Wealth of Nations'' (1776) by Adam Smith, who wrote: Smith is also quoted as saying that Britain was "a nation that is governed by shopkeepers", which is how he put it in the first (1776) edition. It is unlikely that either Adam Smith or Napoleon used the phrase to describe that class of small retailers who would not even have had the franchise. The phrase may have been part of standard 18th century economic dialogue. It has been suggested that Napoleon may have heard it during a meeting of the French Convention on 11 June 1794, when Bertrand Barère de Vieuzac quoted Smith's phrase. But this presupposes that Napoleon himself, as opposed to Barère alone, used the phrase. The phrase has also been attributed to Samuel Adams, but this is disputed; Josiah Tucker, Dean of Gloucester, produced a slightly different phrase in 1766: Napoleon was correct in seeing the United Kingdom as essentially a commercial and naval rather than a land based power, but during his lifetime it was fast being transformed from a mercantile to an industrial nation, a process which laid the basis for a century of British hegemony after the Battle of Waterloo. Although the UK had half the population of France during the Napoleonic Wars, there was a higher per capita income and, consequently, a greater tax base, necessary to conduct a prolonged war of attrition. The United Kingdom's economy and its ability to finance the war against Napoleon also benefitted from the Bank of England's issuance of inconvertible banknotes, a "temporary" measure which remained from the 1790s until 1821.〔 George Lefebvre, ''Napoleon'' (London edition, 2009), pp. 43-53〕 ==Notes== 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Nation of shopkeepers」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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