The long shadow of the emperor: fear and British press during the Napoleonic Wars (1795 - 1815) : A quantitative study on the history of the emotions

Abstract: "The long shadow of the emperor: fear and British press during the Napoleonic Wars (1795 –1815)” was a master thesis that combined the history of emotions with the use of quantitative computational techniques. The main objectives of the project were to detect and analyse the fear around the figure of Napoleon Bonaparte in the British press, between 1795 and 1815, and to check the feasibility of the proposed quantitative techniques for the history of emotions. The methodology consisted of the bibliographic collection of terms, web scrapping techniques, the creation of a database of mentions, and the emotional analysis of the subsequent information. The results showed how the emotion of fear was experienced in the British press, and the great explanatory potential of the methodology proposed by the study. The findings have revealed valuable information about international politics, public opinion, and erroneous assumptions in our current understandings of the Napoleonic Wars.