Christopher Clark

During his fellowship at the IWM, Christopher Clark will be working on a book that focuses on the period encompassing the era of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, the peace-making process of 1814-1815 and the years after 1815 known (misleadingly) as the Restoration. The aim is to map and interpret the impacts—psychic, cultural, and political—of an era of unexampled transformation, but also to show how the polarization of political society created the space for new forms of politics. Trauma is a part of this story, even if the diagnostic language of trauma did not yet exist at the time. But the epoch of Napoleon and the peace that followed were also a remarkable period of order-making, and the impact of warfare and upheaval has to be weighed against the charisma of new ideas and institutions. In addition to freeing him from quotidian distractions, this period in Vienna will enable Clark to make use of the documents at the Haus-, Hof-, und Staatsarchiv.