The collection, divided into four parts, succeeds in covering a wide variety of regions and topics from the historiography and origins of the System to regional approaches, and from a variety of responses to the Systems, including but not limited to smuggling and ‘urban experiences’. … This is a valuable collection that provides a new overview of the complicated whole that was the System, while shedding light on its regional variations.” (Philip Dwyer, French History, January, 2016)
“There is an informative introduction to the topic by Katherine Aaslestad, followed by four general essays on historiography. … The quality of the scholarship is uniformly high and the geographical range impressive. It is difficult to imagine a better introduction to the most recent work on the institutional structure and economic consequences of Napoleon’s efforts to wage economic warfare against Britain and her allies.” (James J. Sheehan, Central European History, Vol. 48 (4), December, 2015)
“The volume includes selected papers from a conference held in Amsterdam in May 2011 and comprises 16 essays … . the volume is a most welcome addition to Napoleonic historiography as a whole and, in treading plenty of new ground, the volume goes far beyond a mere revisit to the Continental System, as its all-too-modest title suggests.” (Morten Nordhagen Ottosen, Scandinavian Journal of History, December, 2015)
“This multi-faceted book … is a coherent collection of 15 papers from historians of continental Europe who attended a conference held in Amsterdam in 2011. … This well-edited, important book has brought many new aspects of these tumultuous years to English-language readers. No naval or maritime history of the period can now be written without taking this evidence and the conclusions of these scholars into account.” (Roger Knight,International Journal of Maritime History, Vol. 27 (4), November, 2015)
