Customer Reviews

The Emperor's Last Campaign: A Napoleonic Empire in America (Atlantic Crossings)

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At this point one would imagine that it would be hard to write something new on Napoleon. This book goes beyond introducing new elements on Napoleon. Is a masterpiece that has to read by anyone interested on Napoleon. Most importantly, by those who have an interest in the independence process that took place in America in the first decades of the 19th century.

It has an impressive research, which may seem to be large but certainly necessary to endorse the view point of the author which presents new information not been researched before. With a background as a senior investment banker in London and New York the author certainly knows to do diligence and support every relevant fact with a quote.

Among other things, the book shows how the domestic independence process of Latin American countries was driven by external elements. The interests and disputes of the old continent, as well as America, in the Atlantic basin were being settled around the Latin American independence process. Being most puppeteers in based in London, Paris, and the US, the most feared one was a prisoner of the British Empire in Santa Elena: Napoleon Bonaparte.

This book has change my view of many events and drivers behind the Latin American independence. I hope every reader will enjoy it as much as I did.

The book achieves a notable effect - although everyone knows that Napoleon does not make it alive out of St. Helena, it is difficult for the reader not to root for Napoleon and his followers as they try to spring him free from the British. Ocampo takes the reader from St. Helena, to Paris, London, to Latin America and back to continental Europe with seamless ease while his depictions of politics and intrigue, of the role of spies and middlemen, and of the grandiose plans fashioned in a military world that seems primitive by today's standards, are engrossing and make the last 60 years of world politics feel like a piece of wet toast. Ocampo backs his arguments with a bucket chock-full of carefully researched data and by the sheer force of his writing makes the reader abandon pre-conceived notions on several subjects -- specially when it comes to Latin America's independence movements. In this latter topic, Ocampo is a breath of fresh air. He has researched his subjects in a painstaking way and poured over piles of documents in three continents. Most iconoclastic (and entertaining) are his observations on Jose de San Martin whom Ocampo falls short of calling a British agent in the British Spanish proxy war fought in Latin America. The result is a tightly knit weave of historical and high political intrigue mixed with newly researched facts and a few nuggets of priceless observations by Ocampo who seems to have absorbed a dry sense of humor during his days as an investment banker in New York and London.