ByErin Blakemore
Published November 22, 2023
• 9 min read
How much do you make? How desirable is your spouse? How are you perceived? Your height could play a role in all these questions and more. Modern civilization is notoriously biased about height, heaping praise and privilege on the tall while minimizing and mocking society’s short kings.
Shorter men have it especially rough. Not only do they face those same biases but they’re also up against a unique stigma: the Napoleon complex.
Named for the tyrannical and aggressive dictator with ambitions far larger than his physical frame, pop psychologists began using this term in the early 20th century to describe short men with domineering personalities. Here’s how the so-called “Napoleon complex” came to be—and why historians still disagree about whether its namesake Napoleon Bonaparte was really all that short.
(The truth behind the turbulent love story of Napoleon and Joséphine.)
Who was Napoleon?
Napoleon Bonaparte first gained fame when he helped France wrest an unlikely victory against the Austrians in Italy in 1796—earning him the nickname the “Little Corporal.” His military prowess led to even more victories, all characterized by daring, even foolhardy, strategies. Hailed as a national hero, he seized political power over France in a 1799 coup. As emperor, he attempted to expand France’s reach across the world.
Napoleon had charisma and huge ambitions. But throughout his life and career, Napoleon was ridiculed for his short stature. His own soldiers gave him several pet names, most of which started with “le petit” (“the little”), and he was consistently portrayed by his critics as a tiny, pugnacious man who attempted to make up for his height by intimidating and dominating those around him.
The most enduring parodies were created by James Gillray, a British caricaturist who helped birth the modern political cartoon. Gillray never saw Napoleon in person. But he mocked the military leader as a childlike man intent on turning the world into his plaything, calling him “little Boney” and showing him as a toddler-like figure in too-large clothing. In one memorable 1803 cartoon, for example, British king George III literally holds the French leader in his palm, looking at him through a spyglass.
It would take a disastrous Russian campaign, a coalition among his European rivals, and the growing discontentment of the French people to bring Napoleon down. He was deposed in 1814 and spent nine months in exile on the Italian island of Elba—then briefly returned to mount a last stand at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815. The battle was a disaster, and Napoleon was forced back into exile until his death in 1821.
(Here’s what went wrong for Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo.)
But how short was Napoleon really?
Just how short was Napoleon? Historians disagree on the answer. During his life, Napoleon was described as both slight and impressive, short and average.
Part of the ongoing confusion seems to stem from the difference in the French and English measuring systems. More than one Napoleon observer said he was about five foot six inches tall, and this was confirmed at his autopsy. But that was often expressed in France’s pre-Revolutionary measurement system. The French “pouce,” or “inch,” equaled 1.06 English inches, which meant that in France at the time, Napoleon was said to be five feet two inches tall.
Historians also point out that Napoleon was often seen in public in the presence of Old Guard grenadiers, who were required to be physically large and who wore uniforms that may have made the emperor look slight in comparison.
Then there’s the deception of appearances. One contemporary, nobleman and ambassador Hyde de Neuville, recalled thinking the man was short. But after Napoleon looked him in the eye during a 1799 meeting, he wrote in his memoirs, “I lost all my assurance under the fire of that questioning eye. To me he had suddenly grown taller by a hundred cubits.”
(Was Napoleon Bonaparte an enlightened leader or a tyrant?)
So why was Napoleon so relentlessly mocked? That might have come down to anxieties about his outsized ambitions, which prompted his enemies to try to cut him down to size. As art historian Constance McPhee writes, British cartoonists like Gillray “manipulated size and dress to symbolically deflate a threatening military opponent, and produced an image that communicates so effortlessly, we often forget it was invented.”
What is a “Napoleon complex”?
Regardless of his actual height, Napoleon inspired the theory that short men attempt to make up for their height with daring deeds. The term “Napoleon complex” was initially used to describe ambitious men in general, as in a 1928 article that complained about “the Napoleon complex in countless businessmen” determined to convince others they are something they are not.
Eventually, though, the idea of Napoleon got wrapped up in ideas of popular psychology, nudged along by one of the most famous psychological concepts of all time: the “inferiority complex.” Coined by legendary psychoanalyst Alfred Adler in the 1920s, the term initially described children driven by their small size and social insignificance to strive for power over their environment.
The public extended the idea of an inferiority complex to adults, too, and connected it with Napoleon’s historically contested stature. Eventually, people began to use the phrase “Napoleon complex” when they referred to domineering, and short, adults.
But modern critics see the idea of a Napoleon complex as evidence of an ongoing pattern of height discrimination, or “heightism,” a term coined by sociologists in the 1970s.
(Visit the remote island where Napoleon spent his final years.)
Studies have shown that short stature is associated with impaired quality of life in some men; in a 2017 study, for example, researchers found that men who experienced discrimination because of their height—or who simply wanted to be taller—were less satisfied with their lives than their counterparts. A 2014 analysis found that men’s height influences society’s perceptions of their mates, their share of household chores and income, and even how old they are when they marry. And taller people consistently get more leadership opportunities and more societal respect.
Is there any evidence that the Napoleon complex is real? Small studies have shown that shorter men may take more obvious risks than taller ones, especially when in the presence of taller men, and keep more resources to themselves when playing a game with a taller male opponent. But it’s unclear if their behavior is due to personal ambition or simply a response to discrimination.
What is clear is that the idea of a Napoleon complex enables people to look down on shorter men. It’s become an “insidious and hurtful stereotype,” writes Tanya Osensky in her book Shortchanged, and is part of a larger strategy of belittling and even publicly humiliating short people.
Such discrimination may be endemic to modern society, but that shouldn’t stop a short king. It certainly didn’t affect Bonaparte. “I am destined to be [my detractors’] prey, but I have no fear of becoming their victim,” he reportedly said shortly before his death in 1821. “The memory I leave behind consists of facts that mere words cannot destroy.”
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