This is a difficult question to answer because Napoleon was often quite vague and contradictory as to his long-term goals. Moreover, Napoleon's goals strategic shifted over time; Napoleon's picture of a future a future European order would differ quite markedly between 1800, 1810, and 1815. Therefore, historians have attempted to try and parse out what exactly what Napoleon was after only with a degree of difficulty.

Generally speaking, there are two historiographic poles about the Napoleonic empire. At one end of the spectrum is the thesis that Napoleon attempted to create a French-dominated European federation run by a rational administration. Owen Connelly's Napoleon's Satellite Kingdoms was one of the first articulations of this thesis, but later expanded upon in Stuart Woolf's Napoleon's Integration of Europe. This latter historian emphasized that the French imposition of a civil order based upon rational lines and trained bureaucracy had widespread repercussions on European development. Woolf argued that the twin policies of ralliement (getting the cooperation of local elites) and amalgame (fusing together elements of the old order with the new through active participation within Napoleonic state systems) were part of a deliberate state policy to craft this new reorganization of Europe. These twin policies were in keeping with Enlightenment precepts and Napoleon's conquests allowed reformers both within conquered states and the French bureaucracy to put Enlightenment ideals in action. On the other end of the historiographic spectrum is the interpretation that the Napoleonic Empire consisted of a series of expedients to squeeze as much men and resources out of conquered territory. Paul Schroeder's The Transformation of European Politics is one of the more forceful articulations of this thesis. Schroeder argued that Napoleon's empire was a fundamentally unsustainable anomaly in the European international system. According to Schroeder, accepting French hegemony meant countenancing a colonial relationship. The Continental System, for example, fostered an economic order in which France supplied finished goods and occupied Europe the raw materials. For Schroeder, bureaucratic rationalization served the purposes of this colonial economic and political order; it was not an enlightened end onto itself.

There is obviously a great degree of distance between these two poles, but most contemporary scholarship on the Napoleonic empire gravitates towards Schroeder's position by arguing that the empire was too riddled with contradictions to be a viable political entity. For example, Geoffrey Ellis short history The Napoleonic Empire argues that Napoleon had no real coherent plan for empire and that its Enlightenment rhetoric masked a continent-wide spoils system. Michael Broers's work on Napoleonic Italy also shows that of the twin pillars of ralliement and amalgame, the former was more successful because French cultural imperialism rendered the latter unworkable. Economic historians (see the recent anthology Revisiting Napoleon's Continental System: Local, Regional and European Experiences) have also lent credence to the idea that the Continental System tried to reorient European trade to the benefit of France; an inner imperial core benefited from the system, but the outer areas became impoverished. Napoleon's commitment to a sound metal currency and a mixture of indirect and direct taxation limited the amount of revenue the French metropole could generate, so he increasingly shifted France's defense burden upon his conquests and allies through forced loans and contributions. By 1813, much of Napoleon's allies were running on economic fumes due to this policy. This renders the common defense of Napoleon that with the exception of 1812, other European states declared war on him somewhat moot and besides the point. Alliance or partnership with Napoleon meant accepting a clearly subordinate role and a diminishing of domestic economic and political power, something that understandably was hard for other European sovereigns to accept.

However, despite the dim prospects for the First Empire's political future, there were more than few willing collaborators within Europe. The promise of Napoleon of a career open to talent and an the Empire's meritocracy was very attractive to many Europeans steeped in Enlightenment traditions. That the Empire's meritocracy was somewhat elitist by cementing a new socioeconomic form of nobility also appealed to many non-French in the middling classes. The very diversity of the Empire's allies and dependencies adds a further layer of complication as reactions and outcomes to Napoleonic rule could vary quite widely, even within the same region. Nor was there a great deal of consensus within the French government about the course of the Empire's direction. One telling example is one of the squabbles inside the French government about the nature of French citizenship. Napoleon's Civil Code favored the concept of jus soli (citizenship based upon land of birth) over jus sanguinis (citizenship based upon parent's nationality). This was something that Napoleon had to fight against some elements within the French imperial government when he pushed for jus soli. Napoleon believed that by creating French-led cultural and state institutions, he could assimilate large sections of Europe into French culture, much as he had "became French" through service in the French military academies and army. The fact that Napoleon's normally pliant administration resisted him on this important point, albeit unsuccessfully, demonstrates that that First Empire's policies consisted of more than the whims of just one man.