Job applications for positions in the Napoleonic administration (1800-1815)

Dataset of application letters for positions in the Napoleonic administration (prefect, sub-prefect, secretary general, and counselor of the prefecture) in the French Republic and later the French Empire, drafted by a sample of 330 French and Italian candidates. The 800 applications are sourced from the French National Archives, collection F1dII. The table contains metadata extracted by the researcher. Column headers include a legend explaining the content where necessary. For columns where this is not specified, the content should be interpreted as follows. For instance, in the column concerning the candidates' previous experience as prefects or sub-prefects: "SPsi" = yes, the candidate has served as a sub-prefect; "SPno" = no experience as a sub-prefect. Other columns follow a similar structure. The final column contains full transcriptions of the texts, without lemmatization, preserving the original spelling. The concluding salutations in the letters have not been transcribed.