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Wars, Blockade, and Economic Change in Europe, 1792–1815*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 February 2011

François Crouzet
François Crouzet
Affiliation:
University of Paris
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Extract

The wars which raged almost continuously from 1792 to 1815 and which are generally, but not quite properly, called in English the Napoleonic wars, are the longest period of warfare which Europe has known since the early eighteenth century, and as they took place at a crucial stage of economic development, when the Industrial Revolution had just taken off in England and when its preliminary stirrings were showing in various places of the Continent, their impact upon the growth of industry in Continental Europe was quite serious. Unlike the twentieth-century world wars, the Napoleonic wars were not marked by large-scale physical destruction; though the productive potential of some towns or districts suffered from military operations or civil disturbances, such destruction was quite limited in space and time. On the other hand, most European countries suffered during the wars from bouts of paper-money inflation, which had undoubtedly serious consequences—especially in France during the Revolution, when the working capital of many merchants and manufacturers was destroyed through the combination of a sharp rise in their costs, of price control under the maximum, and of payment of government orders in depreciated assignats. Also, the diversion of resources to military purposes and the heavy burden of taxation and exactions must not be underestimated.

Type
Articles
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 24 , Issue 4 , December 1964 , pp. 567 - 588
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 1964

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References

1 No significant industrial development resulted from such temporary trading booms; and if many merchants, in the Hanseatic towns or Trieste, for instance, made money through smuggling activities or speculation, they used such capital after the wars for resuming their traditional trade and not for industrial investment.

2 In Barcelona, indirect trade with the colonies through neutrals was in 1806 only a third of the direct trade in 1804. In Nantes, ships entering the port and clearing out had in 1806 a total tonnage of 54,000 as against 80,000 in the peace year of 1802. Moreover, trade through neutral ships did not prevent unemployment of national shipping and depression of shipbuilding.

3 The only exception was German linens, large quantities of which were imported into Britain (and reexported) in 1809–10; American ships were also able to carry them from Tonningen or ports in the Baltic to Latin America.

4 On March 26, 1808, the American consul at Bordeaux reported, “From the Baltic to the Archipelago nothing but despair and misery is to be seen. Grass is growing in the streets of this city. Its beautiful port is deserted except by two Marblehead fishing schooners and three or four empty vessels which still swing to the tide” (quoted by Melvin, F. E., Napoleon's Navigation System: A Study of Trade Control during the Continental Blockade [New York: Appleton, 1919], p. 4Google Scholar8).

5 In fact, the direct cause of this collapse was the sudden abolition in April 1814 of the high customs duties on cotton wool, which at a stroke depreciated manufacturers' stocks and brought sharply down yarn and cloth prices.

6 During the postwar years, some centers of the cotton industry—especially in Germany and Austria—suffered serious difficulties under the impact or renewed British competition but most of them managed to survive and some went on growing.

7 Improvement of agricultural techniques would have resulted in releasing labor which only industry could employ; moreover, home demand for foodstuffs was inelastic, export markets unstable, and the British market, which had a regular import demand, was largely closed right at the end of the wars by the new Corn Laws. Attempts at renovating archaic manufactures, especially the linen industry, would have led into a blind alley, as they were suffering a secular decline. Luxury industries, like silk, were not likely to expand fast and were unsuited to machine production.

8 However, different trade dislocations made their impact felt. During the Revolutionary period, the French silk industry underwent a serious crisis owing to a falling demand for luxury goods on the home market and to its being cut off from foreign markets; in 1801, its output was still about half that of 1789. At the same time, the silk manufacturers in Switzerland, Germany, and Austria were quite prosperous, owing to the elimination of French competition. However, the French silk industry recovered under the Empire and launched an export drive, which Napoleon tried to help as much as possible. This had unpleasant consequences in Switzerland and Germany, where the makers of ribbons in Basel and Barmen and of silks in Berlin were the main sufferers (but some centers of the industry remained prosperous). In Italy, there was little expansion of output.

9 Grossly overdone are the lamentations and diatribes of B. de Cérenville against Napoleon (whom he charges with having deliberately tried to destroy Swiss industry), although the charges have been endorsed by Heckscher, E. F.. See Cérenville, Le Systéme continental et la, Suisse, 1803–1813 (Lausanne: G. Bridel, 1906), pp. 17, 51, 117, 132, 141, 148 ff., 170, 173 ff., 180, 210–20, 279–81, 321Google Scholar; and Heckscher, , The Continental System. An Economic Interpretation (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1922), pp. 307–10Google Scholar. On Berg, see Ch. Schmidt, Le grand-duché de Berg (1806–1813). Etude sur la domination française en Allemagne sous Napoléon ler (Paris: Alcan, 1905), 326–38, 341–43, 354, 382–83, 386, 406–8, 417, 421Google Scholar.

10 This is a very rough guess. The Statistique de la France publicée par le ministére de l'agriculture et du commerce. Industrie, I (Paris, 1847), xv-xvii, gives the value of industrial production for 1812 (and for l'ancienne France) as double the 1788 figure; but this seems over optimistic. On the other hand, according to W. Hoffman's index, the volume of British industrial production did less than double between 1792 and 1815; Hoffman, , British Industry, 1700–1950 (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1955)Google Scholar, table 54.

11 This was helped by the accumulation of capital, through smuggling, in the hands of merchants in Basel, Strasbourg, Frankfort, and Essen, and its subsequent use for investment in industrial ventures.

12 Industrial growth in these countries was stimulated by the shift toward the east of trade routes across Europe at the time of the blockade and by lower prices of raw materials. On Hungary, see Mérei, György, “Ueber einige Fragen der Anfaenge der Kapitalistischen Gewerkentwicklung in Ungam,” Etudes historiques, II (Budapest: Académie Hongroise des Sciences, 1960), 753–59Google Scholar.

13 Because of obstacles to internal trade, high costs of land transport, and low incomes per capita, production upon a large scale could not be based on national or regional demand and had to rely upon export markets.