Emperor's blockade would have been more effective if, at the same time
as he was taking violent steps to close European markets to the British, he
was not also taking even more violent ones to open South America to
them.
The Spanish ulcer not only drained France of blood and treasure but
saved the British economy. After 1809 the ports of Spain and, more
importantly, of Latin America were open to them. When the Grande
Armee was progressively switched from Germany to Spain in r8o9-1 r,
making contraband in northern Europe easier, British recovery was rapid.
In r8o9, at £50.3 million, British exports reached their peak during the
Napoleonic years. Even though they declined again during the years of
'general crisis' from r8ro-r2, they never again descended to r8o7-o8
levels. When the North Sea became extremely difficult for the Royal
Navy in r8ro-12, the British switched the main thrust of their
contraband efforts to the Balkans, Adriatic and Illyria; the Danube
replaced the Rhine as the conduit for colonial goods.
If the Continental Blockade was a failure, the Continental System more
widely considered was not an unalloyed disaster. From r8o6 to r8ro
French industry was bursting with confidence, with three industries
particularly to the fo re: cotton, chemicals and armaments. The great
captains of industry enjoyed considerable prestige and were second only
to the marshals and the Councillors of State in power and rank. Cotton -
based in Paris, Normandy, Flanders, Picardy, Alsace, Belgium and the
Rhineland - was the great success story and was the one area where
France kept up with Britain technologically; in other spheres, where
Britain had a commanding technical lead, the blockade made it difficult
for her inventions to be copied and then remodelled in France. Silk was
another success, especially in Lyons and St Etienne, as was wool in
Verviers, Rheims, Aachen, Sedan, the Rhineland and Normandy.
Agriculture did not fare so well, with sugar and tobacco on the decline,
but viniculture did well.
It has often been asserted that Napoleon set back European economic
life for a decade, because his troops, living off the land, destroyed a
multitude of subsistence economies. But a strong argument can be
mounted for a contrary point of view, according to which the Emperor
was a vital motor in the promotion of French capitalism, and not just in
the picayune sense that he suppressed the old guilds. Some economic
historians make the case that the Continental System saved Europe from
being swamped by British enterprise and thus that it enabled a European
industrial revolution to take place; some go so far as to say that by r8oo
Continental Europe was threatened by the fate meted out to India in the
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