francs a year - not much when compared with the Councillor of State's
annual salary of 25,000 francs. Indeed, by some indices the legal position
of the worker worsened: all trade unions and labour combinations were
forbidden, and Napoleon returned to the work permit or livret of the
ancien regime, which allowed the police to control and supervise labour.
None the less, it was notable that strikes tended to be apolitical and
directed at particular grievances. The Emperor won points in the
workers' eyes when his police sometimes prevented employers from
lowering wages as part of a carefully calculated balancing act directed
from the Tuileries. And the Emperor's wars concentrated minds: on the
one hand, it was generally considered better to be a factory worker than to
be cannon fo dder; on the other, conscription produced a shortage of
workers and fo rced wage rates up.
The Continental System, properly understood, had two main aims: to
exclude British products from the Continental market and to provide a
vibrant economy in the French Empire. It failed in the first aim and had
only partial success in the second. As a corollary to this policy, the role of
the State in the French economy was forced to increase by leaps and
bounds. Napoleon is often compared to Hitler, but one of the few points
of comparison usually not underlined is the similarity in both cases of the
economic partnership between business and industry and the State.
Some would argue that Napoleon's economic blockade of Britain was
doomed to failure, since one of the few clear lessons of history is that
economic sanctions take generations to have any real impact. But in
Napoleon's case there were more particular and specific reasons why the
blockade was never likely to be successful. The three most salient
considerations are that British seapower made strangulation of England
impossible; that success depended on a number of factors that France
could not control; and that the embargo of British goods worked against
the self-interest of the blockaders themselves and thus in a sense ran
counter to human nature.
Without control of the seas, France was always more likely to end up
locked in than to lock Britain out. Apart from the fact that expeditions
could be landed anywhere in Europe, as on the Iberian peninsula and
Walcheren in 18o8-o9, there were three obvious economic advantages in
the Royal Navy's maritime supremacy. First, Britain could conquer
new territories, usually French and Dutch colonies, which would give her
alternative markets and sources of raw materials; after 1808 by the same
means she could control the trade of Latin America. Secondly, Britain
could actually enforce its own blockade by Orders in Council and fo und it
easy to clean out nests of French privateers, such as the one in Mauritius.
marcin
(Marcin)
#1