slumped badly, being estimated at just £r million for the years r8ro--r2.
If Louis's complaisant policies in Holland played into British hands,
Canning's aggressive foreign policy in r8o7 gave the economic advantage
to Napoleon, for the trade with Norway and Denmark before Britain
seized their fleet was £ 5 million, but a year later had plummeted to just
£zr,ooo.
Because of the heterogeneous nature of local economies within the
Napoleonic Empire, a given economic policy could produce skewed
results. Among the unintended consequences of the protectionism of the
Continental System were that German, Prussian and Austrian goods
began to compete seriously with French ones in certain spheres. On the
other hand, a state like Berg was particularly vulnerable to French
protective tariffs , as its economy was like England's, concentrating on
textiles; since the duties on these were threefold, the bankrupt Berg was
soon reduced to appealing for absorption in metropolitan France to avoid
them. Another problem was that Napoleon kept changing the rules of his
own system. Bavaria was initially a beneficiary from the blockade of
Britain and its products - sugar-beet, tobacco, optical glass, textiles,
calicoes, ceramics, pins and needles - were in high demand, but this
advantage diminished once Bonaparte extended his Continental System
to Italy.
In short, the blockade distorted the normal flow of trade, diminished
economic levels throughout Europe, diverted capital from industrial
investment to trade and smuggling and jeopardized relations between
France and her satellites. The customs barrier along the coast and the
inland fr ontiers stretched French policing resources, tempted her into
highhanded and illegal actions, and fu rther harmed relations with the
allied countries. Particular resentment was caused by the growing army of
imperial customs officers, their arbitrary powers and their body searches;
there had been rz,ooo such officials in 1791 but by r8ro there were
35,000 of them. The ultimate absurdity was that this growing band of
excise men was chasing a declining revenue fr om customs duties, at the
very time Napoleon needed the funds to pay for the war in Spain which,
unprecedentedly, was failing to pay for itself.
Yet the most telling reason for Napoleon's failure to blockade Britain
effectively was that Napoleon's military interests did not square with the
interests of consumers and entrepreneurs within his empire. All those
who resented the lack of coffee, tea, sugar, cocoa and spices, the rises in
the cost of leather and cotton, the high price of wool, linen and coffee, the
official inspections of goods and the corruption of customs officers were
bound together informally by a spirit of resistance to the System. It
marcin
(Marcin)
#1