The Continental System Revisited

Abstract

The year 2011 marked the thirtieth anniversary of the publication of my doctoral thesis. Napoleon’s Continental Blockade: The Case of Alsace, by Oxford University Press. When 1 first embarked on my doctoral research at Oxford in the late 1960s and early 1970s, 1 was struck by a marked lopsidedness in Blockade studies published up to that time- It seemed to me then that most, particularly those in English and French, had dealt in some way with what 1 called the ‘’sea aspects’ of the subject, in which the Blockade is seen as essentially a ‘coast system’’. Such a view tended to accentuate its harm- ful commercial and industrial effects in the maritime ports of continental Europe and their hinterlands, to the neglect of its ‘’land aspects’, which often reflected more positive economic results. My aim was to redress the balance by concentrating more on the inland regions of the Napoleonic Empire. That was w^Thy 1 chose Alsace, the two departments of the Bas-Rhin and Haut-Rhin, as an area for detailed focus, using the extensive archival material in Strasbourg, Colmar and Mulhouse. In due course, my wider research revealed that some of the economic fortunes of Alsace during the Continental Blockade from 1806 to 1813 were matched in other inland parts of the Empire, notably the annexed departments of the German left bank of the Rhine and mainland Belgium. Although industrial and commer- cial expansion varied considerably across those regions under Napoleonic rule, they were spared the prolonged decline, which overtook the major European seaports during the maritime wars of that time.