Renewal of Anglo-french Commercial War (1793-1799)

On March 1, 1793, only a month after the outbreak of war, the measures of prohibition began, and within a few months the Convention had passed almost all the laws that were possible along that line. The first law of this kind passed by the Convention, which also annulled all treaties previously entered into with enemy countries, prohibited indiscriminately the importation of a large number of textile, metal, and earthenware goods which were regarded as normally coming from England—it was, of course, the home manufacturers of these articles who had especially complained of British competition—but did not restrict the prohibition to goods coming from any specified country. With respect to all goods not expressly exempted, however, it was stipulated that evidence should be furnished that they did not come from an enemy country. This rendered necessary the use of certificates of origin for certain goods, even though they were indispensable to French consumers and could not be obtained from neutral countries (especially sugar). Two or three months later (May 19), accordingly, such goods had to be exempted. But the whole of this first law was a mild warning in comparison with the outbreak of fury, harmonizing completely with the spirit of the Reign of Terror, which on October 9 of the same year (Vendémiaire 18, year II) appeared in the form of a law bearing the title: Loi qui proscrit du sol de la république toutes les marchandises fabriquées ou manufacturées dans les pays soumis au gouvernement britannique. Its express application to Great Britain, one of the enemies of France, is in itself significant, the whole law, as its title indicates, being a straightforward proposal to persecute all British goods in the most drastic manner. It imposed on every holder of British goods the obligation to declare them and hand them over to the authorities, and provided that any customs official who allowed such goods to enter the country would be liable to twenty years' imprisonment in irons; and the same punishment was assigned to any person who imported, sold, or bought them. But even this was not enough. The law further provided that anybody who wore or used British goods was to be regarded as suspect and to be punished as such in accordance with the notorious loi des suspects; that is to say, he might be arrested and imprisoned at any time. All posters or notices couched in English and referring to stocks of British goods or containing British trade marks or appellations, as also all newspapers announcing the sale of British goods, were 'proscribed'; and the punishment in this case also was twenty years' imprisonment in irons.

After the crisis of Thermidor and the fall of Robespierre early in 1795, the legislators again retraced their steps to some extent by slightly lowering the duties on non-British goods. This did not last long, however, since they were raised again by the Directory at the close of the following year. On the whole it may be said that the rule of the Directory, from the autumn of 1795 to the autumn of 1799, marked a return to the policy of the Reign of Terror, though in a somewhat modified form, throughout the entire economic domain. As a sign of welcome to Lord Malmesbury, who visited Paris to negotiate peace, there was accordingly passed on October 31, 1796 (Brumaire 10, year V), a law prohibiting the importation and sale of British goods on an even larger scale than that established by the laws of 1793, inasmuch as the prohibition was extended to cover goods that were derived, not only from British industry, but also from British trade. And at the same time there was adopted—so far as is known for the first time, but certainly not for the last time—the somewhat clumsy expedient of declaring certain groups of goods to be British, quite irrespective of their real origin. Even such goods as were brought into the country from captured or stranded vessels were not allowed to remain there, but had to be promptly re-exported. The resemblance between this and the above-mentioned regulations of the seventeenth century is unusually striking. Moreover, nearly all the regulations of the year 1793 were renewed in substance, although the provision concerning certificates of origin had again to be limited after a few months. Only in regard to penalties was there a very considerable modification. Among the goods which were always to be regarded as British was refined sugar; but now again, as in 1793, its exclusion proved to be impossible, and the smuggling to which it gave rise finally resulted, in 1799, in the prohibition being replaced by a high customs duty. Evidence of the extent to which French legislators thought it possible to carry the persecution of everything British is furnished by the fact that the importation of Geneva watches was prohibited on the ground that they contained a small amount of steel presumed to be of British origin.

Another link in the policy of commercial war was formed by the Navigation Act, which was brought forward with great oratorical fanfare and was passed by the Convention on September 21, 1793, the anniversary of the overthrow of the monarchy. In exact imitation of the famous corner-stone of English maritime policy, the Navigation Act of the Commonwealth of 1651, and also of earlier French ordinances, it forbade foreign vessels to import any products other than those of their own country or to carry on coasting trade in France. Moreover, by a supplementary law of October 18 (Vendémiaire 27, year II), all foreign vessels were saddled with dues about ten times as high as those imposed on French vessels. There is a close analogy between these measures and those that were adopted during the seventeenth and early part of the eighteenth centuries. The latter were directed chiefly against the principal carrying country of the time, the Netherlands; and in the same manner the law of the Convention was directed against the new commercial nation, Great Britain. Perfide Albion came to occupy the same position in the popular imagination as its predecessor, only it was regarded as still more dangerous owing to the great development of its industries and political power.

All these trade laws of the Revolution manifestly had the same double character as their forerunners of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries; that is to say, they were intended to injure Great Britain by excluding her goods and vessels, and at the same time to serve as an ultra-protectionist measure calculated to benefit French industries. According to the official statement, the Directory's law of 1796 was designed to 'give new life to trade, restore manufactures, and re-establish the workshops', and, on the other hand, 'to deprive our enemies of their most important resource in waging war against us' and compel them to make peace. In complete analogy with this, Barère, the trumpeter in ordinary of the Convention, speaking in the name of the Committee of Public Safety, had justified the Navigation Act partly on the ground that 'Carthage would thereby be destroyed'—'let us decree a solemn Navigation Act,' he said, 'and the isle of shopkeepers will be ruined'—and partly on the ground that France would thereby multiply her industries, stimulate the consumption of domestic products, create her own ship-building yards, build up a flourishing mercantile marine, &c., &c. This, so to speak, dualistic character the Continental System was destined to retain but at the same time to lead to an irremediable self-contradiction.

Naturally it is true of the commercial blockades of the Revolution, as of those of earlier times, that they were not even approximately maintained; the result was that smuggling once more became one of the principal means of Anglo-French intercourse. Notwithstanding the law of 1796, the practice seems to have grown up of importing British and other prohibited goods on a large scale as captured goods. Disordered as every department of the public administration was, one can not doubt that the authorities merely winked at all this; and besides they were often obliged to mitigate the laws, as we have already seen, in order to ensure some observance of them. An example of this was given by the Navigation Act, which was introduced with such high-sounding words and a month later repealed for the most part by a number of supplementary regulations providing that certain raw materials and enemy goods might be imported in time of war by neutral vessels; shortly afterwards such vessels also received the right to carry on coasting trade.