New Commercial Routes (1810-12)

The most remarkable consequence of the new system was a new arrangement of the trade routes, which took place in two directions. In the first place, the sea route was again brought officially into favour by the licence system, as it had not been since the Berlin decree. This change evidently was mainly important for France herself, where smuggling had always encountered the greatest difficulties; and it put an end, for instance, to the prosperity which Strassburg had enjoyed as a staple for French imports, both legitimate and illegitimate. In the second place, and this was the most important, the whole of this trade in colonial goods and British manufactures shifted from Central Europe proper—the regions of the Rhine, Weser, Elbe and Oder—to Eastern Europe and the Danube basin. Beginning with the summer of 1811, there was a practical cessation in the supply of British goods to the Leipzig fairs, and even colonial goods declined there to an insignificant proportion of what they had been. Curiously enough, Frankfurt suffered less, comparatively speaking. This was evidently due to the fact that a genuine good-will to obey the system existed to a considerably greater extent in Saxony than in the other states of the Confederation of the Rhine; and this, in turn, is partly explained by the fact that the great and flourishing textile industries of Saxony profited by the measures against British competition, while Frankfurt in particular had nothing similar to gain by those measures. But at all events, this development shows an increasing efficacy of the blockade in great parts of Germany. The question naturally arises, however, why Leipzig did not take advantage of the licence system with regard to colonial goods; but the answer seems to be that imports through the Baltic ports could not penetrate to Leipzig after the Prussian certificates of payment had been disapproved. But this does not imply any general success for the new policy in Germany, so long as the Baltic coast could only be barred ineffectively. Consequently, the chief effect, in fact, still was to cut off Western Europe itself, while making Germany the purveyor of smuggled goods.