Chapter II.: Effects on France, Luxury Industries

THE development of the industrial life of France under the influence of the Continental System, like the development of all the industrial countries under that system, took place especially in the sphere of textile industries; and nowhere did the conflicting tendencies appear so marked as there. Nevertheless, a great deal of the development of the French textile industry was not only devoid of connexion with the blockade policy itself, but, on the contrary, an evidence of its restricted range.

This applied especially to everything which falls under the heading of luxury industries, including the most brilliant and historic textile industry of France, the manufacture of silk. We, who only recently felt the pressure of a rigorous blockade and shortage of supplies, can best appreciate the fact that in such a situation the production of luxuries would hardly expand and take more and more varied forms, and perhaps still more the fact that governments, however great their lack of intelligence in the sphere of economics, would be foolhardy indeed to go so far as to encourage, not to say enforce, such production. As this was the case during the first French empire, therefore, it is in the very nature of things that the cause can not be sought in the Continental System regarded as a measure of blockade against Great Britain. On the other hand, it is intimately connected with the general protectionist tendency that completely dominated Napoleon and forms the explanation of the peculiar nature of the Continental System as contrasted with the corresponding system of the present day. It was precisely the historic luxury industries of France that the inheritor of the administrative traditions of the Bourbons most unhesitatingly and enthusiastically supported; and it was mainly in the interest of the silk industry that, on the one side, a licensing system was carried out with its obligation to export French industrial products, and, on the other side, the commercial measures against the allies of France, which comprised a monopolization of Italian raw silk for the requirements of the French silk industry and every conceivable measure against the foreign rivals of that industry.

The vaunting luxury in both word and deed, which in Napoleon's view was a principal means of raising the prestige of the empire both internally and externally, also worked particularly well with the tendency to create sales for industries of the kind in which the French had excelled for centuries; and a great deal of the encouragement of industry therefore consisted, quite naturally, in orders of all kinds on behalf of the court and imperial palace. Probably the fact that such a policy diverted productive forces from turning out what was necessary for the support of the people as well as for the prosecution of the war, did not greatly occupy Napoleon's thoughts. To him, in fact, the function of economics presented itself more in the light of the popular notion of the necessity of 'providing employment' than as a need to bring about the greatest possible result from the efforts of limited powers. But in this respect a far more correct perception has forced its way into the minds of the governments of nearly all countries during the recent war—the German Vaterländischer Hilfsdienst (vulgo, Zivildienstpflicht), the British National Service, and various other names, form the best evidence of this—despite almost equally great economic ignorance in the beginning; and this shows how comparatively gentle, after all, was the pressure of the Continental System in comparison with that of the recent war. As the object of our investigation is to determine the actual effects of the blockade policy, therefore, there is no reason to pursue any further the industrial development on its luxury side.