British and French Wars - British Economy Flashcards
Why the Continental System (…) failed
-1806-1814
-French manufacturies relied on imports from British colonies for many raw goods
-This meant that Napoleon’s efforts to impose a trade embargo of banning all British colonial ships from France, had limited success and French overseas trade suffered more than Britain’s
-Most nations secretly or openly broke the blockade of the Continental System (1806-1814) and trade with Britain due to the impacts on their own economies such as Sweden in 1808 and Russia from 1810 onwards
Trade
-By 1815 British trade value was 6x what it was in 1793
-The British navy protected merchant ships on the oceans and kept many French warships blockaded in ports
-Development of iron and steel production meant Britain was no longer reliant on imports
-The British dominated world maritime trade, with more than 21,000 ships by 1815 compared to the hundreds of ships the French had
Wages and the impact on the poor
-Wages stagnated between 1796 and 1814
-The poor were hit were rising food prices
-Speenhamland System used in linking the size of families to the price of bread in order to determine parish relief
Tax
-Parliament to impose an income tax for the first time in history in 1797 which raised £155 million from 1797-1815
-loans to meet war expenditure covered more than 70% of military costs but after, it was reduced to only 30% due to income tax
-21 goods and services newly taxed during these wars
-Taxes on luxury goods hit the rich hardest as they payed 60% of all direct and indirect taxes, but they were willing to pay as they feared French invasion
War-debt
-The previous war in The Seven Years’ War (1756-1763) cost Britain £160 million whereas the French Wars (1793-1815) cost Britain £1.6 billion
-Closer relations between the British government, the Bank of England, and the City of London merchants meant credit was readily available
-Over the course of the wars (1793-1815), almost £66 million were paid in subsidies to a number of countries
Farming
-Output per worker was 50% higher than in other European countries
-Farming revolution was spurred on by the demands of the war
-Parliamentary Enclosure Acts absorbed small farms into larger farms which were more efficient, more than 3,000 such Acts between 1760 and 1820
Industry
-Industrial Revolution had begun before the wars
-Boom in cotton manufacture, by 1818 there were around 340 cotton spinning mills in Britain
-Iron-making boomed with the demand for cannons and other weapons, with the ironworks in Merthyr Tydfil in South Wales increasing its production from 500 tons of iron a year pre-war to 10,000 tons a year in 1812
-The naval dockyards at Chatham, Portsmouth, and Devonport were kept busy building and repairing ships
-New canals built in the South, around London, and in the Midlands such as the Royal Military Canal in Kent (1805-1810)
Anti-industrialisation movement
-Traditional workers feared for their future and began to break machinery, called Luddism
-The government responded to protests in Nottinghamshire and Yorkshire in 1811 by sending troops in to keep the peace
-Combinations Acts of 1799 and 1800 prevented workers from forming trade unions
-In 1812, breaking of machines became a capital offence
East India Company
-In the early years after 1793, over 160,000 ‘India pattern’ muskets which had already been ordered by the EIC were purchased by the government for the army
-Food send to Britain and Saltpetre increasingly sent to Britain for the manufacture of gunpowder
-EIC’s ships were chartered to take troops to the West Indies
-EIC funded over 200,000 troops in India by 1815
-Customs and tea duties paid by the EIC from 1806 were never less than £3 million a year
Economic crisis
-Britain encountered an economic crisis 1810-1812 under which trade declined and many merchant houses were broken
-Bankruptcies in the country nearly doubled from 1,000 in 1809 to 2,000 in 1811
-War expenditure increased and so did taxes but government expenditure exceeded income by over £60 million between 1810-1812
