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MERCHANTS AND MARITIME COMMERCE IN NAPOLEONIC NORMANDY Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/fh/article/15/1/26/603683 by guest on 28 September 2021 GAVIN DALY* Despite the richness of Napoleonic historiography, the impact of the Continental Blockade upon France's maritime commerce and the experiences of the French Atlantic merchants during the Consulate and Empire remain underdeveloped fields of historical enquiry.1 With the noted exception of Bordeaux, there is a shortage of regional port studies under Napoleon. This article aims to further our understanding of Napoleonic social, economic and regional history by investigating the impact of the Napoleonic wars and the Continental Blockade upon the maritime commerce of the ports of Rouen and Le Havre in the Norman department of the Seine-Inferieure. Whilst Pierre Dardel has traced the evolution of these major French ports throughout the golden commercial age of the eighteenth century, his study ends with the devastation wrought to ocean commerce in 1792-3-2 From this point in time until the end of the First Empire, the exact fate of maritime commerce in the Seine-Inferieure remains obscure. Furthermore, this article illuminates the fate of the Rouen merchants, members of a social class traditionally marginalized in national accounts of the Napoleonic notables but important in understanding the socio-economic impact of the Revolution and the social foundations of Bonapartism. Commonly held views on the national maritime experience under Napoleon, incorporating the influential thesis of Francois Crouzet, establish a broad context for understanding Rouen and Le Havre, whilst Paul Butel's findings on * Gavin Daly is a lecturer in Modem European History in the School of Social Inquiry, Murdoch University, Australia. His book, Inside Napoleonic France, state and society in Rouen, 1800-1815, will be published by Ashgate later in 2001 1 For Bordeaux, see P Butel, 'Crise et mutation de l'activite economique a Bordeaux sous le Consulat et l'Empire', Rev HlstAf, 17 (1970), 540-58, idem, 'Guerre ct commerce: l'activite du port de Bordeaux sous le regime des licences, 1808-1815', Rev Hist M, 19 (1972), 128-49, idem, 'Revolution and the urban economy maritime cities and continental cities', Reshaping France: town, country and region during tbe French Revolution, ed. A Forrest and P Jones (Manchester, 1991), pp 37-51, and F Crouzet, 'La mine du grand commerce', Bordeaux au 18" siede, ed. F Pariset (Bordeaux, 1968), pp 486-510 2 P Dardel, Navires et tnarcbandises dans les ports de Rouen et du Havre au xviif siede (1963), idem, Commerce, Industrie et navigation a Rouen et au Havre au xviif siede (Rouen, 1966). O Oxford University Press 2001 French History, Vol 15 No. 1, pp 26-50 GAVIN DALY 27 Bordeaux provide an important comparative dimension.3 The miserable state of the French ports throughout the Revolutionary-Napoleonic era is widely accepted. The Revolutionary wars with Britain and the loss of Santo Domingo devastated France's Atlantic commerce. The French Atlantic ports that had traditionally prospered through colonial trade were shaken by almost twenty- five years of constant warfare against an enemy whose maritime hegemony, especially following Trafalgar, rendered the sea lanes virtually unnavigable to French merchants. The British blockade of French ports was made complete Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/fh/article/15/1/26/603683 by guest on 28 September 2021 under Napoleon. French shipping was almost completely paralysed during the years 1800-14, aside from the brief respite offered by the Peace of Amiens, and the late imperial traffic in licences. The Continental Blockade proved ineffective in crippling Britain's economic might and provoked an intensifica- tion of the Royal Navy's blockade of French controlled ports. The French ports were forced into a painful slumber, with most merchants under the misapprehension that they would reawaken to find the old trading world had returned. This old trading world, however, was lost for ever. Increasingly, a distinction has been made between the economic fate of continental and maritime cities.4 Whilst inland entrepots such as Strasbourg flourished, the maritime ports stagnated. Crouzet has perceived this development in terms of broad economic structural change, not only within France, but within the emerging capitalist modern world economy.5 The collapse of traditional colonial-orientated sea ports in France was representative of much wider economic change and a shift in the world balance of power. It represented the demise of the old world Atlantic economies dependent upon luxury colonial products and the emergence of modern trade servicing the development of the Industrial Revolution. The era of the Revolution and Empire was a period of transition from the age of sugar, coffee and tobacco, to one of cotton, coal and iron.6 The merchandise of the world economy increasingly gravitated towards London and New York, and English and American businessmen became the power- brokers of Caribbean trade.7 As the maritime commerce and ancillary maritime industries of ports such as Bordeaux and Nantes declined in importance, a process of de-industrialization occurred in the south-west that was part of a 3 F Crouzet, 'Wars, blockade and economic change In Europe, 1792-1815',/ Econ Hist, 24 (1964), 567-88, and Veconomie btitannique et le Blocus continental, 2nd edn (1987) For an Introduction to the experience of Napoleonic maritime commerce G. Lefebvre, Napoleon (1963), a. 107-47, 205-63, L Bergeron, France under Napoleon (Princeton, NJ, 1981), pp 167-70, G. Ellis, Tbe Napoleonic Empire (Atlantic Highlands, NJ., 1991), pp. 96-101, M Lyons, Napoleon Bonaparte and tbe legacy of tbe French Revolution (Bastngstoke, 1994), pp. 214-20, 265-70, and diverse writers In the special edition of Revue iconomique, 40, no. 6 (1989). 4 This is one of the central themes of G FJlis, Napoleon's Continental Blockade- tbe case of Alsace (Oxford, 1981) See also Butel, 'Revolution and the urban economy1 ' See especially Crouzet, "Wars, Blockade and Economic Change' * Crouzet, 'Crise et mutation', p 510. 7 Butel, 'Revolution and the urban economy", pp 41-4. 28 MERCHANTS AND MARITIME COMMERCE IN NORMANDY geoeconomic shift within France from south to north, from littoral society to the industrial heartland of continental Europe.8 Bordeaux, however, remains the only Atlantic port under Napoleon to be studied in depth. Paul Butel's work has established a yardstick for future port studies. Butel, through indicating important chronological distinctions in the experience of Bordeaux's commercial shipping between 1800 and 1814, has challenged the traditionally perceived monolithic nature of the British blockade of French ports. The port of Bordeaux was not in a state of complete paralysis Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/fh/article/15/1/26/603683 by guest on 28 September 2021 throughout the entire Napoleonic era. Aside from the commercial renaissance during the Peace of Amiens, bordelais merchants enjoyed a commercial recovery via neutral, especially American, shipping in the period 1803-7. It was only from 1807, with the beginning of the Continental Blockade and British attacks on neutral shipping, that Bordeaux's merchants became economically stricken. Yet the commercial misery from 1807 onwards was partly alleviated in Bordeaux through trade in licences, especially American permits. One of the central themes of this article is the degree to which the maritime experience of Rouen and Le Havre differed from that of Bordeaux. In contrast to Bordeaux, the ports of the Seine-Inferieure remained in a severely depressed state throughout almost all the Napoleonic era; the only exceptions being the spectacular recovery enjoyed during the Peace of Amiens and the survival of coastal and interior navigation - an important but neglected aspect of the history of commercial shipping. Significantly, the recovery enjoyed by Bordeaux between 1803 and 1807 should not be regarded as typical for French ports. In contrast to Butel's findings for Bordeaux, Rouen and Le Havre did not receive a comparable flow of neutral and American shipping prior to the application of the Continental Blockade. This was due to the stricter blockade measures adopted by the British navy towards Channel ports and neutral ships in the vicinity. Given that Rouen and Le Havre did not enjoy neutral shipping prior to 1807, the Continental Blockade and the escalation of the economic war between Britain and France had only a negligible impact on shipping - maritime commerce was already in a state of devastation. Moreover, unlike Bordeaux, Rouen and Le Havre did not receive a large number of licences and American permits during the late Empire. The fate of Rouen's maritime merchant community also challenges a number of established historiographical views. French merchants remain a neglected group within the historiography of the Napoleonic notables. As businessmen represented only 10.8 per cent of the 1810 Napoleonic notables, as denned by electoral college membership, discussion of the merchant classes has traditionally been secondary to highlighting the importance of proprietaires and fonctionnaires within Napoleon's 'masses • Sec especially Crouzet, 'Les origincs du sous-developpement econontique du Sud-Ouest', Ann Midi, 71 (1959), 71-9 GAVIN DALY 29 of granite'.9 The national social composition of the Napoleonic notables, therefore, has tended to divert historical attention away from the socio- economic