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Trade with the Enemy in the Scandinavian and Baltic Ports during the Napoleonic War: for and against

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 February 2009

A. N. Ryan
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Extract

The French victories over Prussia and Russia in 1806–07 enabled Napoleon to impose upon the continent a peace diametrically opposed to the interests of Britain. An essential condition of it, as was made clear in the Berlin Decree and the Franco-Russian treaty of Tilsit, was that Britain should be banished from Europe. Within a few months of the Tilsit agreement in July 1807 all the northern powers, except Sweden which kept out of the French alliance until 1810, were formally at war with Britain and were pledged to break their commercial connexions with her. It appeared that Napoleon, with the aid of Russia, Prussia and Denmark–Norway, had finally shut the Baltic to British trade and had thus made the commercial exclusion of Britain from the continent a reality. As things turned out, trade between Britain and the north of Europe, though harassed by enemy commerce raiders and impeded by French agents, was not destroyed. The Scandinavian and Baltic ports, the last in Europe to come under French influence, were never firmly closed even when Napoleon''s continental system was most effectively enforced in 1811

Type
Research Article
Information
Transactions of the Royal Historical Society , Volume 12 , December 1962 , pp. 123 - 140
Copyright
Copyright © Royal Historical Society 1962

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References

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page 132 note 5 ibid., pp. 17, 30, 34.

page 132 note 6 Hull Advertiser, 15 Feb. 1812; The Rockingham, 6 Apr. 1811, 15 Feb.1812.

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page 137 note 4 P.R.O., B.T. 1/76, p. 85, Memorial of Manufacturers of Newcastleupon–Tyne.

page 138 note 1 Parl. Deb., 1st Series, 1812, vol. xxi, cols. 1111 ff.; Lindsay, W. S., History of Merchant Shipping and Ancient Commerce (London, 1874–1976), ii,pp. 313 ff.Google Scholar

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page 140 note 1 P.R.O., P.C. 2/178, pp. 86, 507; 2/179, P. 51; 2/l80, P. 7; 2/182, P. 577; 2/185, P. 382.

page 140 note 2 Petitions of the shipowners of North Shields, Sunderland, London, South Shields and Scarborough in favour of Orders in Council, H.C.J., lxvii, pp. 377–78, 386, 395.

page 140 note 3 George Rose (1744–1818), Vice-President of the Board of Trade and Treasurer of the Navy.

page 140 note 4 The Rockingham and Hull Weekly Advertiser, 15 Feb. 1812.