Experiencing the Continental System in the Cities of the French Atlantic

Abstract

Silvia Marzagaîîi is right to insist that the classic ‘view of the French Revolution and Empire as a period of continuons, almost linear, decline for French maritime trade was in urgent need of revision.¹ From Jean Meyer and François Crouzet to jean-Pierre Poussou and Paul Butel, historians had subscrihed to the view of the eighteenth century as a ‘golden age’ that gave way to a period of catastrophic decline during the Revolution- Crouzet, for instance, talks of a ‘lasting weakening of the economy’, of ‘the ruin of overseas trade’ and of ‘economic bankruptcy’.² Here he is referring to a particular trade and the commercial interests of the ports that dominated it — the Atlantic commerce in sugar, indigo, slaves and wine that supported the economies of Nantes and Bordeaux, the two most prosperous Atlantic cities, but also smaller ports like La Rochelle and Lorient, Le Havre and Bayonne, which depended heavily on colonial trade, and in the case of Nantes in particular, on slaving.³ And of course there are economic statistics that support his verdict, not least the desperate dearth of cargoes by the end of the 1790s or the fact that even in 1815 trade levels were still below those of 1789, There are also the views of contemporaries, those expressed by chambers of commerce and merchant interests across the French Atlantic, which tended to sec the future in apocalyptic terms and joined forces to oppose any move that might jeopardize their traditional sources of profit.