Rhine River Commerce and the Continental System

Abstract

Eighty years ago FJi Heckscber pointed out that Napoleon’s Continental System shifted European economic activity away from the Atlantic coast towards the interior of the continent-¹ Thirty’ years later, Francois Crouzet confirmed the axis of the Continental economy had now [1814] moved from the Atlantic toward the Rhine’’/ The entire Rhine basin, as well as the commerce of the river itself, is widely presumed to have been profoundly affected by French economic policies in the years from 1806 through 1813. Recently, Ute Planert mentioned a ‘’shift of prosperity to areas on the Rhine’ as a result of the Continental System, indicating that the inland shift to the Rhine has endured as one of the few accepted points in a literature often divided over the impact of Napoleonic economic policy.³ But the consensus ends there.