The Domestic Impact of the
Napoleonic Wars
Three Main Areas
• Economic effects of wars
• Impact on society
• Political consequences
The Economics of War
(Elite) contemporaries often positive:
• Ricardo: ‘Notwithstanding the immense expenditure of
the government during the last twenty years there can
be little doubt that the increased production on the
part of the people has more than compensated for it.’
• Forbes (banker): ‘that wonderful extension of
commerce and manufactures which, contrary to all
former example, continued to swell as the war was
protracted’
• Earl of Rosse: ‘never did this country, carry on a war in
which it suffered so few privations’
Interpretations
(Explorations in Economic History, 1987)
attributes little to wartime dislocation or
stimulus.
• Emphasised the differences between Britain and
the later industrialising economies of Europe
arguing that British industrialisation occurred
over a long period
• Revolutionary change only occurred in a very few
manufacturing industries
• Thus war had little impact as British industrial
growth occurred at such a slow pace
Comparison of figures on Industrial
Growth
Industrial Output
Crafts
Deane &
Cole
1700-60
0.7
1.0
1760-80
1.5
0.5
1780-1801 2.1
3.4
1801-31
3.0
4.4
1831-60
3.3
3.0
Percentage growth per year
Crafts
0.7
0.7
1.3
2.0
2.5
GDP
Deane
and Cole
0.7
0.6
2.1
3.1
2.2
Interpretations
(Journal of Economic History, 1984) in contrast
attributes slow growth during industrial revolution to wars and their
aftermath, on capital and labour markets especially.
• Williamson asserted that modern economic growth follows a
general pattern
• It was only the stress of the wars that deflected Britain from this
pattern. Wartime government borrowing crowded out productive
investment. If it were not for the wars, industrial growth would
have been more rapid following a normal pattern of early
industrialisation.
• But see
(Journal of Economic History, 1990) who estimates
there was not enough crowding out of investment to bear the
weight Williamson puts on it and
who find no
evidence of crowding out (Journal of Economic History, 1987)
Interpretations
(Fernand Braudel Centre Review, 1989)
eschews quantitative approach: data constraints and
the need to consider short and long term
consequences make examination of national accounts
unsuitable.
• Growth rates of domestic output declined between
1793 and 1819
• Consumption standards were 10-20% below the levels
they may have attained if the economy continued to
grow at pre-war rate.
• But could one assume the growth rate of the 1780s
would have continued indefinitely?
Assessment
Need to consider:
• Changes in government revenue raising and
expenditure on different industries.
• Changes in agriculture
• Pressure for innovation: technological,
organisational and commercial.
Revenue
• 60% of extra funds raised by government to pursue war between 1793 and
1815 came from
not borrowing
• Tax strategy of government imposed major share of burden on
consumption of population and encouraged private capital formation to
continue.
• Private consumption fell sharply from 83% of national expenditure in
1788-92 to 72% in 1793-1812 and as low as 64% in last years of war.
• Household incomes were depressed by heavy taxes and by inflation.
Redistributed income from wage earners to farmers, employers and
property owners thus private capital investment remained stable.
• Encouraged the stockmarket. Number of dealers rose during the war from
432 in 1792 to 726 in 1812 and the Stock Exchange was formed in 1802.
The number of banks also increased. In London from 63-60 and in the
country from 280-660.
Estimates of total revenue from
taxation
70
60
50
£m
40
30
20
10
0
1712
1722
1732
1742
1752
1762
1772
1782
1792
1802
1812
Structure of Central Government Tax
Revenue
Years
Direct
Customs
Excise
1771-5
1791-5
1811-5
1831-5
1851-5
22.4
25.8
39.8
25.2
31.4
26.8
22.7
20.4
38.3
40.1
50.7
51.5
39.8
36.4
28.5
Total
indirect
77.6
74.2
60.2
74.8
68.6
Nominal Wages, Prices and Real Wages
(1778-82 = 100)
Period
Average fulltime earnings
Cost of Living
Index
100
Full
employment
real earnings
100
Real earnings
adjusted for
unemployment
100
1778-82
100
1783-87
100.2
99.1
101
101
1788-92
107.4
101.4
106
105
1793-7
129.6
119.2
109
105
1798-1802
154.6
153.8
103
99
1803-07
173.5
151.1
115
109
1808-12
188.7
181.8
104
98
1813-17
185.9
178.6
105
97
1818-22
166.5
150.9
111
102
1823-7
156.6
139.2
113
104
Agriculture & Industry
• Wars had a commercialising effect on agriculture preventing the
onset of diminishing returns.
• Added to the incomes of landowners and farmers. The
consolidation of land into larger farms was encouraged, as was the
assertion of private rights to commons and wastes.
• ‘the upswing in agricultural prices associated with the war years
pulled those who owned and managed British agriculture into a
cage from whence escape from the imperatives to invest, innovate
and exploit farm labour became more difficult.’ (O’Brien)
• Increases in customs and excise duties harmed only a handful of
industries including building and construction, brewing and salt.
• Iron, metal products, woollens, linens, candles, soap and leather
experienced no significant additions to taxation on their inputs or
outputs nor did they suffer from the rising costs of imported raw
materials.
Innovation
• Rate and scale of bankruptcies in trading and industrial sectors peaked
after the war. Particularly bad years were 1815-16 and 1819.
• But losses were matched by the rise of new generations of entrepreneurs.
Foreign commission agents settled in the provincial centres of industry
and this was a direct consequence of the war. Wholesale warehouses
which served only the export market were new developments.
• In the aftermath of war, monetary policy designed to protect bondholders
restrained the growth of trade and industry. It depressed the employment
and incomes of the urban poor. But the low incomes and regressive
taxation also raised the rate of saving and investment which was to the
long term benefit of economic growth and income levels.
• Short term costs of the wars need to be balanced against the capture of
carrying trade, unification with Ireland, opening up of Latin America and
seizure of enemy colonies.
• In longer term wars inflicted much greater costs on the economies of rival
European powers which gave Britain an advantage.
Industrial Disputes
• Trade unions flourished even during
combination laws.
• 1802 London shipwrights conducted a
prolonged dispute & used intimidation to
prevent strike breakers
• ‘collective bargaining by riot’ also occurred in
the woollen industry of the South West
Luddism
• Occurred on wide scale from 1811.
• Began in stocking frame industry with
proclamations bearing the signature Ned
Ludd, King Ludd or General Ludd
• Threatened to wreck machinery &
occasionally threatened violence
• Trades affected: framework knitting; woollen
industry; & cotton industry
• In 1779 failure of a Bill to regulate frameknitting industry had resulted in 300 frames
being smashed
The Leader of the Luddites, E
Walker (1812)
Nottingham
• Frames were scattered round villages & easy to
smash
• March 1811-Feb 1812 smashed about a thousand
machines at the cost of between £6,000 and
£10,000.
• 1811 Act was passed to secure the peace of
Nottingham.
• In March 1812, 7 Luddites were sentenced to
transportation for life;
• April 1812, Luddites attacked William
Cartwright's mill at Rawfolds near Huddersfield.
Event described by Charlotte Brönte in her novel
Shirley.
Interpretations
(Luddism in Nottinghamshire) primarily
industrial and futile attempt to halt the process of
industrialisation?
• Collective bargaining by riot?
(Making of the English Working
Class) sees it as quasi-political movement with
‘ulterior revolutionary objectives’.
(The Labouring Classes) argues it was
primarily industrial ‘a guerrilla campaign’
• Varied from region to region and industry to
industry
• Tapped into popular mood which was antigovernment and anti-employer.
End of Luddism
• Government feared revolutionary potential of
Luddites.
• Direct action continued to c. 1817
• 1816 was revival of violence following bad
harvest & downturn in trade.
• Troops used to end riots, 6 men were
executed & 3 transported.
• After the trials, Luddism subsided e but
concurrently, 'Swing' riots erupted in the
countryside
William Cobbett, Political
Register, 11 September
1819
Society ought not to exist, if not for
the benefit of the whole. It is
and must be against the law of
nature, if it exists for the benefit
of the few and for the misery of
the many. I say, then, distinctly,
that a society, in which the
common labourer . . . cannot
secure a sufficiency of food and
raiment, is a society which ought
not to exist; a society contrary to
the law of nature; a society
whose compact is dissolved.
[Political Register, 11 September
1819]
Society after the War
• Heyday of aristocratic excess and swagger
• Post-war economic boom for the landed
• Passed Corn Law of 1815 which further
secured landed incomes
• Epitomised by Beau Brummell, Harriette
Wilson and Lord Byron
London Dandies or Monstrosities of 1816 (George
Cruikshank)
The Arrest
A caution to the DANDIES taken
from a late real scene
The DANDY squinting through his
glass
Surveys the Ladies as they pass
But still the Fribble lacks the wit
To guard against the Bailiffs writ
(J Le Petit, 1820)
Harriette Wilson
Blackmailer and lover of Lord
Craven, Marquess of Lorne,
Marquess of Hertford, Lord
Brougham, Prince Regent and
Marquess of Worcester
Lord Byron, (Complete
Poetical Works)
'Tis said Indifference marks the
present time,
Then hear the reason—though
'tis told in rhyme—
A King who can't—a Prince of
Wales who don't—
Patriots who shan't, and
Ministers who won't—
What matters who are in or out
of place
The Mad—the Bad—the
Useless—or the Base?
Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, J M W Turner, 1823.
Lord Byron, The Age of
Bronze
Safe in their barns, these Sabine
tillers sent
Their brethren out to battle – why?
For rent!
Year after year they voted cent. Per
cent.,
Blood, sweat and tear-wring
millions – why? For rent!
They roar’d, they dined, they
drank, they swore they meant
To die for England – why then live?
– for rent!
The peace has made one general
malcontent
Middle-class reactions
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Response came particularly from the nonconformist sects and Evangelical
Anglicans.
The Society for the Promotion of Permanent and Universal Peace (known as the
Peace Society) was formed in 1816 as a direct response to the Napoleonic wars.
Alongside the urge to reform society and the religious motives against war were
the secular influences of liberalism and humanitarianism which stemmed from the
Enlightenment.
Clapham Sect led by Henry Thornton, William Wilberforce, Charles Grant, James
Stephen and Zachary Macaulay. Most of the inner core members lived at Clapham
in South London where their close friend John Venn was the rector.
Group published tracts, formed associations, and had an official periodical, the
Christian Observer.
Greatest public cause to which they devoted themselves was anti-slavery but were
also crusaders for the renewal of Christianity, the sanctity of the family and female
domesticity.
Examples of these sentiments may be found in Mansfield Park by Jane Austen
which was published in 1811.
The same year, the Unitarian, Anna Laetitia Barbauld composed her darkly satirical
poem Eighteen Hundred and Eleven
Anna Laetitia Barbauld, Eighteen
Hundred and Eleven
But fairest flowers expand but to decay;
The worm is in thy core, thy glories pass away;
Arts, arms and wealth destroy the fruits they
bring;
Commerce, like beauty, knows no second spring
Political Consequences
• Reduction in prices and wages and the numbers of discharged
soldiers and sailors added to unemployment.
• December 1816: a political meeting at Spa Field ended in an armed
attack on the Tower and the suspension of habeas corpus.
• Government passed the so called "Gag Acts" in February and March
1817.
• March 1817: the blanketeers from Manchester (blanket carrying
weavers) assembled at St Peter’s Fields Manchester to march to
London to present a petition to the Prince Regent. The magistrates
read the Riot Act and sent in the army.
• Later that year there was a riot of textile workers at Pentich in
Derbyshire which ended in execution of Jeremiah Brandreth and
two others and transportation of thirty more. Brandreth was
encouraged by William Oliver the Home Office’s notorious agent
provocateur.
Print showing Henry ‘Orator’
Hunt speaking at Spa Fields
Peterloo
• Manchester Patriotic Union Society invited
Henry ‘Orator’ Hunt and Richard Carlile to
speak at public meeting on 16th August. Also
included John Knight, Joseph Johnson & Mary
Fildes, leader of the Manchester Female
Reform Group
• Magistrates were concerned at crowd ordered
arrests of leaders. Yeomanry brought in to aid
police & arrested speakers & newspaper
reporters
• In process, 11 people were killed & 400
wounded.
Hustings
Magistrates
Aftermath
• Richard Carlile managed to avoid being
arrested & took first mail coach to London.
• Placards began appearing in London with the
words: 'Horrid Massacres at Manchester'.
• Full report of the meeting appeared
newspapers including the Times which used
eye-witness accounts by moderate radicals
including Archibald Prentice.
"Down with 'em! Chop em down my brave boys: give them no quarter they want to
take our Beef & Pudding from us! ---- & remember the more you kill the less poor rates
you'll have to pay so go at it Lads show your courage & your Loyalty"
‘Dreadful Scene at Manchester’
Role of Women
• Mobilised on huge scale: voted at meetings,
formed associations with female officers, held
their own meetings and presented addresses.
• Women were claiming the right to public
space and inclusion within the political nation.
• Loyalist & government commentators rejected
claim that women gave moral tone to protests
instead presenting them as lax in manners &
morals.
Colour engraving by
George Cruikshank,
1819
… but see also this caricature of female reformers by Cruikshank
Consequences of Peterloo
• Peterloo hardened political positions.
• Government passed the Six Acts
• Received enormous publicity and blunders
were carried out in full view of the radical,
active, provincial press.
• Epstein has noted use of the ‘cap of liberty’;
carrying branches of laurel & playing music
such as Rule Britannia and God Save the King
illustrate the change from Paineite
republicanism to popular constitutionalism.