Continental System

Continental System, policy adopted by the French government during the Napoleonic Wars (1799-1815) to prevent Great Britain from trading with other European nations. The system was inaugurated with the Berlin Decree issued by Napoleon I in November 1806. The decree declared the British Isles to be in a state of blockade and forbade neutral countries or French allies to trade with it. Great Britain responded by issuing an Order in Council (January 1807) that prohibited the vessels of all neutral nations from trading with French ports or with ports of any nation allied with France. By a second Order in Council (November 1807) the British blockaded all the ports of France and her allies. Napoleon retaliated by issuing the Milan Decree (December 1807), which declared that any vessel, of whatever nation, that had been searched by a British ship, made a voyage to Great Britain, or paid duty to the British government was to be considered a British vessel and treated as such. Napoleon also issued a number of additional decrees in 1810 similarly intended to prevent Great Britain from engaging in commerce with the Continent.

The Continental System had important military and economic results. In 1807 Russia agreed to the system, closing Russian ports to British commerce. In September of that year a British fleet bombarded Copenhagen and captured the Danish fleet in an effort to prevent Denmark from joining the system. The French invasion of Portugal in November 1807 was provoked by the Portuguese refusal to adhere to the system. Napoleon's decrees succeeded in greatly reducing imports to Europe, resulting in a massive rise in the cost of many commodities and the establishment of an extensive smuggling trade to supply them. Attempts were made in various European countries to manufacture articles that had previously been imported; some of these attempts laid the basis for large industries that developed after the end of the Napoleonic period. The Continental System virtually ruined the shipping trade of the United States, which had been prosperous until that time. British insistence on enforcing its Orders in Council was one of the causes of the War of 1812 between Great Britain and the United States.

Russia withdrew from the Continental System in 1810, resulting in Napoleon's unsuccessful attack on Russia in 1812. With the fall of Napoleon in 1815, the system collapsed.