āFrom the spring of 1808 Napoleon tried to reinvigorate trade in French ports by introducing a system of licences. To maintain a commercial war against Britain, shipping was subjected to strict regulation. There was a remarkable disparity in licences between old and annexed ports. Even though Livorno had been attached to the Empire in 1808, it did not receive any licences of the ancien systĆØme in 1809-1810. Bordeaux, though, got more than a third of the total and became the most privileged port in the Empire. The same was true for the different types of licences for European trade created after 1810. Bordeaux merchants could buy twice as many as Livorno traders, and four times as many as those of Hamburg. Trade with the US, which had been re-established in 1810, was almost entirely reserved for French ports: Bordeaux received 620 navigation permits, while Hamburg was granted only five and Livorno just one.
Even if they enjoyed a privileged existence, Bordeaux merchants were not disposed to submit to strict control or limitations, and therefore often abused the trade opportunities they obtained. False declarations concerning cargoes seem to have been quite common. For example, in 1813 the commercial house of Clamageran declared to customs agents a shipment of wine that was three times the size and seven times the value of the real cargo. They inflated the declaration because their licence obliged their exports to be as valuable as their imports. Apparently Clamageran risked little, as police and custom controls in Bordeaux were rather weak.
But licences were costly and bureaucratically demanding. Merchants complained about the insufficient number, the excessive time between their requests and the actual granting of the permit, and the inadequacy of the trade permitted compared to real market conditions.Ā It is not surprising that, wherever possible, traders tried to find other means to keep trade active. Corruption, smuggling and shifting the flow of merchandise toward regions where control was less efficient were their most important responses.
Merchants engaged in massive bribery of customs officers, consuls and any authorities charged with enforcing prohibitive legislation, especially outside of old France, where only a handful were delegated to enforce laws against trade. In the first half of 1807, for example, when French troops occupied Hamburg, the city's senate and chamber of commerce spent about 1.5 million francs to persuade the authorities to ignore trade on the Elbe.Ā The American consul in Hamburg reported that, according to his French colleague, means might be found to facilitate the entry of vessels that had stopped in England: "the secret of this, as of most of their measures [i.e., of French authorities in Hamburg], is that the austerity of the agents must be softened by pecuniary motives."
Corruption worked well for continental merchants, and during 1807 about 1500 small boats entered Hamburg from Tonning with colonial produce and English manufactures, both of which were prohibited. Tonning was at the time one of the major neutral staple centres in the north. Between 11 March and 6 June 1807, 281 ships left London for Tonning: in that year, thirty percent of all British re-exports were directed to Denmark. Americans also were active in Danish ports. Once the merchandise reached Denmark, its redistribution was entirely in the hands of Hamburg merchants, who were extremely successful in reorganising the flows. In 1807, the net profit of Robert Sloman, a Hamburg merchant of British origin who had settled in Tonning during the first blockade of the Elbe in 1803, amounted to the substantial sum of Ā£45,000.Ā
Smuggling constituted another means of circumventing trade restrictions. Smugglers were well organised and generally received widespread protection from the local populace. The permeability of the Rhine and the Spanish borders is well known, but there was another form of fraud practised both in Hamburg and Livorno. The walls of both towns were customs borders: between 1808 and 1810, Livorno was a sort of free port, where goods could be stored free of duty. It was therefore tempting for merchants to import merchandise fraudulently into the French Empire without paying the heavy duties levied on colonial produce. By the same token, Hamburg was about a fifteen minute walk from Altona, Denmark, which was swollen with colonial goods.Ā
In both Livorno and Hamburg, thousands of people crossed the customs line daily, transporting small amounts of goods. In total, the quantities of contraband were substantial. In August 1810, customs agents seized 9300 kilograms of colonial goods at the gate between Hamburg and Altona. Moreover, this quantity seems to have represented at most five percent of the quantity smuggled. Re-export was not a problem: an inquiry into the bribery of Bourienne, the French consul in Hamburg, revealed that from 1807 to 1810 he had signed passports granting the free circulation of about 100 million francs worth of imports annually. According to the French customs director in Hamburg, in 1810 about one inhabitant in six subsisted on the income from this fraud. At a time when port activity was heavily reduced, deceit permitted much of the population to survive. The main profits, however, went to the merchants who organised these exchanges. In both Livorno and Hamburg this sort of fraud ceased at the end of 1810 ā in the former because of the end of its free port status and in the German port because of extremely tight enforcement of French legislation. Smuggling was thereafter more discreet. Merchants let the goods flow into the North Sea or along the Tyrrhenian coast. But in general it was less risky to introduce them along continental borders. Spain, Naples and the Baltic states were relatively open, and some Bordeaux, Livorno and Hamburg merchants were able to carve out places on these diverted trade routes.
To facilitate commerce, merchant houses also exploited international networks to obtain important information and to organise alternative trade flows. Livorno merchants, for example, learned about the alteration in the port's duty-free status on 1 October 1810, only a week after the decision was made in Paris. Since the official proclamation of the new system did not occur until one month later, merchants had a few weeks to prepare and were able to forestall the worst consequences.Ā
Quite often, merchants sent one of their associates abroad. Many Hamburgers could be found in Altona, the Baltic ports or in GĆ“teborg, another major centre of smuggling. And it is quite striking that the destinations of passports demanded by Bordeaux merchants between 1806 and 1813 follow the new trade routes: the Baltic was particularly frequented in 1809-1810, when the Royal Navy escorted hundreds of American and British ships through the area. The US was the main destination of Bordeaux merchants before the Embargo of December 1807, and again from 1810 until the outbreak of the Anglo-American war in June 1812.Ā
The French government was unable to match the resources and ingenuity of merchants determined to flout embargoes, and there were too few customs agents to enforce the commercial laws; what agents could be found were badly paid and thus unreliable. In a report to his superior, Livorno's chief of police asked how he could possibly prevent a customs officer, who at a salary of forty francs a month earned just enough to survive, from refusing 200 or 300 francs to close his eyes for half an hour while smugglers transferred their merchandise? The Customs Director estimated that two-thirds of his men were bribed, adding that their numbers were inadequate anyway. In 1811, the Livorno police was reduced to twenty-two men, in order to afford their salary.Ā
Increasingly repressive measures, such as the Fontainebleau decree of October 1810 condemning armed smugglers to death, were hardly able to deter the real organizers of smuggling. If some smugglers were arrested, the bulk remained at liberty. And the merchants who stood behind all these activities were almost never arrested.Ā
There was also reluctance by juries to prosecute the rich and most influential merchants, who were often their relatives. This was particularly evident in Bordeaux and Livorno, where the city administration was largely entrusted to Tuscans. In Hamburg, by contrast, all important places were given to French functionaries, who proceeded energetically against local interests. But the proximity of the border, the importance of Hanseatic harbours in northern European commerce, and the extension of merchant networks permitted trade, even in Hamburg, to continue to flow.ā
- Silvia Marzagalli, āPort Cities in the French Wars: The Responses of Merchants in Bordeaux, Hamburg and Livorno to Napoleon's Continental Blockade, 1806-1813.ā The Northern Mariner/Le Marin du nord, VI, No. 4 (October 1996), 65-73.
