GROSSBRITANNIEN AM ENDE DER NAPOLEONISCHEN KRIEGE. VOM KRIEG ZUM FRIEDEN: PROBLEME VON WIRTSCHAFT, FINANZEN, GESELLSCHAFT UND INNERER ORDNUNG
BRITAIN AT THE END OF THE NAPOLEONIC WARS. FROM WAR TO PEACE: PROBLEMS OF ECONOMY, FINANCE, SOCIETY, INTERNAL ORDER

Summary/Abstract: Britain fought a war against Revolutionary and Napoleonic France for more than 20 years (1792-1815). To finance the war and to support its continental allies with subsidies to it had to reform its financial system and the means of taxation. Britain was the first country to experience industrial revolution and urbanization. For exports and imports the lines of communication needed to be kept open in order to provide the basic materials for industrial production and feeding the population of a developing industrial mass society and exportation. This could not always be achieved. After the war the transition from a war economy to a peace time economy was difficult and involved economic, financial and taxation problems leading to distress, disturbances and disappointment. Peace and plenty, reduction of taxation and support for agriculture, trade and industry which people were expecting could not be realized. In addition there were domestic problems like the cornlaws, the property tax, the status of Princess/ Queen Caroline, the problems of Ireland and Catholic emancipation, disturbances in the industrial regions and especially the Peterloo “Massacre” in 1819 and the still unsolved issue of the abolition of the slave trade. The British case shows clearly the problems of transformation from an economy of war to an economy of peacetime. It underlines the close connection between domestic and foreign policy. Therefore “peace as national interest” was a necessity for a developing industrial mass society and its rise to a dominant role as the “workshop of the world”.

• Details
• Contents