On November 21, 1806, Napoleon  Bonaparte issued the Berlin Decree which banned the French Empire from trading with Great Britain.

After over ten years of revolution, turmoil, confusion, and political pandemonium, France was ready for some sort of stability. The multiple governmental changes during the French Revolution made possible an atmosphere that was ideal for a military dictatorship. Napoleon was able to take advantage of this situation and eventually become the Emperor of France in May of 1804.

During Napoleon’s reign, he embarked on the most ambitious military expeditions of his time, which allowed him to control most of central Europe, including Spain, Poland, Switzerland, Italy, and modern day Germany. He was also allied with many other nations. One country he could not control, though, was Great Britain.

France and England had a centuries-old tradition of warfare, and France’s assistance to the colonies in the American Revolution only exacerbated this enmity.  In 1803, after a brief peace under the Treaty of Amiens, Britain, not satisfied with the conditions of the treaty, declared war on France again in an ultimate effort to contain the French Empire.

Napoleon was determined to subdue Britain, and set out to invade her. In order to do this, he would need to destroy the Royal Navy, the undisputed master of the High Seas. Initially, he tried to destroy the English Navy directly; however, after his loss at the Battle of Trafalgar, he turned to other methods to capacitate his British invasion.

The Berlin Decree initiated what Napoleon called the Continental System, a system of economic warfare rather than military. Under this system, the Berlin Decree was eventually strengthened by the Milan Decree, which forbade trade with Britain not only from within the French Empire, but from France’s allies and neutral countries.

WHAT THIS MEANS FOR US:

The Berlin Decree eventually failed as a means for Napoleon to invade Britain. Since they had control of the Atlantic Trade Route, Great Britain’s trade with France was not absolutely essential. It harmed France’s economy far more than it did Britain’s. Some have speculated that this decree led to the eventual fall of the Napoleonic Empire, as her allies needed British goods. Napoleon himself issued himself authority to bring in goods from British Colonies, a clear violation of his own decree.

More importantly for the United States, however, was that this caused England to enact its own form of economic warfare. The newly formed United States had been engaging in free trade with France since before the American and French Revolutions, and was considered neutral in the Napoleonic Wars.

As a response to the Berlin Decree, Great Britain issued its Orders in Council, which established a naval blockade preventing U.S. trade with France. Napoleon responded by issuing the Milan Decree, which stated, “Every vessel of whatever nation she may be…steering her course to England, English Colonies, or to places in possession of English troops, shall be considered good and lawful prize.” United States vessels were now in danger if they attempted to trade with Britain or France, their two largest importers.

While the Berlin Decree did fail in its attempt to cripple Britain’s economy, it did provide enough of a dent to force a reaction. These reactions eventually caused the Anglo-American War of 1812, and had Napoleon not forbade all countries to trade with the United Kingdom, King George III would have been economically able to keep his military presence in the United States much longer than 1814, perhaps even to re-conquer his lost colonies.