ABSTRACT
The cotton industry and especially machine spinning had struck rather strong roots in Continental soil during the Napoleonic wars, and so the foundations for further industrialization had been laid. The dislocation and eventual interruption of the Continent's sea-borne trade, owing to maritime war and British blockade, brought about undoubtedly a collapse of the Atlantic sector in the Continental economy, which had serious and lasting consequences. The chapter investigates mostly through the dislocations in international trade which were brought about by the twenty-year-long conflict between Britain and France and by the progressive involvement of all other European countries in this bitter struggle in which economic warfare played a prominent part. Protection through the self-blockade was, moreover, responsible for the taking off of a small woolen industry in Switzerland and in the Dutch district of Tilburg and for expansion of the Moravian wool manufactures. Elsewhere, there was little change.
