Post-Napoleonic depression

The post-Napoleonic depression was an economic depression in Europe and the United States after the end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815.

In England and Wales, an agricultural depression led to the passage of the Corn Laws (which were to polarize British politics for the next three decades), and placed great strain on the system of poor relief inherited from Elizabethan times.[1] In Ireland, wheat and other grain prices fell by half, and alongside continued population growth, landlords converted cropland into rangeland by securing the passage of tenant farmer eviction legislation in 1816, which led, because of the Irish workforce's historic concentration in agriculture, to a greater subdivision of remaining land plots under tillage and increasingly less efficient and less profitable subsistence farms.[2][3]

Also, after the end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815, a brief boom in textile manufacture in England was followed by periods of chronic industrial economic depression, particularly among textile weavers and spinners (the textile trade was concentrated in Lancashire).[4] Weavers who could have expected to earn 15 shillings for a six-day week in 1803, saw their wages cut to 5 shillings or even 4s 6d by 1818.[5] The industrialists, who were cutting wages without offering relief, blamed market forces generated by the aftershocks of the Napoleonic Wars.[5]

At the same time, the Corn Laws (the first of which was passed in 1815) exacerbated the situation. They imposed a tariff on foreign grain in an effort to protect English grain producers (agricultural landowners). The cost of food for working people rose as people were forced to buy the more expensive and lower quality British grain, and periods of famine and chronic unemployment ensued, increasing the desire for political reform both in Lancashire and in the country at large.[6][7]

In Scotland, the depression ended in 1822.[8]

Samuel Jackson of Pennsylvania theorised that the Panic of 1819 and resulting depression in the United States were caused by the post-Napoleonic depression, holding that the end of the Napoleonic wars had led to the collapse of export markets and resulting underconsumption.[9]

References
  1. Lord Ernle, English Farming Past and Present. Fifth Edition. (London: Longmans, Green & Co., Ltd. 1936), Chapter XV: Agricultural Depression and the Poor Law 1813-37
  2. Blessing, Patrick J. (1980). "Irish". In Thernstrom, Stephan; Orlov, Ann; Handlin, Oscar (eds.). Harvard Encyclopedia of American Ethnic Groups. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. p. 529. ISBN 978-0674375123. OCLC 1038430174.
  3. Jones, Maldwyn A. (1980). "Scotch-Irish". In Thernstrom, Stephan; Orlov, Ann; Handlin, Oscar (eds.). Harvard Encyclopedia of American Ethnic Groups. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. p. 904. ISBN 978-0674375123. OCLC 1038430174.
  4. Frangopulo, N. J. (1977), Tradition in Action: The Historical Evolution of the Greater Manchester County, EP Publishing, p. 30, ISBN 978-0-7158-1203-7
  5. Hernon, Ian (2006), Riot!: Civil Insurrection from Peterloo to the Present Day, Pluto Press, p. 22, ISBN 978-0-7453-2538-5
  6. Farrer, William; Brownbill, John (2003–2006) [1911]. "The city and parish of Manchester: Introduction". The Victoria history of the county of Lancaster. – Lancashire. Vol.4. University of London & History of Parliament Trust. Retrieved 27 March 2008.
  7. Glen, Robert (1984), Urban workers in the early Industrial Revolution, Croom Helm, pp. 194–252, ISBN 0-7099-1103-3
  8. Richard Saville (1996). Bank of Scotland: a history, 1695-1995. Edinburgh University Press. p. 484. ISBN 978-0-7486-0757-0. Retrieved 9 March 2011.
  9. Murray N. Rothbard, The Panic Of 1819: Reactions and Policies, p.213

Further reading
  • Browning, Andrew H. The Panic of 1819: The First Great Depression (2019) Comprehensive scholarly history of the era in the United States; ch 1
  • Roger J. P. Kain; Hugh C. Prince (20 April 2006). The Tithe Surveys of England and Wales. Cambridge University Press. pp. 28–30. ISBN 978-0-521-02431-0. Retrieved 9 March 2011.
  • Fussell, G.E. and Compton, M. 'Agricultural adjustments after the Napoleonic Wars', Economic History, III, no. 14. London, 1939 doi:10.1215/00182702-1-2-306
  • Hollander, Samuel. "Malthus and the post-Napoleonic depression." History of Political Economy 1.2 (1969): 306-335. Online
  • Kynaston, David (2017). Till Time's Last Sand: A History of the Bank of England, 1694–2013. New York: Bloomsbury. pp. 107–118. ISBN 978-1408868560.
  • O'Brien, Patrick Karl. "The impact of the revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, 1793-1815, on the long-run growth of the British economy." Review (Fernand Braudel Center) 12.3 (1989): 335-395. Online


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