The Continental System: An Economic Interpretation
By Eli F. Heckscher
THE author of the present inquiry into the Continental System during the beginning of the last century is known as one of the most prominent political economists in Scandinavia and as a thorough investigator of the history of commerce. Among other things he has done very useful work by his suggestive researches concerning the economy of the World War.When the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace publishes the book, the obvious explanation is that the Continental blockade in many ways throws light on the economic blockade among the belligerent powers involved by the World War…. [From the Preface by Harald Westergaard]
Translator/Editor
Harald Westergaard, ed. C. S. Fearenside, trans.
First Pub. Date
1918
Publisher
Oxford: Clarendon Press
Pub. Date
1922
Comments
First published in Swedish.
Copyright
The text of this edition is in the public domain.
- Editors Preface, by Harald Westergaard
- Authors Preface
- Chronological Table
- Introduction
- Part I, Foreword
- Part I, Chapter I
- Part I, Chapter II
- Part I, Chapter III
- Part I, Chapter IV
- Part II, Chapter I
- Part II, Chapter II
- Part II, Chapter III
- Part II, Chapter IV
- Part II, Chapter V
- Part III, Chapter I
- Part III, Chapter II
- Part III, Chapter III
- Part III, Chapter IV
- Part III, Chapter V
- Part III, Chapter VI
- Part IV, Chapter I
- Part IV, Chapter II
- Part IV, Chapter III
- Part IV, Chapter IV
- Part IV, Conclusion
- Bibliographical Note
- Appendix I
- Appendix II
AUTHOR’S PREFACE
FOR the aim and character of this short study the reader is referred to the Introduction and the Bibliographical Note. A few words may be added, however, as to the conditions under which it was written.
The book represents a sort of synthesis of earlier studies of the mercantile system and its outgrowths, on the one side, and the result of extensive theoretical and practical work—private, academic, and government—in the field of present-day war economics, on the other. In its original form it was written very rapidly during the winter of 1917-18, under strong pressure of other work, and was presented to my history teacher, Professor Harald Hjärne, on the seventieth anniversary of his birth, at the beginning of May 1918. Probably the atmosphere of a rather strict blockade in a neutral country will be found to pervade it as a more or less natural consequence of the time of its production.
When the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, through its representative for Scandinavia, my esteemed colleague, Professor Harald Westergaard, proposed that I should treat the subject for its series, I overhauled my earlier text, changing its outward arrangement in several respects and making a number of additions, partly based on new materials. As before, however, I was restricted to such information as was to be found in my own country, and consequently I cannot hope to have escaped error altogether, especially as the field is very large and some of my sources not above suspicion. But what I hope is that the leading ideas of the book, that is, the interpretation of the Continental System, will prove substantially correct.
As the book appears in an English translation, it may be
well for me to point out that I have not had American readers principally in mind. Had that been the case, the brief outline of American policy with regard to the Continental System (part II, chapter IV) would have been either enlarged or omitted altogether, since it cannot contain, in its present form, much that is unknown to educated American readers.
The British Orders in Council of 1807 have been reproduced in an appendix, as they are far more inaccessible than the Napoleonic decrees, and are, moreover, very often misunder-stood and sometimes even misquoted.
The English text is, in the main, the work of my colleague Mr. C. S. Fearenside, M.A. (Oxford), Junior Lector in English at the University College of Commerce. There can be no question about the desirability of writing a book from the beginning in the language in which it is to appear, since the association of ideas with language, at least in political and social sciences, is far too close to allow a text to pass entirely unscathed through the ordeal of a translation. But in this case too much was already written in Swedish to leave more than one course open to me. Mr. Fearenside has found it the best plan to follow the Swedish original very closely, instead of attempting to recast the sentence structure on English lines. I am very grateful to him, not only for the work of translation, but also for numerous valuable suggestions regarding the outward arrangement of the text.
My wife has been my best helpmate throughout the work, and to the Carnegie Endowment I am deeply indebted for the reading of the proof.
University College of Commerce,
Stockholm,
July 4, 1919.