France and the American Civil War by Stve Sainlaude;

Author:Stve Sainlaude;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of North Carolina Press
Published: 2019-05-27T16:00:00+00:00

A COTTON CRISIS?

Accounts coincide to date the end of the French cotton crisis in the late winter of 1862–63. If we look at the press, some organs saw the situation improving in the first months of 1863, and even earlier in Britain.95 The same is true for the procureurs. Their reports show a gradual recovery in manufacturing, which was faster in some regions than others (in Mulhouse an improvement was observed in January 1863; in Rouen, Nancy, and Colmar the upturn was confirmed in October, while in Caen and Belfort the crisis came to an end in early 1864).96 So how is it that France overcame the difficulties caused by cotton diplomacy?

One oft-cited explanation is the existence of a cotton surplus in France and England right before the Civil War. The South could not have chosen a worse moment to secede. While the Confederates were gradually establishing their embargo in 1861, France and Britain suffered relatively little from the cotton crisis. Bumper crops before the war had saturated the markets, and both countries had taken advantage of the drop in cotton prices to build up their stocks.97 By September and October 1861, petitions from the textile industry were urging Thouvenel to prepare for a shortage of cotton for the French textile industry.98 However, while the foreign minister had been worried in September, in late October he reviewed his position and judged that the cotton stocks were not exhausted; on December 1, 1861, France still had 143,345 bales, which is probably an underestimate.99 Indeed, while the French requirements were slightly higher than 400,000 bales, in 1860, 594,000 bales of cotton were imported to Le Havre and, despite a collapse from the summer of 1861, 516,000 bales still reached the Norman port in the first year of the Civil War.100 So France could easily draw on its stocks to offset the cotton shortage. The imperial government nonetheless became alarmed, which was proof of its difficulty establishing an accurate estimate of remaining cotton stocks. In November 1861, Rouher, the minister of agriculture and commerce, assessed them at six months’ worth, in January 1862, the wife of Justice Minister Jules Baroche heard it said that France had no more than six weeks’ worth, and in April 1862 Thouvenel evaluated them at two months’ worth.101

Another way out of the crisis was to turn to suppliers outside Dixie, which allowed an increase in cotton imports in 1863 and the following years. From the 271,570 bales imported into France in 1862, the figure slowly rose to 381,539 in 1863—almost as many as the already high 1860 level (400,000 bales)—and 460,880 in 1864.102 Looking at the trade tables, we can confirm this by expenditure. In the second half of 1862, France purchased 26,296,380 francs worth of cotton, and 58,206,056 francs worth in the first half of 1863. On a full-year basis this gives 126,158,877 francs in 1862, 177,170,622 francs in 1863, and 315,606,000 francs in 1864.103 In other words, France bought three times more cotton between July 1 and December 31, 1863, than between January 1 and June 30, 1863.

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