Abstract
During the French Revolutionary Wars, Denmark benefited from neutrality to develop its navigation across the globe. In Europe, the Danish shipowners developed their tramping activities, taking freight from port to port. The Mediterranean, where demand in freight was high, was part of the traditional circuit of Danish ships. Despite pressure from the British government, the authorities of Copenhagen maintained their neutrality during the conflict. Shipowners used various techniques to neutralize their business and transport goods between all European ports. For neutral merchants, wartime was a period of great prosperity because of the increased demand and the high prices and freight. This article focuses on the operations of the Danish merchant fleet in the Mediterranean, and highlights the great prosperity of the Danish mercantile marine during this period.
Introduction
The second half of the eighteenth century witnessed a succession of conflicts between France and Britain. According to Immanuel Wallerstein, Britain chose naval war ‘whose main objective was the conquest of markets and the liquidation of its competitors.’ 1 The War of Austrian Succession (1740–1748) showed the maritime superiority of Britain over its enemies, especially France. The following wars confirmed the power of the Royal Navy and the main European sea lanes remained under British control. Neutral countries benefited from the situation to enter into belligerents’ service and to develop their maritime activities. Thus, Danish trade grew significantly during these conflicts. The period between the Seven Years War (1756–1763) and the attack on Copenhagen by the British fleet (1807) is considered to have been the ‘Golden Age’ of Danish shipping. 2 During this half-century, merchants and shipowners in Copenhagen benefited from their neutrality and seized opportunities to develop the activities of their fleets.
During the first half of the eighteenth century, Scandinavian shipowners expanded their activities to Southern Europe. In order to do so, they had to protect their ships against the Barbary privateers. Several peace and trade treaties were signed with Algiers, Tunis, Tripoli, Morocco and the Ottoman sultan in Istanbul. The treaties with the Barbary States were considered by the Danes as protection agreements against racketeering. 3 Scandinavians committed to bringing an annual tribute of guns and naval stores in exchange for their safety on the Southern European seas. However, the treaties did not prevent conflicts. Denmark was at war with Algiers in 1769–1772, with Tripoli in 1795–1797 and had problems with Tunis in 1801–1802. All these conflicts were very expensive for Denmark and all led to a similar result: the navigation was very disturbed and the authorities had to agree to pay higher tolls. Rather than organizing costly military campaigns, contemporaries felt it was better to pay the tributes. Being at peace with the Barbary States, Denmark could thus exploit all opportunities to develop its trade and business with the Mediterranean during the major European conflicts, as the example of the French Revolutionary Wars shows.
Danish politics during the French Revolutionary Wars
From the 1740s, the Kingdom of Denmark-Norway benefited from its neutrality during Franco-British conflicts. While supplying France, whose maritime connections were heavily disturbed, Denmark had a friendly policy towards Britain, the only country that had the ability to cause severe damage to its business. In 1759, Danish Minister Johann Hartwig von Bernstorff outlined the arguments for the necessity of a friendly attitude towards London, despite the pressure of the Navy and British privateers on its activities. 4 He stressed that the length of its coastline made Denmark completely at the mercy of England and that a war against Britain would ruin Danish commerce. Moreover, friendship with England was a counterweight to the ties with France, and Denmark would gain nothing in entering a war whereas peace made it possible to load ships with colonial products from the Danish West Indies and navigate freely between America and Europe.
These arguments were still valid during the French Revolutionary Wars and Denmark therefore implemented the same policy. As early as 12 May 1792, at the beginning of the continental conflict, Austria and Prussia put pressure on the Danish authorities to participate in the war against Revolutionary France and to provide troops. 5 Denmark replied that it did not fear the contagion by revolution. However, the King of Denmark, as Duke of Holstein, had to guarantee the security of his territories in the Holy Roman German Empire, he therefore decided to pay subsidies to contribute to the military effort against France.
On 1 February 1793, after the French declaration of war on the British, the tensions between the major European powers directly affected Denmark as a maritime power. The London government organized a coalition whose goal was to put an end to the Republic and restore the Bourbons to the throne of France. Britain decided to hinder French commercial relations with all Europe. On 14 February 1793, orders were given to capture all French vessels and cargoes. On 4 March, the Admiralty ordered the seizure of all neutral ships loaded with grain, food and weapons bound to a French port and to take them for inspection in a British port. On 25 March, Britain signed a treaty with Catherine II in order to prevent trade between France and Russia and to close all Russian ports to French ships. On 8 May, a similar agreement was signed with Spain and in mid-July with the Kingdom of Naples and Prussia. On 8 June, new measures, known as the ‘instructions of 1793’, prohibited all transport of foodstuffs to France: That it shall be lawful to stop and detain all ships loaded wholly or in part with corn, flour, or meal, bound to any port in France; and to send them to such ports as shall be most convenient in order that such corn, meal, or flour, may be purchased on behalf of his Majesty’s government, and the ships be released after such purchase, and after a due allowance for freight, or that the masters of such ships on giving due security, to be approved of by the Court of Admiralty, be permitted to proceed to dispose of their cargoes of corn, meal, or flour, in the ports of any country in amity with his Majesty.
6
To reply to these injurious measures to neutral trade, the Danish Board of Trade (Kommercekollegiet) published on 22 February 1793 (with the approval of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs) an order asserting the rules of neutrality. If taken, Danish masters and Danish vessels could obtain compensation paid by the Danish government if they had all required documents, a list of which was provided in the text. Any transport of contraband of war was prohibited, but foodstuff should not be considered as such and be subject to any ban. This divergence between British and Danish authorities on what neutrals could or could not trade led to the seizure of numerous Danish ships by the former.
During the summer of 1793, Russia and Prussia, together with the British government, exerted pressure to induce Denmark to participate in their project to blockade France. Such blockade included foodstuffs. The allies justified their position by insisting that treaties on neutral commerce were not valid in the case of a country like France, whose behaviour was contrary to international law. Since France had no legitimate and internationally recognized government, Denmark should not maintain diplomatic relations, nor trade with this country. Moreover, the Scandinavian kingdom had to close its harbours to French privateers, which were using Norwegian ports as bases for their activities in the North Sea. To intensify pressure on the Danish authorities and to show their determination to obtain a favourable response, in the summer of 1793 the coalition sent a fleet of 23 ships of the line and seven frigates to anchor near the island of Møn, situated close to Copenhagen. 7
Prime Minister Andreas Peter von Bernstorff reacted in an original way to the British by addressing directly the Danish people and the international community. On 28 July 1793, he published in the newspaper Altonaischer Mercurius a letter explaining the Danish position. The first words were addressed to all Europeans: ‘The rights of the people are unchangeable; their principles do not depend on circumstances.’ 8 He rejected the idea of a new form of war against revolutionary France and refused to believe in the legitimacy of the military action of the coalition against a friendly neutral power. Although Bernstorff disapproved the ideas of the Revolution, he asserted that France was still a nation and Denmark’s duty was to oppose a blockade designed to starve innocent people. Thus, despite minimal concessions to the coalition, the Kingdom of Denmark refused to get involved in the blockade and maintained maritime relations with France.
The pressure of the coalition and the war led to an agreement between Denmark and Sweden. In 1792, Stockholm contacted Copenhagen to agree on a common policy on trade and navigation. If Bernstorff was in favour of a treaty, he rejected any defensive alliance with Russia that the Swedes would have liked to add to the project. In March 1794, after lengthy discussions, the two countries signed a neutrality convention limited to shipping and trade. 9 The harbours of Holstein and Western Pomerania were excluded from the convention because they belonged to the Holy Roman German Empire. To affirm their commitment to the coalition, Sweden and Denmark coordinated their navies to protect their mutual maritime trade, planning surveillance missions in the Kattegat, the Skagerrak and the North Sea. Convoys were organized separately. However, what to do when meeting British warships was not clearly defined. As in previous conflicts, the main goal was to protect merchant ships, while avoiding any encounter with naval ships of the belligerents that could lead to a clash.
In August 1794, the British changed their position and withdrew the June 1793 instructions, although the major powers continued to exert pressure on the Danish authorities to join the coalition against France. The successes of the revolutionary army and the signing of the treaty of Basel on 17 May 1795, 10 however, guaranteed the neutrality of the north of the German Empire and allowed Denmark to maintain its neutrality.
Thus, Danish traders and shipowners benefited from neutrality and the propitious opportunities of wartime to increase their business. As the foremost specialist on history of Danish neutrality, Ole Feldbæk, had shown in his research, the political and administrative elites also benefited from the situation. One of the most important Danish traders to participate in grain traffic to France was Pierre Peschier of Copenhagen. He was a Swiss Huguenot who specialized in the export of grain from the ports of the Baltic, Denmark and Hamburg. In the years 1793–1794, each captain loaded with grain and stopped in the North Sea by the British was systematically asked if he knew a Mr. Peschier from Copenhagen. This merchant had a lot of business relations with Ernst Schimmelmann, the Danish Minister of Finance, who regularly gambled on the advantages of the Danish neutrality during European conflicts. During the American War of Independence, for instance, Schimmelmann had organized an expedition to the Spanish colony of Caracas with a group of investors, whose names were kept secret: the trust included the Prime Minister Guldberg, two members of the State Council and the most important ministers and senior officials of the government. 11 It is likely that during the French Revolutionary Wars the same men invested money in neutral trade. However, according to Ole Feldbæk. it seems that at the end of the eighteenth century, Danish politicians separated more distinctly the government of the Kingdom from their private business. 12
Neutral merchants in action
Once the treaties with the Barbary States were signed and the safety of shipping assured, the Mediterranean became a privileged area for the expansion of Danish shipping. Denmark could offer products in demand: timber and, especially, salted cod from Norway, which were much sought after in the Catholic countries of Southern Europe. Demand and prices increased in wartime when normal suppliers, notably the French, were put out of play. For instance, in December 1793, 12 Danish ships entered Barcelona (Table 1). Half of them were loaded with wheat, charged in Hamburg or nearby, while four others entered with cod from Bergen or Christiansand.
Arrivals of Danish ships in Barcelona in December 1793.
Source: Rigsarkivet (Copenhague), Kommercekollegiet, Journalsager 1793.
In addition to this direct trade between Northern Europe and the Mediterranean, Danish shipowners specialized in tramping, taking freight from port to port. The Mediterranean, where demand for freight was high, was part of the traditional circuits of Danish ships. The few shipowner’s instructions found in the archives show the shipping patterns that were considered profitable: one of them required, for instance, the captains to load colonial products from Lisbon to Genoa, Marseille or Leghorn, then to take part in the Sicilian grain export and if that was not possible, the captain should take a cargo of Trapani, Ibiza or Setubal salt, oil and fruit from the Ligurian coast, wines and spirits from Cette [today’s Sète] and return home. 13 The main business area of the Danes was the western Mediterranean, north west of a line between Sicily and Gibraltar, an area in which nine-tenths of Danish Mediterranean traffic was concentrated. However, some vessels operated in other areas as well. Norwegian captain Thomas Fasting, for instance, sailed for five years among ports of the Levant in the Helena, of 29 lasts. 14 This following example, studied by Ole Ventegodt, is based on exceptional accounting documents of Flensburg shipowners. 15 In 1793, six merchants of the city put together their capital to dispatch the ship Die Einigkeit on European maritime routes. Until 1800, there is evidence of her four tramping voyages from Denmark to Western Europe (see Table 2).
The navigation of the ship Die Einigkeit of Flensburg, 1793–1800.
Source: Ole Ventegodt, Redere, Rejser og Regnskaber (Flensburg, 1989), 227–230.
During its navigation, the ship was seized twice by the British. The first time, its cargo of wheat bound to France was judged good prize and unloaded in London. The second time, the ship and its cargo were released.
Navigation in wartime was very risky, but the owners knew how to reduce their risks. During the conflicts, belligerent countries whose business was threatened offered the greatest number of opportunities to neutral shipping. That was the case of France during the Revolutionary Wars, when all cargoes bound to French ports were considered as contraband of war by the British. Scandinavian merchants and shipowners developed strategies to prevent their vessels from being seized by the British. They knew how to conduct their business in wartime and they were familiar with all the techniques to neutralize their business and transport goods between European harbours. During these conflicts, they claimed that they could transport goods to all ports of the Republic including wines and brandies from Bordeaux or La Rochelle to all ports in the Channel. 16
Neutral vessels had frequently faked documents on board to avoid capture by the British or, if taken, in order to make legal claims based on such documents. The ship papers stated false destinations. A coding system of destinations made their understanding possible only to insiders. A merchant wrote: ‘we have established our correspondence in such way that even if it would be opened, it would not compromise our cargoes. It was agreed that Le Havre is called Falmouth, Brest is called Saint Sebastian etc.’ 17 The ship papers had also to certify that the goods belonged to neutral traders who had no ties with France. In general, the middlemen were multiplied to make it impossible to track the transactions. Merchants used what we would call today ‘shell companies’ in charge of making trade channels opaque. They provided the captain with some documents giving evidence that the cargo was destined to a foreign merchant, such as the following letter from a Danish trader, C. G. Dede then in Hamburg, to Henry Holst in Leghorn. Complex merchant networks, including the countries at war against France, were involved in this traffic.
Mrs Henri Holst & Cie To Leghorn Hamburg, 8 March 1793 Mrs At the recommendation of Mr. Luis Jencquel, we are pleased to start a correspondence with you which we hope will continue in an advantageous and agreeable way to both parties. You will find enclosed a bill of lading for 255 bags of beautiful wheat […] that the captain Nicolai Hansen Bahr will deliver to you. We hope that God will offer him a safe and lucky journey. These 255 bags contain 10 last and immediately after this arrival we ask you to sell the wheat to our best advantage. It is only a kind of test that will encourage greater speculation. Please send us information on trade in your place and we’ll be very interested to purchase oil […] C. G. Dede
18
Unless the port was blocked and belligerent ships at sight, Danish ships sailing close to the French coast would enter the French harbour. Constantin Brun, an important Danish merchant, reported that in the Mediterranean ‘we must indicate in the documents the destination of Genoa and Leghorn because when bound to these ports the ships has to sail along the French coast and can enter in the harbours of Marseilles or Cette.’ 19 So, when a ship was stopped by the British, it was very difficult to prove that the cargo was bound for France, even if the British knew very well through their information networks that this was probably the case.
For neutral shipowners wartime was a period of great prosperity because of the increased demand and the high prices and freight rates. On 29 June 1793, the Danish consul in Bordeaux wrote that ‘the freight rates are still very high and, although we have plenty of ships from the Hanseatic towns, the Danish are preferred even at a higher freight rate. We paid […] up to 40 Dutch guilders per ton to Altona or Copenhagen.’ 20 After delivering their cargo, given the demand, captains and neutral shipowners could be very demanding and chose among different proposals. Two Norwegian ships arrived in Genoa in May 1794: on the 6, the Lykkelige captain J. H. Brun of Christiansand from Marseille in ballast and on the 23, Det Gode Haab Captain H. der Mees from Bergen loaded with stockfish, ‘The first one found a cargo of grain to Spain but the second refused a cargo of 4000 florins for 36 ½ last for his small ship because the captain would not accept less than 5400 florins.’ 21
In return, one might think that insurance rates increased substantially. In fact, it seemed that many ships, even the potential risk was known, were not insured at all. In 1797, a Trondheim ship-owner declared that there was no reason to have an insurance policy: if taken, insurers never paid without long discussions and, moreover, the only ones able to seize Norwegian vessels were the English and they paid compensation if the cargo was confiscated. For this reason, the value of the goods loaded was intentionally increased in the bills and charter parties. 22 A contemporary document stated that ‘insurance for sea risks can be taken in Hamburg and even in London’. 23 French merchants made the point that, with an insurance subscribed in Britain, ‘if by chance some of these ships were seized, it was at least the English who had to pay’. 24
The activity of the Danish fleet in the Mediterranean
The development of Danish shipping to the Mediterranean was very important. From an average of 171 ships per year during the Seven Years’ War, their number increased to 282 during the War of American Independence and to 562 during the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. Out of the 20,500 Danish voyages beyond Cap Finisterre recorded between 1747 and 1807 in the registers of Algerian sea passes, around 15,000 sailed to the Mediterranean. With the expansion of the tramping activity, the length of their Mediterranean voyages increased over time: from 250 days in the 1750s to around 350–400 days in the 1760s (Table 3). 25
Number of Danish Algerian passes, 1738–1815 (annual averages).
Source: Dan H. Andersen, ‘The Danish flag in the Mediterranean: Shipping and trade, 1747–1807’ (Unpublished PhD Thesis, University of Copenhagen, 2000).
The main destinations for the Danish fleet were Genoa and Leghorn, particularly the first one from whence small ships forwarded the cargoes to France. In 1794, the Danish consul in Genoa recorded 43 Danish ships arriving from and bound to a wide range of Atlantic and Mediterranean ports (Table 4).
Danish ships in Genoa, 1794.
Source: Copenhagen, Den Kongelige Bibliotek, Efteretninger om den inden og udenlanske hanhel, skibsfart, fabrique og manufactur bæsen som og on agerdyrkningen og Oeconomien i almindelighed, Gênes, 10 May 1795.
In contrast, the number of Danish ships entering into Marseille, the main French Mediterranean port, was reduced during the Revolutionary Wars (Table 5).
Number of Danish ships arriving from Northern Europe to Marseille.
Source: Charles Carrière, ‘Les entrées de navires dans le port de Marseille pendant la Révolution’, Provence historique, 28, No.7 (1957), 21–3.
Danish ships loaded with grain from North Africa bound to Marseille (in charges: 1 charge = 120 kg).
Source: Archivo di Stato di Firenze, Segreteria di Stato 1765–1808, Archivio degli affari di sanità, No. 98–1794, Leghorn; Archives de la Chambre de commerce de Marseille, L IV, Article n° 104; Archives départementales des Bouches-du-Rhône, Bureau de Santé de Marseille, 200 E 549–551.
Marseille was closely watched by the British and the Spanish navies and supplies arrived mainly from Genoa. However, some Scandinavian ships managed to get into the French harbour. Some of them were loaded with stockfish and arrived from Norway. The French market was no longer supplied by the French Newfoundland fisheries and demand was high. For example, in May 1794, two ships from Bergen arrived in Marseille to deliver 3700 quintals (185 tons) of cod. 26 In a few instances, Danish ships carried Mediterranean grain from Genoa but because of their size, they were easy to spot, they came slightly more often from North Africa: the Africa Agency (Agence d’Afrique) regularly used the large Scandinavian ships.
From the information given in the charter parties, it is possible to estimate that more than 2600 tons of grains from North Africa were transported by Danish ships whereas more than 5400 tons were shipped by the very large Swedish ships. 27
The risk to be taken was, however, rather high. The British archives provide information about 392 Danish ships seized by the British in the years 1793, 1794 and 1795 and the list is not complete. 28 In the Mediterranean alone, the Spanish navy captured 34 Danish ships between 1793 and July 1795, when peace between France and Spain was signed. 29 In this region the cargoes of the seized ships radically differed from those sailing in the northern seas, which were loaded with grain, stockfish or naval stores. Among the Spanish prizes most were caught near the strait of Gibraltar, half of them (14) being brought to Algeciras, the closest Spanish harbour to Gibraltar, seven to Malaga and one to Ceuta. Twenty-six ships were taken by privateers and eight by the Spanish Navy. Twenty-four of them were loaded with wine from Cette to neutral destinations in Northern Europe, and another one intended to sail as far as Baltimore in the United States. The two ships carrying grain were bound for Barcelona and Leghorn 30 . The majority of these ships could not be considered as good prizes and in 1797 the claims of the Danish government for various charges on account of the shipowners amounted to 1,259,324 reals, or 62,966 Spanish dollars.
Whereas in the first years of the French Revolutionary Wars the problems came mostly from the anti-French coalition, in the second half of the 1790s, French privateering was particularly aggressive. Neutral vessels were then hunted by the privateers and the Navy of the Republic, and French courts declared ships and cargoes as good prizes on the most trivial pretexts. In the Mediterranean, according to the Danish consul in Leghorn, the Corsicans were particularly dishonest and ignored the meaning of the word justice. Thus, in 1797–1798, the ship Christine Margarethe of Bergen which transported fish from Bergen to Leghorn was arrested seven times during her journey: by a frigate of the British Navy, a French naval frigate, a French privateer, a Spanish privateer, another French privateer, an unidentified privateer and finally by a Corsican privateer flying English flag. The latter would have seized it, had it not been a former English ship caught and sold by a French privateer. Finally on her journey back to Norway the ship was seized by two French privateers, taken to Malaga and condemned as a good prize under the fallacious pretext that her name had been changed and she had cannons on board. 31
If privateering was a permanent danger to the shipping of neutral countries, the blockade was another problem affecting directly their economies. On the one hand, neutral fleets were used to supply blockaded countries and a blockade that did not restrict neutral shipping was ineffective. On the other hand, neutrals were not part of the conflict and did not recognize the rules imposed on trade in wartime and did not tolerate that their activities could be affected by the conflict. Belligerents had to decide how to act: if they took a too rigid position versus neutrals, this could lead to a conflict and increase the number of their enemies. Any intervention against a neutral vessel raised the problem of the concrete definition of neutrality on the ground: although principles were theoretically defined, in practice belligerents’ tolerance varied greatly depending on the country’s needs. These divergences produced a large amount of administrative documents and gave rise to endless judicial proceedings. In the case of a blockade, it was necessary to establish rules which would prove satisfactory to neutral countries, that is to say that they should not harm their interests. The issue of the so-called ‘paper blockades’ is a good example of conflicting interpretation of belligerents’ and neutrals’ rights.
Thus, to avoid endless trials with neutrals and in order that their interests were not threatened, the British government applied a pre-emption right and provided funding to buy the goods seized and pay the ships’ freights. In a statement of 8 June 1793 the King of England assured that neutral ships would be compensated both for their cargo and freight. This decision was clearly aimed at keeping good relations with neutrals even when the attitude of the latter was opposed to British interests. It was risky even for the British to oppose the small kingdom of Denmark for the reasons explained by a Liverpool merchant in a letter to the French authorities dated 2 January 1794 (13 Nivôse year II): If the English decided to stop a Danish ship loaded for France with simulated papers stating that the cargo belonged to a Danish merchant, the government of Denmark could protest against arrest and unless the English declared war to Denmark and accordingly closed the entrance to the Baltic to its ships, it was wiser to accept the insult made to its flag and the violation of its power.
32
If the experts who analyzed the ship papers as well as the questioning and answers of the captains and the crews provided no evidence, the ships could not be considered as good prizes. In case of doubt the British bought the goods according to the prices specified in the documents which were, as mentioned above, artificially high. For the government in London this was a great dilemma. Why should they buy expensive products that could be otherwise purchased at a lower price by using the British networks? However, if the ships were not seized, they would supply the enemy that the British wanted to starve. This situation probably explained why there were interruptions in the British surveillance.
This policy was costly as the British Admiralty noted in a report dated 7 September 1795 when summarizing the problem of the neutral fleets to the commanders in Portsmouth, Plymouth and Dunes (Downs) as well as to Lord Howe, the head officer of the Channel fleet: […] among the captures of neutral ships […] there appears to be many cases where such ships are not laden with military stores or provisions, and where there is no ground to support the suspicion of the enemy’s property, which has occasioned much expense and inconvenience to government […] the only ground on which they ought to be stopped is a reasonable suspicion of their being enemy’s property; and […] in all those cases the captors must take on their own risk the proof of such suspicion […]
33
This report acknowledges that there was not always a legal justification to condemn the ships. The British Admiralty did not want to pay the compensations and indemnities. It argued that privateers who could not produce evidence justifying their prizes would have to reimburse the expenses.
In addition to the compensation paid to the seized neutral ships, the blockade itself had a high cost for the power that implemented it. First, it was necessary to have ships to monitor the enemy coast permanently. These ships were small crafts whose speed qualities were preferred to firepower and which were not usually equipped for other types of military actions like naval battles. Secondly, a real blockade could endanger the ships and the crews because the vessels had always to be at sea with the risk of shipwrecks or unexpected encounters with the enemy.
The running of a blockade was itself a major problem because it was never complete. It was impossible to have a sufficient fleet to monitor and prevent ships to approach all ports on the enemy coast. The knowledge of the opponent shoreline was never total and local fleets or smugglers knew how to avoid controls. The weather conditions or the checking lapses were exploited with efficiency by those who expected them.
After all, orders might have been more or less strongly implemented. In June 1793 a letter from the Danish consul in Bordeaux noted that ‘currently the English let neutral vessels loaded with grain to France pass, since two Danish vessels and one from Hamburg have just arrived in our port after being searched rigorously at sea’. 34 In May 1794 in Genoa a captain of a Danish ship arriving from Bergen with stockfish declared that he had been inspected and that, when he was asked where he was bound for, he replied he was going to Genoa, after which the British had ‘wished him a safe journey’. 35
William Pitt’s explanations to stop grain shipments to France did not mention the needs of Great Britain for cereal products. According to a report by the Swedish envoy in London, Lars von Engeström, referring to a statement made in the House of Lords on 3 November 1795, the seizure of ships loaded with grain bound to France was a convenient way to supply the home country. As a matter of fact, due to poor harvests affecting Britain in 1794 and 1795, imports were necessary for the needs of the British population. 36
Denmark seemed satisfied with a situation that did not bind the country with the coalition against France. If Bersnstorff’s aim was to get around London’s policy, he did not want in any way to enter in a conflict against Great Britain. He was opposed to a systematic convoying 37 which was a potential source of tensions, especially as the Royal Navy closely monitored the North Sea and the English Channel. The agreement with Sweden and the organization of a naval squadron showed to France the determined policy of Denmark to defend its neutrality, but the lack of financial means minimized the action of these squadrons to waters between Sweden and Denmark. However, the Danish fleet did not remain inactive. During the summer of 1793 the brig Glommen was responsible for protecting the ships entering the Kattegat and the frigate Triton convoyed the Asiatisk Kompani’s ship the Prince of Augustenburg to Cape Finisterre, while offering protection to all Danish ships he met along its way. In Danish territorial waters, regular cruises were organized against privateers especially in the Skagerrak and on the southern coast of Norway. In the Caribbean, two ships were charged to pursue privateers around the Danish islands but no transatlantic convoy was provided. Bernstorff systematically rejected the organization of convoys that the shipowners and the traders demanded. In a meeting with some businessmen of Copenhagen, he said to them, ‘Do you want war? I can bring it today or tomorrow. But terminate a war it is not in my power.’ 38 After the death of Andreas Peter Bernstorff in June 1797, merchants put pressure again on the Danish government to organize convoys, this time with more success. In January 1798, a first convoy left Copenhagen to the West Indies and a few months later another one was organized from Norway to the Mediterranean. 39
Conclusion
The Danish merchant fleet took advantage of the opportunities arising in the last decades of the eighteenth century. The frequent wars between the major European countries and the loss of neutrality of the Dutch Republic during the American War of Independence allowed Denmark and Sweden, the two neutral middle powers of Northern Europe with a consistent merchant fleet to take care of multiple traffics especially in Southern Europe. The Danes organized an intense and highly lucrative tramping between the Atlantic and the Mediterranean as well as within the Mediterranean.
The period of the French Revolutionary Wars was a time of great prosperity for Danish shipping. The fleet grew significantly: in Flensburg the number of ships increased from 226 (8000 lasts) in 1790 to 312 (almost 15,000 lasts) in 1800. 40 Denmark became a key player in European exchanges but also on the maritime routes to West Indies and Asia. 41 Shipowners made fortunes and played a leading role in Denmark’s politics, as illustrated by the example of Frederic de Coninck whose businesses were one of the reasons for the tension with Britain leading to the attack on Copenhagen in 1801 by the Royal Navy. 42
The importance of neutrality and the role of wars in business changes had been underestimated in many studies about the European trade. The growth of Nordic activities in times of war was not only an exceptional phase between two periods of peace. It also reflected a great transformation of maritime activities in Western Europe with the arrival of multiple actors.
Footnotes
1.
Immanuel Wallerstein, Le mercantilisme et la consolidation de l’économie-monde européenne 1600–1750 (Paris, 1985), 353.
2.
Ole Feldbæk, Dansk søfarts historie, vol. 3 (Copenhagen, 1997), 63.
3.
Dan H. Andersen, ‘La politique danoise face aux États barbaresques (1600–1845)’, in Gérard le Bouëdec and Francois Chappé, eds., Pouvoirs et Littoraux du XVe au XXe siècle (Rennes, 2000), 243–50.
4.
Ole Tuxen, ‘Principles and priorities: The Danish View of neutrality during the Colonial War of 1755–63’, Scandinavian Journal of History 13 (1988), 230.
5.
Knud Jespersen and Ole Feldbæk, Revanche og Neutralitet: Dansk Udenrigspolitiks Historie 2, 1648–1814 (Copenhagen, 2002), 425.
6.
Archives du ministère des Affaires étrangères, supplément Danemark, Grouvelle, microfilm 5988.
7.
Jespersen and Feldbæk, Revanche og Neutralitet, 427.
8.
Jespersen and Feldbæk, Revanche og Neutralitet, 429.
9.
The convention followed closely the Swedish-Danish convention of 1756. See Leos Müller’s article in this Forum, ‘Swedish merchant shipping in troubled times: The French Revolutionary Wars and Sweden’s neutrality 1793–1801’, International Journal of Maritime History 29 (2016).
10.
Christophe-Guillaume Koch, Histoire abrégée des traités de paix entre les puissances de l’Europe depuis la paix de Westphalie, ouvrage entièrement refondu, augm. et continué par Frédéric Schoell jusqu’au Congrès de Vienne et aux traités de Paris de 1815 (Brussels, 1857, 4 vols.), I, 559.
11.
Ole Feldbæk, ‘Caracas-spekulationen 1782–1783: Dansk neutralitetsudnyttelse under den Amerikanske frihedskrig’, Historisk Tidsskrift 12 (1973), 159–76.
12.
Jespersen and Feldbæk, Revanche og Neutralitet, 435.
13.
Dan H. Andersen, ‘The Danish flag in the Mediterranean: Shipping and trade, 1747–1807’ (Unpublished PhD Thesis, University of Copenhagen, 2000), 280.
14.
Andersen, ‘Danish Flag’, 182.
15.
Ole Ventegodt, Redere, Rejser og Regnskaber (Flensburg, 1989), in which the author uses the accounts of three ships of Flensburg.
16.
Paris, Archives Nationales de France (hereafter, ANF), F/11/223, Letter of 28 November 1793 (8 Frimaire year II).
17.
ANF, F/11/223, Report of 12 December 1793 (22 Frimaire year II).
18.
Copenhagen, Rigsarkivet (hereafter, C-RA), Danica (microfilm from The National Archives, HCA, 32-763, 11), original in English.
19.
ANF, F/11/223, ‘Mémoire de Constantin Brun du 1er nivôse an II’ (21 December 1793).
20.
RA, Kommercekollegiet, 1817, Letter from Von Hemert, 29 June 1793, original in French.
21.
Copenhagen, Den Kongelige Bibliotek, Efteretninger om den inden og udenlanske hanhel, skibsfart, fabrique og manufactur bæsen som og on agerdyrkningen og Oeconomien i almindelighed, Gênes, 10 May 1795.
22.
Henry Berg, Trondhjems Sjøfart under Eneveldet 1660–1814 (Trondheim, 1938–1941), 219–20.
23.
ANF, F/11/223, ‘Note sur la manière de tirer avec économie les denrées du Nord qui peuvent être utiles à la République dans les circonstances présentes’ (undated).
24.
ANF, F/11/223, ‘Réflexions sur les subsistances par Terrasson et Lecoulteux du 6 frimaire year II’ (26 November 1793).
25.
Andersen, The Danish Flag, 3.
26.
C-RA, Kommercekollegiet, Journalsager, 1160.
27.
Archives de la Chambre de commerce de Marseille, L IV, Article No. 104.
28.
C-RA, Danica, inventory of materials kept at The National Archives (Kew, London).
29.
C-RA, Kommercekollegiet, Journalsager, 2155, Letter of 2 January 1797.
30.
The other ships were loaded with different products (two with stockfish from Norway, one with flour from Philadelphia, one with tobacco from Le Havre and three with unspecified goods from Norway and the West Indies).
31.
Andersen, The Danish Flag, 209.
32.
ANF, F/11/223, ‘Projet à présenter aux comités des subsistances et de marine sur les moyens de procurer à la République des blés, bois de construction, chanvres, fers, cuivre, étain, plomb, bray, goudron, bœuf salé etc. du 13 nivôse an II’ (2 January 1794).
33.
Richard Hill, The Prizes of War: The Naval Prize System in the Napoleonic Wars (Stroud, 1998), 20.
34.
C-RA, Kommercekollegiet, 1817, Letter of von Hemert, 29 June 1793.
35.
C-RA, Kommercekollegiet, Journalsager 1158, Letter of the Danish Consul at Genoa, 10 May 1794.
36.
Lydia Wahlström, Sverige och England under revolutionskrigens början: bidrag till den Reuterholmska regeringens historia (Stockholm, 1917), 192–3.
37.
Jespersen and Feldbæk, Revanche og Neutralitet, 437.
38.
Jespersen and Feldbæk, Revanche og Neutralitet, 437.
39.
Ole Feldbæk, Konvoy (Copenhagen, 1992), 27. In 1798, the brig Nidelsen and the frigates Hvide Ørn and Najaden escorted a convoy from Flekkerø to Lisbon and the Mediterranean.
40.
Feldbæk, Dansk søfarts historie, 72.
41.
Feldbæk, Dansk søfarts historie, 92, 103.
42.
Ole Feldbæk, The Battle of Copenhagen 1801 (Barnsley, 2002), 18.