Continental Blockade

When the continental blockade could no longer be maintained against the gigantic system of smuggling to which it had given rise and was remo ed in 1814, the colonial products flooded the market and brought down the price of sugar to extremely low levels, especially as this... 

The necessary restriction of the culture of sugar cane to tropical or semi-tropical lands stimulated the search for sweetening materials which could be obtained from plants native to the temperate region. This search led to the technical development on the European continent of the sugar beet during the latter part of the eighteenth century and especially in the early years of the nineteenth because of the continental blockade during the Napoleonic wars. 

Britain never again enjoyed the advantage of huge balance-of-payments surpluses that had marked the pre-1914 period. Victory had been achieved by a combination of Britain s traditional way of warfare -blockade, loans or subsidies to allies and maritime operations - and an unprecedented continental commitment, but it came at the price of a permanent weakening of British power. 

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