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«Vaincre la mer par la terre» 1793-1815
Guerra commerciale, guerra al commercio, guerra ai neutri di Virgilio Ilari «Si l’on considère la durée de cette mesure politique que Napoléon appelait le système continental, son époque, les désordres qu’elle apporta dans les habitudes et les fortunes du commerce, on doit la regarder comme le plus extraordinaire de tous les coups d’Etat qui aient été jamais tenté; et l’on ne sait ce qui doit le plus étonner, de l’audace de la combinaison, ou de la résignation, de la soumission de tous les intérêts qui en souffraient».
Comte Mollien, Mémoires d’un ministre du Trésor public, 1780-1815, III, p. 318.
In the effort to bring under the yoke of their own policy the commerce of the whole World, the two chief contestants, France and Great Britain, swayed hack and forth in deadly grapple over the vast arena, trampling underfoot the rights and interests of the weaker parties; who, whether as neutrals, or as subjects of friendly or allied powers, looked helplessly on, and found that in this great struggle for self-preservation, neither outcries, nor threats, nor despairing submission, availed to lessen the pressure that was gradually crushing out both hope and life. The question between Napoleon and the British people became simply one of endurance (…) Both were expending their capital, and drawing freely drafts upon the future, the one in money, the other in men, to sustain their present strength. (…) In December, 1812, (the Empire) was shattered from turret to foundation stone; wrecked in the attempt «to conquer the sea by the land». The scene was shifted indeed. Great Britain remained victorious on the field, but she had touched the verge of ruin.
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A. T. Mahan, The Influence of Sea Power Upon Revolution and the Empire, II, pp. 199-200.
e vogliamo reinterpretare le «guerre della Rivoluzione e dell’Impero francese» come la prima «guerra mondiale» dell’età contemporanea1, allora dobbiamo allargare l’orizzonte nel tempo e nello spazio (Atlantico e Asia Centrale), esaminando la fase terminale della storica conflittualità anglo-francese nel contesto più ampio in cui emersero le 1 A. D. Harvey, Collision of Empires: Britain in Three World Wars, 1793-1945, Bloomsbury Academic, 1992. Ma prima di lui Paul Fregosi, Dreams of Empire: Napoleon and the First World War, 1792-1815, Hutchinson, 1989.
