The Cobden-Chevalier Treaty of 1860 lowered or eliminated duties levied on goods traded between Britain and France, and signaled a victory for liberal economic policies. Named for its two primary negotiators, British Richard Cobden (1804-1865) and French Michel Chevalier (1806-1879), the treaty inaugurated a period of relatively free trade among many European nations that lasted until the early 1890s. The treaty continued Britain’s move toward lowered tariffs that had begun in the 1820s, notably through the 1846 repeal of the Corn Laws. In France, the treaty marked a clear departure from protectionism, shaped industrialization, and sharpened political opposition to Napoleon III, emperor of France.
Well before 1860, both Cobden and Chevalier had acquired reputations as advocates for free trade and held influential positions within their respective governments. Cobden, a member of Parliament (MP) who made his fortune in Manchester textiles, won international acclaim as a radical campaigner for free trade through his success with the Anti-Corn Law Association in the 1840s. As a young man, Chevalier adopted the Saint-Simonian principles that the state’s economic policies should promote the material and moral elevation of the masses. Chevalier taught in the College de France before his appointment to the Council of State as an economic advisor to Napoleon III in 1852.
During the 1850s, Napoleon III worked to create political stability through prosperity. He and Chevalier agreed that the state should encourage industrial modernization and improved transportation in order to increase productivity and make more goods and services accessible to more people. They believed that free trade would further these goals. Businessmen in wine, railroads, ports, and steamships favored lower duties. However, French textile manufacturers, cereal growers, and mining companies supported protectionism, and the Legislative Corps repeatedly blocked attempts to lower tariffs. Chevalier awaited an opportunity to use a treaty to accomplish his goals, because the empire did not require the Legislative Corps to approve treaties.
The right moment arose in July 1859, when tensions between Britain and France increased due to France’s interventions in Italy. The British MP John Bright called on Britain to lower its tariffs in order to improve its relationship with France. Chevalier took this opportunity to contact Cobden in the hope of coming to a free trade agreement. Beginning in October 1859, the two nations, led by Cobden and Chevalier, entered into negotiations. The treaty stating the principle of lowered tariffs and setting maximum values at 30 percent was signed on 23 January 1860. The British Parliament approved the treaty in March, in large part due to the support of Chancellor of the Exchequer William Gladstone.
Conventions signed in the fall of 1860 through negotiations between French Minister of Commerce Eugene Rouher and Cobden set the new tariffs. Britain eliminated most duties on articles de Paris (toys, haberdashery, imitation jewelry), silk, wine, and spirits. The French could maintain a maximum of30 percent duties on some goods, but many were taxed as low as 10 percent. Any tariff decreases that France or Britain offered to a third nation would be extended to each other. Treaties lowering trade barriers among most major European nations, excluding Russia, soon followed.
Cobden and Chevalier viewed the treaty not as an end to itself, but as the first step in improved Franco-British relations. However, some British politicians believed the French used the treaty as a distraction from their Italian policies, and that the treaty would leave the British handicapped in case of war. The two nations soon became involved in a naval arms race.
The treaty’s influence on French industrial modernization is difficult to measure amid other factors, including the development of domestic markets and the cotton shortage during the U. S. Civil War (1861-1865), but most scholars agree that the treaty speeded technological and structural change in France. French users of charcoal forges, forest owners, and textile manufacturers suffered from the influx of British coal and textiles, but some modernized using low-interest loans offered by the government. The treaty did not significantly affect British industry.
In France, the political consequences proved significant. Protectionists, led by politician
Adolphe Thiers, felt that Napoleon III had betrayed their interests and their trust by secretly negotiating a treaty that might cripple their industries. They pressured the emperor to make liberal political concessions.
The tariff remained in effect until 1882, when Britain and France could agree only to mutually maintain most-favored-nation status. Once France’s treaties with other nations lapsed in 1892, protectionists led by Jules Meline raised duties, although never to the prohibitive level in effect before the Cobden-Chevalier Treaty.
See also Cobden, Richard; Corn Laws, Repeal of; Liberalism; Trade and Economic Growth.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Dunham, Arthur Louis. The Anglo-French Treaty of Commerce of 1860 and the Progress of the Industrial Revolution in France. Reprint, New York, 1971.
Edsall, Nicholas C. Richard Cobden: Independent Radical. Cambridge, Mass., 1986.
Price, Roger. The French Second Empire: An Anatomy of Political Power. New York, 2001.
Rachel Chrastil
COCKERILL, JOHN (1790-1840), English entrepreneur.
John Cockerill was one of the pioneering entrepreneurs of the Belgian iron and mechanical engineering industries. He was the third son of William Cockerill (1759-1832), a peripatetic English inventor who had a gift for constructing models of industrial machines and who worked in Russia and Sweden before moving to the Low Countries in 1799. John spent most of his childhood with relatives in Lancashire until joining his father in Verviers in 1802. William was then working with Simonis et Biolley, the most important woolen producers in the Low Countries, and building machinery for woolen textile manufacturing. Louis Ternaux (1763-1833), a major French woolens producer, established a further mill at Ensival, near Verviers, equipping it with Cockerill spinning machinery. John was apprenticed to his father and, with his brothers William II and Charles, moved to Liege in 1807, where their father established a number of his own workshops to produce machinery for spinning and weaving wool. John was a manager in the family business by 1807 and, with his brother Charles, took it over on their father’s retirement in 1812. During that year, the Cockerills produced twenty-six hundred machines, primarily for woolen spinning. Also at this time, the Cockerills obtained a steam engine from England, but it would appear that they did not produce their own for a further six years.
Following the collapse of Napoleonic Europe in 1814-1815 and the consequent decline of the Verviers woolen industry, John and Charles opened a Berlin workshop for producing wool-spinning machinery through the patronage of Peter Beuth, responsible for the Department of Trade and Industry within the Prussian Ministry of Finance. However, the venture only lasted about two years, as John decided to return to the Low Countries, opening an ironworks at Seraing in the former bishop’s palace. This was to be the final step in the family’s shift from initially producing textile machinery to building steam engines with their enterprise’s own iron, a developmental path followed by a number of other continental European mechanical engineering plants—Koechlin, Schlum-berger, Sulzer, and Wyss—during the first half of the nineteenth century. The first Cockerill steam engine was built at Seraing in 1818, and by 1830 the works had turned out a further 201.
John worked in partnership with his brother Charles and the Seraing enterprise began production on 25 January 1817. Initially, it had the backing of William I (r. 1815-1840), the king of the Netherlands, who personally invested ?100,000 (4 million francs) as a silent partner in the ven-ture—the Etablissements John Cockerill—a stake that was part of state support for industrializing his newly established kingdom. This royal patronage also led to the Socielte; Generale (Algemmeene Nederlandsche Maatschappij ter begunstiging ven de Volks-slijt) providing Cockerill with a fifty-thousand-florin credit during the late 1820s to finance a cotton mill.
In 1821 Cockerill attempted to use English coal-based technology at Seraing for smelting iron, but these efforts were not to be completely successful until eight more years had passed. Nonetheless, the Cockerill works had become the ‘‘industrial wonder of Europe’’ by the mid-1820s. It employed two thousand workers at an integrated production site that smelted iron and transformed the metal into not only girders and rods but also complex machinery including steamboats. The product range included cotton textile machinery from 1825 (power looms from 1827), mechanical presses from 1828, glass-polishing devices from 1834, and railway locomotives from 1836. These were exported throughout Europe. In developing his business, Cockerill quickly obtained copies of new industrial machines from England, which were used at Seraing as models to be copied and emulated for his widening range of European customers. Cockerill’s advantage over English mechanical engineers lay in lower Belgian labor costs.
The creation of Belgium in 1830 led to the cessation of Dutch royal financial backing, and Cockerill became the sole owner of the Seraing works in 1835. By then he also owned cotton and wool mills at Liege and a paper works at Andenne, all operated on the same large scale as his Seraing ironworks. Without state backing, Cockerill was forced after 1830 to rely on short-term credits from the Banque de Belgique to sustain his Seraing enterprise, but he overcame severe financial difficulties during 1839, when an economic depression forced his firm into liquidation.
In acting as a disseminator of the new industrial technology pioneered in Britain, Cockerill’s life mirrored that of his father. He continued to play this role until the end. In 1839-1840 Cockerill went to Saint Petersburg to present plans to Nicholas I (r. 1825-1855) for building railways within the Russian Empire (although this may also have been an attempt to obtain financing for his ailing Belgian company). However, when returning to Seraing he caught typhus in Warsaw and died on 19 June 1840. The Seraing works then comprised four coal mines and two blast furnaces together with associated rolling mills, forges, and machine shops. His creditors continued the enterprise by converting it into a joint-stock company—Socielte Anonyme des litablissements John Cockerill.
See also Coal Mining; Engineers; Industrial Revolution,
First.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Briavoine, M. N. Extract from De I’industrie en Belgique, vol. 1, pp. 302-305. Brussels, 1839. Reprinted in Documents of European Economic History, edited by Sidney Pollard and Colin Holmes, vol. 1: The Process of Industrialization, 1750-1870, 322-323. New York, 1968.
Hodges, Theodore B. ‘‘The Iron King of Liege: John Cockerill.’’ Ph. D. diss., Columbia University, 1960.
Milward, Alan S., and S. B. Saul. The Economic Development of Continental Europe, 1780-1870. London, 1973.
Mokyr, Joel. Industrialization in the Low Countries, 17951850. New Haven, Conn., 1976.
Pasleau, Suzy. John Cockerill: Itineraire d’un geant indus-triel. Alleur-Lie;ge, France, 1992.
Westebbe, Richard M. ‘‘State Entrepreneurship: King Willem I, John Cockerill, and the Seraing Engineering Works, 1815-1840.’’ Explorations in Entrepreneurial History (April 1956).
Philip Cottrell
COFFEE, TEA, CHOCOLATE. Coffee, tea, and chocolate were all increasingly widely consumed in nineteenth-century Europe. They had numerous apparent benefits: they offered appealing taste and stimulating effect (from the caffeine), yet they were not alcoholic. They were prepared with boiled water (which people understood made water safe), and were thought to have medicinal benefits. In contrast, the water in many cities was polluted and unfit to drink, which had led to high consumption of light beer or light wine. Londoners in the early nineteenth century had particularly bad water, which led to several outbreaks of waterborne illness and prompted London hospitals to serve only alcoholic beverages to their patients. Factory owners encouraged the drinking of tea or coffee rather than beer or wine because of the dangers associated with running machinery while intoxicated and perhaps because stimulants increased productivity. on the downside, coffee and tea replaced beverages that provided more nutrition. Chocolate, tea, and coffee were also associated with the increasing demand for sugar in Europe, because sugar lessened their bitterness. And as with any popular commodity, all were targeted for taxation by governments.
COFFEE
Originally from Ethiopia, coffee was introduced to Europe by Italian traders in 1600. In the seventeenth century, coffee houses became important literary and political places, and they retained this character through the nineteenth century. The Spanish, having been chocolate drinkers since they introduced it from the Americas, were late to embrace coffee, and it was not until the nineteenth century that coffee houses began to prosper in Spain.
However, in France coffee was an essential beverage. Coffee was deemed so essential that in 1806, when Napoleon I (r. 1804-1814/1815) decided to make France self-sufficient (to cut Britain off from its European trade customers), he sought a substitute for coffee. Since coffee cannot grow in Europe, the French substituted the herb chicory during this period. When foreign policy changed, the French went back to true coffee, although sometimes mixed with chicory.
The medical qualities of coffee had been investigated since its entry into Europe. This inquiry continued in the 1800s, with some researchers praising its energizing effects and others deploring the stimulating aspects as upsetting the body’s natural balance. Caffeine was isolated in the 1820s, although not all critics of coffee’s healthfulness understood that caffeine was the active substance. By the late 1800s, it was clear that excessive consumption of coffee created a recognizable syndrome.
By the early 1900s, afternoon coffee became a customary occasion in Germany. The derogatory term Kaffeeklatsch was coined to describe women’s gossip at these affairs (although now the term simply refers to relaxed conversation).
Coffee became an international commodity, and one of Europe’s major sources was Brazil, where the coffee plant was tended by slaves. With the abolition of the slave trade in Brazil in 1850, the coffee industry, and the culture of Brazil, was slowly forced to change as the existing slaves aged and died. other changes in the coffee trade were due to technical developments such as steam pressure espresso, vacuum tins to package roast coffee (which hurt the market for local roasting shops), soluble instant coffee, the filter-drip coffee process, and the process for decaffeinating coffee beans.
Coffehouse in the Clerkenwell district of London. Undated engraving. In many parts of Europe, caf(§s were an important locus of sociability. Private Collection/Brigdeman Art Library
TEA
Europe was introduced to tea in the mid seventeenth century; in Spain, Italy, and France, it was a drink for the upper classes. In England and the Netherlands, tea was drunk by all.
The well-known British preference for tea was well established by the nineteenth century, partly because it was easier to brew than was coffee, partly because the British East India Company advertised profusely, and partly because smugglers offered tea at cheaper prices than did legal sellers, who had to pay high taxes. Especially in Britain, ‘‘tea’’ was not simply a drink but a social event. By the 1880s, afternoon tea had become an important daily event. Also by the 1880s, the price of tea—or what was sold as tea—had dropped enough so that working-class folk could afford a steady supply.
Because until the nineteenth century tea only came from China, it was often expensive. This led many tea sellers, both Chinese and European, to supplement the tea leaves with additives. Sometimes the adulteration was harmless, as in the case of adding orange or lemon leaves. Some adulterants were harmful, such as the dye added to green teas: a mix of Prussian Blue and gypsum, which added both plaster and cyanide to the tea. The British parliament did not pass a ‘‘tea act’’ to check the quality of tea until the end of the nineteenth century.
Tea was so important to the British that the East India Company engaged in a complex trade by which the British traded opium to Chinese merchants for tea. The Chinese emperor had forbidden opium importation and requested that the British stop the opium trade, but the British refused. This tension led to the First Opium War of 1839-1842, which the British won. Ironically, by about 1840, the British actually had another source of tea, India.
CHOCOLATE
The Spanish introduced chocolate to Europe in the early sixteenth century, and consumption was well established by the late eighteenth century. Chocolate was taken as a beverage, and, because of the high cost, chiefly drunk by aristocrats. Less austere Catholic clergy welcomed chocolate as a drink allowed on fast days. This association with the upper classes and the clergy conflicted with the ideals of the French Revolution and turned French opinion against chocolate in the late eighteenth century. In Britain, cocoa was popularized by the navy; hot, nutritious, and nonalcoholic, it was considered the perfect drink for sailors on watch duty.
Chocolate underwent several processing improvements in the nineteenth century. In 1828, Dutch chemist C. J. van Houten discovered how to remove most of the bitter fat; the ‘‘Dutch process’’ of alkalization neutralized acids and made chocolate more soluble in water. Van Houten’s work led to the production of the first chocolate bars in 1847, although milk chocolate was not developed until 1875.
As with other expensive and exotic products, chocolate was subject to adulteration. In the midnineteenth century, a British study found that 90 percent of the fifty brands of commercial cacao were adulterated with starch fillers or brick dust and toxic red lead pigment.
See also Alcohol and Temperance; Diet and Nutrition;
Wine.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Coe, Sophie, and Michael D. Coe. The True History of Chocolate. New York, 1996.
Hobhouse, Henry. Seeds of Change: Five Plants That Transformed Mankind. New York, 1986.
Pendergrast, Mark. Uncommon Grounds: The History of Coffee and How It Transformed Our World. New York, 1999.
Pettigrew, Jane. A Social History of Tea. London, 2001.
Weinberg, Bennett Alan, and Bonnie K. Bealer. The World of Caffeine: The Science and Culture of the World’s Most Popular Drug. New York, 2001.
Kathryn A. Walterscheid
World History
