The Anglo-French Commercial Treaty of 1786

Abstract

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org. This content downloaded from 128.235.251.160 on Tue, TH E Anglo-French commercial treaty of 1786 was one of the most important trade agreements of the eighteenth century. It marked a break in a commercial system which had long been accepted as the only method of regulating international trade. It marked also a serious attempt to end the traditional rivalry between France and Britain. English historians have neglected this significant aspect of Anglo-French relations, 1 but fortunately French scholars have given it the attention which it deserves.2 The short life of the treaty and the disappointment of the hopes of its sponsors may account for its neglect by English historians, but this does not minimise its importance for an understanding of the Europe of the last years of the ancien regime.In the eighteenth century, France's commercial policy aimed at reducing foreign imports to negligible proportions so as to give native manufacturers and farmers a virtual monopoly of the home market.3 Navigation policy aimed at securing for French vessels as much of the carrying trade between France and the outside world as possible. Colonial policy was designed to exclude foreigners from trading with France's overseas possessions. The government wished to secure a 'favourable balance' of commodity trade and to increase stocks of bullion held in France. The rigours of this commercial system were, however, somewhat relaxed by the Family Compact of 1 76 I; the opening of a few colonial ports to foreign vessels (176i); the Franco-American treaty of 1778; and the Franco-Portuguese agreement of 1783. But it was the Eden-Rayneval treaty of 1786 which really reversed the traditional commercial and navigation policies of France and Britain. Since 1713, Anglo-French commerce had been regulated by the Treaty of Utrecht.4 But the reciprocal freedom of trade guaranteed by this agreement had never been carried into effect since Britain had not ratified Articles 8 and 9.5 The French government had soon reverted to its traditional policy of 1 Two articles by Oscar Browning and Holland Rose almost exhaust the serious contributions of English scholarship to the history of the treaty. See Oscar Browning, 'The Treaty of Commerce between England and France, 1786', Trans. R. Hist. Soc. II (i 886), 349-364 andJ. Holland Rose, 'The Franco-British Commercial Treaty, 1786', Eng. Hist. Rev. XXIII (1908), 709-24. 2 F. Dumas, Atude sur la traits du commerce de I786 entre la France et l'Angleterre (Toulouse. 1904); H. de Butenval, Prdcis historique et iconomique du trait de commerce entre la France et La Grande Bretagne ... I786 (Paris, 1869); Camille Bloch, Atudes sur I'histoire 1conomique de la France I760-89 (Paris, I90...

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