The Continental System or Continental Blockade (known in French as Blocus continental) was the foreign policy of Napoleon I of France in his struggle against the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland during the Napoleonic Wars. As a response to the naval blockade of the French coasts enacted by the British government on the 16 May 1806, Napoleon issued the Berlin Decree on the 21 November 1806, which brought into effect a large-scale embargo against British trade. This embargo ended on April 11, 1814 after Napoleon's first abdication.
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“Every political system is an accumulation of habits, customs, prejudices, and principles that have survived a long process of trial and error and of ceaseless response to changing circumstances. If the system works well on the whole, it is a lucky accident—the luckiest, indeed, that can befall a society.”
—Edward C. Banfield (b. 1916)