Orders in Council (1807)

The Orders are important for the role they played in shaping the British war effort against France, but they are also significant for the strained relations—and sometimes military conflict—they caused between Great Britain and neutral countries, whose trade was affected by them.

In response to a British Order in Council of 16 May 1806, which had declared all ports from Brest to the Elbe to be under a state of blockade, Napoleon issued the Berlin Decree of 21 November 1806, which forbade French, allied or neutral ships to trade with Britain.

By this means, Napoleon hoped to destroy British trade, disrupt its growing industrial expansion, diminish its credit, and ultimately force a peace settlement.

Great Britain responded with the Orders in Council of 1807 issued on 6 January and 11 November 1807, extending the range and scope of the blockade instituted the previous year.

The British bombarded Copenhagen in September 1807 (Battle of Copenhagen) to prevent the Danish joining the Continental System, and the British policy of stopping neutral ships trading with France played a large part in the outbreak of the Anglo-American War of 1812 (the three laws most repugnant to the Americans were in fact repealed five days after the declaration of war, but before Prime Minister Lord Liverpool was aware of it).

However, it was Napoleon's invasion of Russia in the same year, again in part to enforce his continental system, that proved to be the turning point of the war.

[2] On the very day that the Minister took his formal leave from the United States, 23 June 1812, a new British government headed by Lord Liverpool provisionally repealed the Order in Council.