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Effects of the Napoleonic wars

Five years later, a barber named Richard Arkwright (1732-1792) built the water frame that made it possible to spin many threads into yarn at the same time. Ten years after that Samuel Crompton (1753-1827), a spinner, combined the spinning jenny and water frame into the water mule, which, with some variations, is used today.
The postwar economy and society
Town and village labourers were also unrepresented in Parliament, and it was they who bore the main brunt of the postwar difficulties. Bad harvests and high food prices left them hungry and discontented, and in the worst years, whenever bad harvests and industrial unemployment coincided, discontent assumed a political shape. Moreover, the development of a steam-driven factory system with new rhythms of work and new controls led to a breakdown in traditional family relationships and the growth of towns with structures of communication that were quite different from those of villages or preindustrial urban communities. These changes fostered the emergence, though it was not always shared, of the sense of a working class. There were radical riots in 1816, 1817, and particularly in 1819, the year of the Peterloo Massacre when there was a clash in Manchester between workers and troops of the yeomanry, or local citizenry.
Thousands of homes were starved in order to find the means for the great war . . . the resources on which the struggle was based, and without which it would have speedily collapsed, were the stint and starvation of labor, the overtaxed and underfed toils of childhood, and the under-paid and uncertain unemployment of men (Rogers, 1891, quoted in Hartwell, 1971, p. 326).
Modern statistical evidence and economic theory lends support to such observations. Government war spending and borrowing increased interest rates, thus "crowding out" private investors who desperately needed capital to construct new factories, build better canals, and design new inventions. Growth was present during the war, but it was excruciatingly small. In the long run, this meant fewer jobs and lower wages for the working class.
But, for the common man, the war had more painful and immediate consequences than slowing the rate of economic growth. Various government schemes to finance the war debt led to monetary instability and uncertainty. This monetary instability, coupled with severe harvest failures, led to rapidly increasing food prices throughout the Napoleonic Wars (Redford, pp. 89-93). In fact, food prices soared upward by more than twenty-five per cent (Williamson, p. 187). Considering that the British working class then only earned on the average little more than Ј11 per year, it is no wonder how these developments led to hardships and deprivation that invariably resulted in social unrest.
Although decidedly the most important, war was not the only form of government intervention that decreased the quality of life. Government monopolies, such as the East India Company and Cutler's Company, served to lessen economic efficiency and growth. The entire area of foreign commerce and trade was forced to contend with massive government regulation (Ashton, pp. 138-39).
While these immediate effects should not be overlooked, the real benefits of the industrial revolution are enjoyed by those living in today's world of comparative luxury and splendor. The industrial revolution was the "great discontinuity" that built the foundations for our modern society (Hartwell, 197 1). It has led us into an age without the famines, epidemics, and other disasters that continually plagued pre-industrial societies. Perhaps the only way to fully appreciate the impact of the industrial revolution is to look at those in the modern world who have yet to undergo industrialization. The fate of the hungry and disease-ridden peasants in such areas as Africa and India is perhaps the most forceful and convincing argument in favor of capitalism's industrial revolution.
Napoleonic wars affected industrialization greatly. In some countries it made industrialization slower or impossible while in some, like Britain, it couldn’t hinder industrial revolution’s development. Napoleonic wars meant fewer jobs and lower wages for working classes which are significant moving froce of industrial revolution. The overall conclusion could be: if there were no wars at the time of industrialization , European industry would grow much faster.

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Hartwell, R.M., "Capitalism and the Historians, " Essays on Hayek (New York: New York University Press, 1976). Hartwell, R.M., "History and Ideology," Modern Age, Vol. 18, No. 4, Fall, 1974.
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