How much money did Great Britain, Russia and France collect per year during Napoleonic wars as total revenue, and how much money did each one spend in total on that war?
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1Where have you looked so far, for this information? – WS2 Nov 30 '15 at 12:14
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The answer will not be simple - for significant portions of the period, France was engaged in rather creative finance. They created money, borrowed money against assets, devalued debts, fixed valuation against need rather than value, etc. Great Britain pursued a policy of inflation and national debt. I'm less familiar with Russian finance, but I'm suspicious of the finances of any absolute monarchy. The answer will not be a simple set of sums. – Mark C. Wallace♦ Nov 30 '15 at 13:23
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1In addition, it will be difficult to separate spending on the war from overall spending during the war. For example, is infrastructure spending (such as road building), which may have had an indirect benefit to fighting the war, to be included or not? – Steve Bird Nov 30 '15 at 13:54
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Hi Steve Bird, I mean income from all sources. Just direct benefits I mean. – Vinicius Toyohashi Dec 1 '15 at 3:27
I won't pretend that this is a comprehensive answer (or close to one) but I can offer some expenditure figures for Great Britain for the period 1803-1815.
These are taken from The Foundations of British Maritime Ascendancy: Resources, Logistics and the State 1755-1815, Roger Morriss (Cambridge UP, 2011) which in turn took them from Abstract of British Historical Statistics, Mitchell & Dean (Cambridge, 1962).
Year Navy Army Civil Debt Total (£000,000)
1803 12.0 13.3 6.7 20.4 54.8
1804 8.1 15.5 5.1 20.7 53.0
1805 11.9 22.2 5.2 20.7 62.8
1806 14.3 25.8 5.2 22.3 71.4
1807 16.3 24.8 4.7 23.2 72.9
1808 16.9 24.0 5.3 23.8 73.3
1809 17.6 27.2 4.7 23.1 78.0
1810 19.4 28.9 5.2 24.2 81.5
1811 20.0 28.0 5.1 24.4 81.6
1812 19.6 33.8 5.2 24.6 87.3
1813 20.8 36.5 5.4 26.4 94.8
1814 22.5 49.6 5.3 27.3 111.1
1815 22.8 49.6 5.8 30.3 112.9
Total 222.2 379.2 68.9 311.4 1035.4
The figures are in Pounds Sterling and are gross government expenditure. The figure for the Army includes the Ordnance (and so includes some Navy expenditure). 'Civil' is civilian government expenditure while 'Debt' is the cost of servicing the country's debt.