I was listening to a podcast today, and they briefly mentioned the embargo on Britain during the Napoleonic era, and Britain's subsequent embargo on Europe, along with Canada's sizable role in this embargo. What was the scenario leading up to the embargo's and what was the effect of the embargo, along with the implementation of it (types of goods, countries embargoed, etc.)? What was Canada's role in the embargo and how important was Canada to the British plans during this period?
I can shed some light on this question, but I hope some other users will answer the Canada part.
In short, Napoleon considered Britain to be the biggest threat to his European domination since it was almost impossible to subdue them by direct actions: relatively small British military would definitely face complete destruction if faced against combined might of the Great Army, but it was impossible to bring many hundreds of thousands of French troopers to the Biritsh isles, because British fleet was the dominating naval force during this time. All previous French attempts at flexing their muscles ended with French fleets being subsequently destroyed, with the biggest British success coming in the battle of Trafalgar in 1805. Being constantly undermanned, outgunned and having inexperienced crews (majority of qualified sailors fled the country during revolution, and situation didn't really improve with time), French fleet was unable to close the gap between Britain and continental Europe. Napoleon's dreams of invading Britain using a mosquito fleet of hundreds of small corvettes (so many they will easily evade majority of British ships) were also eventually discarded as it became evident they will have troubles even arriving at the point of their destination in order.
Britain, however, utilized their fleet in maximum capacity, attacking French possessions where they were the weakest and delivering armies where they could fight on equal grounds. Moreover, Britain was extremely wealthy because of their posessions in India and other parts of the world: constant income of spices, tea, silk, silver and other valuable goods meant they could achieve decisive economical superiority over France. Unless Napoleon enacts embargo on them, and this is exactly what he did. His victories in Europe enabled him to dictate terms of conduct to other countries, and joining continental blockade against British Empire (not selling to them, not buying from them) was one of the key elements of new world order he tried to build. Goods imported from Britain by other countries included both common categories such as provisions and weaponry and luxury items such as silk or wine.
Eventually continental system failed since countries already defeated by Napoleon didn't want to cope with their worsening economical conditions (British trade was extremely important for different countries - for example, many new rifles bought by Russia before Napoleon's invasion came from Britain [1]), which led to them disobeying France and breaking the blockade. Running out of countermeasures against Britain and disobedient European states, Napoleon tried to "persuade" Russia to come back into the system by conducting his military campaign which ended in disaster and was one of factors of renewed allied offensive against France.