The major nations all recognized that the Confederacy had certain rights as an organized belligerent. A few nations did take advantage of the war. Spain recaptured its lost colony of the Dominican Republic. It lost it again in 1865. More serious was the war by France, under Emperor Napoleon III, to install Maximilian I of Mexico as a puppet ruler, hoping to negate American influence. France, therefore, encouraged Britain to join in a policy of mediation, suggesting that both recognize the Confederacy. Seward repeatedly warned that any recognition of the Confederacy was tantamount to a declaration of war. The British textile industry depended on cotton from the South, but it had stocks to keep the mills operating for a year and in any case, the industrialists and workers carried little weight in British politics. Knowing a war would cut off vital shipments of American food, wreak havoc on the British merchant fleet, and cause the immediate loss of Canada, Britain and its powerful Royal Navy refused to join France.