As we have learned from London Times correspondent William H. Russell's writing, there is a wide assumption in the south that the end of cotton exports will quickly cause Great Britain to come to her senses and recognize and support the new Confederacy. As a determined neutral, Russell doesn't attempt to change minds, but he notes in his diary that the assumption is unrealistic.
Here, the South greatly miscalculated. British and French warehouses were storing over a million bales of cotton from the bumper 1860/61 crop. This is the cotton that kept British and French manufactures in business through 1862. The self imposed cotton embargo by Davis had little effect.
By early 1863 the European manufactures were facing cotton shortages and curtailing production. But the political situation had changed and any hope of British/French intervention to restore the flow of cotton was lost forever. By 1864, captured cotton sold by the U.S. Government, and cotton from India, Egypt and South America had eased the cotton shortage somewhat for the European manufacturers.