Abstract
BLOCKADE is not among the more dramatic or complicated devices of war. In the general history of war it figures mainly as one of the several means by which a Power (usually a naval one) may seek to enforce its will on its enemy; a means which sometimes has succeeded but at other times has not, and which invites controversy only insofar as its specific share of the aggregate of causes of victory and defeat has often been peculiarly difficult to distinguish from the others. More interesting and much more controversial is its place in the symbiotic histories of the ethical and legal contexts of war. It is within those intimately related contexts that blockade is here to be considered, with particular attention to two things which have often been said about it: first, that it may fairly be seen as a logical antecedent and a practical precursor of the most ruthless and awful practices of the total wars of the twentieth century; second, that it is characteristic of what has been identified as a British, an Anglo-American, or an ‘Anglo-Saxon’ idea of war distinct from (and, as has often also been alleged, morally inferior to) a supposed ‘continental’ one.
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Reference
E. Castrén, The Present Law of War and Neutrality (Helsinki, 1954), p. 37.
H. Meyrowitz, `Réflexions à propos du centenaire de la Déclaration de Saint-Petersbourg’, Revue Internationale de la Croix-Rouge (1968), 549.
A. Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, cited in O. Nippold, The Development of International Law after the World War (trans. A.S. Hershey, Oxford, 1923), p. 123. Nippold’s preface is dated 1917.
A.W. Heffter, Le Droit International de l’Europe (trans. J. Bergson, ed. F.H. Geffcken, Berlin and Paris, 1883), § 119. See also §§ 138–9.
J. Westlake, International Law (2nd edn., 2 vol., Cambridge, 1910–13), II, 257–9.
Franklin was following a `model treaty’ produced by a committee of the Continental Congress in 1776; see S.F. Bemis, Diplomatic History of the United States (5th edition, New York, 1965), pp. 25–6. The status of that 1785 treaty was well assessed by the distinguished Russian jurist, F.F. Martens, at the 2nd Hague Conference, 1907: `it must be remembered that that treaty was signed by a philosopher-king and a prince among philosophers, who for the rest had few illusions concerning the practical effect of their agreement…’, Proceedings of the Hague Peace Conferences (ed. J.B. Scott, 3 vol., New York, 1920–1), III, 823. Barère’s speech, on behalf of the Committee of Public Safety, delivered on 21 September 1793, is in the Moniteur of 23 September.
I have not yet seen it in a contemporary source. Writers who subsequently used it thought it unnecessary to cite an exact attribution. See e.g. J.C. Bluntschli, Revue de Droit International,IX (1877), 540, where he merely refers to Heffter, Droit International,pp. 260–1 n. 3, where no reference is provided for it at all.
That was the figure reported by Keith to the Admiralty in his dispatch of 10 June 1800. The Keith Papers (ed. C. Lloyd for the Navy Records Society, 2 vol., London, 1950), II, 112–13.
st edn., Oxford and London, 1842), p. 221. The lectures were delivered in 1841 and 1842.
P. Kennedy, whose Rise and Fall of British Naval Mastery (London, 1976) provides the best general historical context for this particular study, and J.S. Bromley have reminded me that all grain going to France had been contraband on earlier occasions; most recently, in 1709. Kennedy, whose Rise and Fall of British Naval Mastery (London, 1976) provides the best general historical context for this particular study, and J.S. Bromley have reminded me that all grain going to France had been contraband on earlier occasions; most recently, in 1709. `But France tightened her belt and held out’, H. Richmond, Statesmen and Sea Power (Oxford, 1946 ), p. 93.
G. Lefebvre, The French Revolution from 1793 to 1799 (trans. J. H. Stewart and J. Friguglietti, London, 1967), p. 21. Whether one follows him in accepting this as a `first time’ depends on whether one considers it as a `strategic’ measure, while characterizing the earlier attempts as merely `tactical’ and opportunistic.
J.H. Rose, William Pitt and the Great War (London, 1911), p. 123. Richmond, Statesmen,p. 180 only mentions the matter as an opportunity for demonstrating `that the interpretation of international law is not infrequently governed by expediency rather than by principle’.
See W.N. Medlicott, The Economic Blockade (2 vol., London, 1952–9), I, passim.
W. Galpin, The Grain Supply of England during the Napoleonic Period (New York, 1925), p. 101.
E.g. Desforgues’s reply to Gouverneur Morris, 14 October 1793: French reprisals `will continue only as long as our enemies employ against us, means disapproved by the laws of humanity and by those of war…. You will see on the one hand, the firm determination of destroying several millions of victims, merely to satisfy a spirit of vengeance or of ambition, and on the other, the desire of repelling unjust aggression by severe laws, and a regret at being reduced to that extremity’. State Papers and Publick Documents of the United States (12 vol., Boston, 1819 ), I, 457–8.
One of the weightiest monuments to this, as it now appears, too idealistic trust in the power of neutrality is: The Armed Neutralities of 1780 and 1800: a collection of official documents preceded by the views of representative publicists (ed. J.B. Scott for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, New York, 1918 ). Critics of the principles of those leagues are apparently considered unrepresentative!
This had been emphasized as early as 1802 by J.N. Tetens,Considérations sur les droits réciproques des puissances belligérantes et des puissances neutres sur mer avec les principes du droit de guerre en général (Copenhagen, 1805), p. 176.
J. Corbett, Some Principles of Maritime Strategy (London, 1911), pp. 91, 187, 194.
Cited in A.C. Bell, History of the Blockade of Germany and of the Countries associated with her in the Great War ( produced and printed for official purposes only, H.M.S.O., London, 1937 ), p. 423.
W.R. Schilling, `Weapons, Doctrines and Arms Control: a case from the good old days’, Journal of Conflict Resolution, VII (1963), 206.
The most that can be said on the other side has been well said by T. J. Farer: `Strenuous denials by states accused of intentionally bombing exclusively civilian targets…, the articulate outrage that precipitated those denials, the opinions of influential scholars, United Nations Resolutions, retrospective condemnation of Allied behaviour in World War Two, contrasted with the virtual absence of any defence of this behaviour, all support the judgement that the bombing of civilian targets [he would better have said, the deliberate and exclusive bombing] remains outside the accepted pale of admissible conduct except, perhaps, in interstate wars of national survival and then only as a means of ultimate recourse.’ `Illegal Means for the Conduct of Armed Conflicts’, Revue de Droit Pénal Militaire et de Droit de la Guerre, XII (1973), 167.
E.g. R. Binding, cited by B.H. Liddell Hart, Through the Fog of War (London, 1938), p. 220: `How can one bear it, this German shriek for sympathy to America? Look how cruel it is! England is trying to starve millions of women and children to death!… As if we would not starve out all England in cold blood until the thinnest English Miss fell through her skirts!’
The British government brought this up in answer to Dutch complaints about the intensification of the blockade in November-December 1939. See F. Kalshoven, Belligerent Reprisals (Leiden, 1971), pp. 152–5, 159–60.
because that was the year when British prize courts became markedly more odious to neutrals by their adoption of the `Rule of War of 1756’, denying to neutrals in wartime participation in commerce from which they had been excluded in time of peace.
This convenient practice, much more time-consuming than search at sea, had been declared illegal by the Hague Court as recently as 1913: L. Guichard, The Naval Blockade 1914–18 (trans. C.R. Turner, London, 1930 ), pp. 29–30.
Nippold, International Law,p. 153, cites one Schrameier as writing in Deutsche Warte,5 September 1914: ‘as long as England’s supremacy at sea continues, the principle “England rules the waves” will be synonymous with “England waives the rules”.’
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Best, G.F.A. (1977). Britain and Blockade, 1780–1940. In: Duke, A.C., Tamse, C.A. (eds) Britain and the Netherlands. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-7518-8_7
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