Merchants of Fortune: Negotiating Spanish Neutrality in the American War of Independence

Economic warfare, in the form of commerce predation, was a crucial part of Britain's strategy in the West Indies during the American War of Independence. The rebels relied on a flow of goods provided by Spanish, French, Dutch and British merchants which British warships and privateers tried to stem. Britain's peaceful relations with the other three powers in the region depended greatly on being perceived to justly conduct economic warfare without breaking maritime law or bilateral treaties. British strategy during the war, therefore, was a fine line between crippling the rebels through aggressive commerce predation without giving cause for grievance to the other regional powers. The war opened several commercial opportunities in the form of smuggling and privateering. Merchants intentionally blurred the boundaries between enemies and allies to suit a given commercial venture. These blurred boundaries in the Americas were problematic for British ministers and Admiralty officials entrusted with prosecuting the war. Maritime treaties and international law were constantly reinterpreted in an attempt to avoid ruptures with other colonial powers, achieve Britain's war aims, and lend credence to British policy.

The Royal Navy and Economic Warfare against the United States during the War of 1812

This chapter provides an overview of recent scholarship on the Royal Navy’s economic blockade of the United States between 1812 and 1815. The article shows how the combination of British naval forces and privateers slowly strangled the American economy and nearly immobilized the U.S. Navy. Despite the Royal Navy’s very successful application of economic warfare, it was not decisive. Due to financial exhaustion following the Napoleonic wars, Parliament would not support the naval and military funding necessary to impose the harsh peace terms for which economic warfare had laid the foundation.

Protecting Neutrality at Sea in a Global Age, 1815–1914

This chapter argues for the central importance of the development of the principle of neutrality in explaining the contours of the nineteenth-century age of industrial globalisation and the waging of economic warfare between 1815 and 1914. It highlights how nineteenth-century imperial expansion and industrial growth were dependent on the ability of industrial states to sustain easy access to the open seas, even in time of war. It describes how the naval powers co-ordinated and negotiated the rights and duties of neutrals and belligerents in international law in such a way as to maximise the financial, industrial and imperial advantages from doing so. It also explains how the principles of war avoidance and neutrality maintenance helped to underwrite the global power of Great Britain and the contours of the Pax Britannica.

Neither a Silver Bullet Nor a Distraction: Economic Warfare in Sea-power Theory

This chapter outlines a framework of how to think about the dynamics of economic warfare at sea. Economic warfare features in sea-power theory as an instrument that is often important but usually an afterthought or something taken for granted. Decisive results have been denied to practitioners in the past as the economic pressure of sea power is indecisive. But that does not mean it is a mere distraction or that it cannot be effective as part of a broader grand strategy in war as well as peacetime coercion. The chapter outlines the points of theory that are useful for historical and contemporary studies of economic warfare. These points are taken from a variety of theorists and form a general consensus on the potential and pitfalls of maritime economic warfare in grand strategy.

Epilogue

Economic Warfare in recent times is no longer a strictly maritime concern, but its conduct follows in the wake of its original embodiment as an element of war at sea. In more limited forms it has largely passed from the realm of war to that of diplomacy, where sanctions regimes in various forms remain an established feature of international life. As an element of “total” war, economic warfare now carries considerable moral and escalatory risk, even as the expansion and integration of the world economy have made its effects more difficult to manage. This chapter surveys the contents of the volume in relation to these developments.

Economics, Warfare, and the Sea, c.1650–1945

This chapter ranges over the full period considered in the book to exemplify a number of central themes in the relationship between economic activity and naval warfare. It looks particularly at the British experience, as Britain was the major naval power for much of these three centuries. The chapter examines matters such as the role of the Navigation Acts, naval blockades, convoy systems, and the stimulation to industry and agriculture provided by shipbuilding, naval armaments, and the supply of foodstuffs to ships’ crews.

Convoys and Companies: Privatising Economic Warfare at Sea in the Dutch Republic, 1580–1800

When the Dutch Republic and Habsburg Spain went to war again in 1621, the Dutch were confronted by a well-run campaign against its trade and fisheries mainly operating out of Dunkirk. This chapter studies how the Dutch Republic responded to this threat. It argues that consistent efforts were made to outsource protection of trade and fisheries to those groups which profited from it. Rather than centralising decision-making and monopolise violence at sea, the Dutch state devolved responsibility to lower levels of government, corporations and chartered companies, and private firms. These ships were mainly uses for convoy duty. This chapter argues that this devolution was instrumental in protecting Dutch commerce and provided ships to the fleet in crises such as the Battle of the Downs as well. But from the middle of the seventeenth century this system would deteriorate and more tasks would be taken up by the admiralties themselves.

The Achievement and Cost of the British Convoy System, 1803–1815

The combination of British blockade and convoys has been seen as comfortably defeating Napoleon’s economic warfare strategy, principally his Continental System after 1807. Trade and military convoys were maintained and increased from 1803 and 1815, but this success came at a cost. Winter storms and ice were responsible for more warship and merchant ship losses than by enemy action. Shortages of skilled seamen caused considerable anxiety at the Admiralty. The greatest difficulties were the Danish attacks on convoys between 1809 and 1810 and those from America in 1812 and 1813, dangers which, fortunately for Britain, did not arrive simultaneously. The British naval and mercantile effort survived, but towards the end of the war it was a close-run thing.

Introduction

This chapter explains the rationale for the volume, arguing that historical studies of economic warfare require greater nuance than has traditionally been afforded by an overreliance on conceptions developed by classical naval theorists such as Alfred Thayer Mahan. It presents an overview of the chapters in this collection, which are grouped around four key themes: neutrals and neutrality; the role of non-naval bureaucracies in conducting campaigns of economic warfare; the ways in which non-state actors have interacted with and taken advantage of episodes of economic warfare; and studies of economic warfare as an element in the broader grand strategy of states. The chapter concludes by offering suggestions for new approaches to understanding economic warfare and the sea. A more international approach which deconstructs the workings of the global economy promises rich rewards for new studies. Similarly, interrogating ideas about economic warfare, and the rhetoric surrounding its potency, may offer a better guide to understanding the reasons for its use in the past. Lastly, given that sea power matters chiefly in the ways in which it influences events on land, more must be done to excavate the link between action at sea and how it impinges on military operations on land.

Maritime Power and Economic Warfare in the Far East, 1937–1941

This chapter analyses the operational capability and strategic planning of the Royal Navy, United States Navy, and Imperial Japanese Navy in the period between the outbreak of war in China in July 1937 to the beginning of the general Pacific war on December 7, 1941. It outlines the lack of ability of the Western Powers to use naval power effectively to deter Japan in conjunction with Economic Warfare at sea. It also highlights the inability of the Anglo-Americans to prevent an escalation in tensions during the implementation of economic warfare measures due to a lack of credible maritime power to support that deterrence strategy.