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broadly : a restrictive measure designed to obstruct the commerce and communications of an unfriendly nation. 2. : something that blocks. 3. : interruption of normal physiological function (such as transmission of nerve impulses) of a cellular receptor, tissue, or organ.
BLOCKADE definition: 1. the situation in which a country or place is surrounded by soldiers or ships to stop people or…. Learn more.
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- Overview
- International law regarding blockades
- Examples of blockades in war
- Blockade in the American Civil War
- Blockade in World War I
- Bunker control
- Embargoes
- Blacklists and the financial blockade
blockade, an act of war whereby one party blocks entry to or departure from a defined part of an enemy’s territory, most often its coasts. Blockades are regulated by international law and custom and require advance warning to neutral states and impartial application.
In a memorandum prepared for the London Naval Conference of 1908–09, the British government defined a blockade as “an act of war carried out by the warships of a belligerent, detailed to prevent access to or departure from a defined part of the enemy’s coast.” This differs from a so-called pacific blockade inasmuch as the latter is not strictly an operation of war and cannot rightly be enforced against neutrals. The former may be either military or commercial. A military blockade is undertaken to attain some specific military objective, such as the capture of a naval port. A commercial blockade has no immediate military objective but is designed to cause the enemy to surrender or come to terms by cutting off all commercial intercourse by sea. A belligerent may, if it can, blockade the whole of the enemy’s seaboard, but the mere proclamation of a blockade of the whole or any part of the enemy’s coast, without anything more, is of no legal effect. Such proclamations were formerly common and were known as “paper blockades.” A belligerent may not blockade neutral territory unless it is in the actual control or occupation of the enemy, nor may it blockade enemy territory in such a way as to prevent access to neutral territory.
The common law of blockade rests mainly upon principles laid down by Anglo-U.S. prize courts. The more important of these are summarized in the judgments of British jurist Stephen Lushington and Privy Council in an 1854 decision regarding the Franciska, a Danish ship that was seized by the British during the Crimean War.
In order, therefore, to render a blockade valid under the common law and to impose penalties upon neutral vessels for breach of it, the following facts must be proved:
1.A blockade must be duly established: that is, it must be instituted under the authority of the belligerent government. Usually the officer in command of a naval force institutes the blockade under express instructions, but if this is done without them—an unlikely occurrence—this action must be ratified by the government. In either case, although in the British view an official notification is not necessary, neutral powers are notified in practice through diplomatic channels and the blockade is officially proclaimed. The officer in command must also notify the local authorities and foreign consuls.
2.The blockade must be effective. Paper blockades were declared illegal by the Declarations of the Armed Neutralities of 1780 and 1800, and it was to suppress their subsequent continuance that Article 4 of the Declaration of Paris (1856; a supplement to the Treaty of Paris) provided that “blockades, in order to be binding, must be effective.” A blockade, therefore, must be maintained by a force sufficient to truly prevent access to the coasts of the enemy.
3.The blockade must be continuously maintained and impartially enforced against all vessels alike. If interrupted—except when temporarily interrupted by adverse weather—it must be duly reestablished. Certain classes of vessels are exempt from the latter part of this rule, such as neutral warships and neutral vessels carrying distressed seamen of their own nationality, as well as neutral vessels compelled by stress of weather or the need of provisions or repairs to put into the blockaded port. Under the Anglo-U.S. practice vessels which have received a special licence from the government of the blockading state or the commander of the blockading force are also exempt.
A nation fighting for its existence and depending for success on its maritime superiority cannot afford to see one of the main objects for which its naval strength was developed largely discounted by neutrals who, ostensibly taking no part in the struggle, supply its enemy with the sinews of war. The ultimate aim of a sea power is to protect its own sea communications while denying oversea supplies to the enemy. The right of a belligerent to stop contraband of war from going to its enemy has always been admitted, but it is not unnatural that weaker maritime powers and neutrals should prefer that goods carried in neutral ships should be secure from capture. During the hundred years that followed the defeat of Napoleon, Great Britain was almost invariably a neutral and its own commercial interests found profit in this latter view. Thus, by signing the Declaration of Paris in 1856, British diplomats surrendered the right to “paper blockades” in exchange for greater economic opportunities. “I believe,” said Lord Salisbury speaking in the House of Lords on March 6, 1871, “that since the Declaration of Paris, the fleet, valuable as it is for preventing an invasion of these shores, is almost valueless for any other purpose.”
A further check on the use of Britain’s sea power for preventing supplies from going to the enemy was the Declaration of London (1909). Of the items enumerated in this instrument, the absolute contraband list was small, being confined to articles of exclusive military value such as guns and explosives. These were liable to capture when destined for the enemy in neutral ships either directly or through neutral territory and in this case the doctrine of continuous voyage was recognized. The conditional contraband list was composed of articles necessary to the civil population as well as to the military forces, such as food, fuel, and clothing. Such articles were liable to capture only if shown to be destined for the armed forces or to a government department of the enemy state and if they went directly to an enemy port. They could not be touched if discharged in a neutral port for transmission by rail or inland waterway. The evidence required by the declaration to prove the innocence of a cargo could be evaded so simply as to render this class of goods practically immune from capture, and in this case even the doctrine of continuous voyage was disallowed.
During the American Civil War, the Federal navy concentrated upon blockading the seven principal Southern ports. U.S. Pres. Abraham Lincoln had proclaimed a blockade of the Southern coast on April 19, 1861, but for many months it was little more than nominal for lack of ships to enforce it. Although the United States was not party to the Declaration of Paris, the demise of paper blockades was universally recognized, and an effective blockade of the entire Confederacy would be an enormous undertaking. An attempt to close Charleston (South Carolina) harbour by sinking stone-laden hulks in the entrance proved a failure.
Not until the middle of 1862 could the blockade be regarded as even moderately effective. As demand for Southern cotton increased in the English market, vessels specially adapted for blockade-running were built in both English and Southern shipyards. In spite of the Federal navy’s efforts, blockade-running only ceased to be a profitable activity when the ports were actually in Federal hands. Savannah (Georgia) had been practically closed since the capture of Fort Pulaski (December 12, 1862). The loss of Charleston (February 18, 1865) and Wilmington, North Carolina, (January 15, 1865) left the Confederacy without an Atlantic port; by that point, Union naval strength had expanded from just 42 commissioned vessels at the outbreak of war to more than 600.
During World War I Britain sought to justify its interference with trade between neutrals, when such trade might have an enemy destination, on the ground of changed conditions of warfare. British Foreign Secretary Sir Edward Grey’s note to U.S. Secretary of State Robert Lansing on July 23, 1915, asserted that Germany’s “territories are covered by a network of railways and waterways, which enable her commerce to pass as conveniently through ports in…[adjacent] neutral countries as through her own.”
The tactical disadvantage thus faced by a belligerent was not a novel geographical situation, historically speaking. In the Napoleonic Wars water transportation by river and canal through the ports of the Baltic was as substantially effective in supplying France as was the “network of railways and waterways” supplying Germany in World War I. Nevertheless, the modes of application of naval blockades and the effectiveness of blockading naval operations had been greatly changed by conditions of warfare. The extended range of shore batteries, the use of torpedo boats and similar craft, the action of submarines and mines, and the employment of aircraft for bombing and machine-gunning surface craft had made any close blockade or any blockade by stationary vessels impossible. The blockading squadron was accordingly now constrained to operate at some distance from the enemy coast. On the other hand, the efficiency of the blockading forces was increased by the ability of the modern naval vessel to be independent of the weather; to communicate by radio with other vessels of the squadron and with the command; to operate at high speed; to utilize radar, naval aircraft, and submarines for scouting purposes; and to employ radar and searchlights for night operations.
During World War I nearly all the bunker depots in the world, except those under U.S. control, were in Allied territory or were dependent on supplies from such territory. This fact was made the basis for an effective system of licensing supplies of fuels to neutral vessels in Allied ports. Among other things, such supply was made subject to the con...
Embargoes on the export of specified commodities were announced by Germany and France on July 31, 1914, and by Great Britain on August 3, 1914. The practice rapidly expanded both as to commodities affected and territories prohibited. The belligerents evidenced a willingness to relax the embargoes as to specific strategic commodities desired by neut...
In the exercise of its sovereign power over British subjects, the United Kingdom prohibited all transactions by them with neutral merchants “known or suspected to be furnishing supplies to the Central Powers.” Various firms in neutral countries, including the United States, were so blacklisted. The consequences of such a loss of trade constrained m...
- The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
Blockade definition: the isolating, closing off, or surrounding of a place, as a port, harbor, or city, by hostile ships or troops to prevent entrance or exit.. See examples of BLOCKADE used in a sentence.
Meaning & use. 1. 1659–. Originally Military. An act or means of sealing off a place in order to prevent supplies or people from entering or leaving; esp. the blocking of a harbour or patrolling of a coast by an enemy navy. Now also: the blocking of a road or other route as a civilian protest. Cf. siege n. II.6a.
For the purpose of this book, ‘blockade’ refers only to the traditional method of warfare by which a belligerent naval power prevents egress or ingress of all maritime vessel or air traffic to or from the ports of a blockaded state.
