Mercantilist Import of the Blockade

The blockade undoubtedly had its root in the idea of siege, as the Swedish international jurist, Dr. Nils Söderqvist, has pointed out; and like the siege, accordingly, it aimed in principle at a real cutting-off of the enemy's territory, especially as regards the exclusion of supplies. Here, therefore, the external contrast with the mercantilist commercial policy is very marked; for the latter, as we have seen, aimed to encourage the forcing of goods upon the enemy and would consequently have regarded a consistent application of the blockade principle as a direct advantage to the enemy country in so far as its supplies were crippled, and as an advantage to the home country only in so far as the blockade impeded the foreign sale of the enemy's own goods. This peculiar and important but usually overlooked inconsistency can be explained only by the fact that the practice of blockade arose in the pre-mercantilist period. But with the development and spread of mercantilist ideas the practice necessarily had to reshape itself; and this, in fact, was what actually happened.

The result was twofold. In the first place, blockade measures were employed to accomplish other purposes than those formally intended; and, in the second place, the regulations existing on paper were annulled, either by exceptions or by deliberate laxity in their enforcement, to such an extent as to create an order of things quite different from that which was officially prescribed.