What was the result of the British blockade during the war?

The Great War YouTube Channel

The decisive naval battle that the Royal Navy had hoped for did not happen during World War I, but another naval strategy slowly but surely ground the German economy down. The Great War YouTube Channel looks at the British naval blockade of Germany - and its effects on the German home front - in this special 7 1/2 minute episode

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Introduction

During the Civil War, Union forces established a blockade of Confederate ports designed to prevent the export of cotton and the smuggling of war materiel into the Confederacy. The blockade, although somewhat porous, was an important economic policy that successfully prevented Confederate access to weapons that the industrialized North could produce for itself. The U.S. Government successfully convinced foreign governments to view the blockade as a legitimate tool of war. It was less successful at preventing the smuggling of cotton, weapons, and other materiel from Confederate ports to transfer points in Mexico, the Bahamas, and Cuba, as this trade remained profitable for foreign merchants in those regions and elsewhere.

U.S. Secretary of State William Henry Seward recommended adopting the blockade shortly after the Battle of Fort Sumter in April, 1861 that marked the beginning of Civil War hostilities. Gideon Welles, the Secretary of the Navy, argued for a de facto but undeclared blockade, which would prevent foreign governments from granting the Confederacy belligerent status. President Abraham Lincoln sided with Seward and proclaimed the blockade on April 19. Lincoln extended the blockade to include North Carolina and Virginia on April 27. By July of 1861, the Union Navy had established blockades of all the major southern ports.

South Recognized as a Belligerent

Following the U.S. announcement of its intention to establish an official blockade of Confederate ports, foreign governments began to recognize the Confederacy as a belligerent in the Civil War. Great Britain granted belligerent status on May 13, 1861, Spain on June 17, and Brazil on August 1. Other foreign governments issued statements of neutrality.

As the Union Navy took steps to enforce the blockade, controversies arose with foreign governments over the legality of Union seizures of neutral shipping, as well as other related practices. The most important of these was the arrest of Confederate commissioners that precipitated the Trent Affair in November of 1861, an incident that was resolved by the release of the commissioners one month later. Foreign governments acknowledged the right to stop and search neutral ships in international waters, but were displeased by what they saw as violations of the spirit rather than the letter of the law; Union ships typically determined which ships in Caribbean ports were preparing to run the blockade into the Confederacy, and would wait outside the territorial limits for those ships to clear port. British officials were also concerned about the treatment of crews of seized ships, as well as the seizure of British mail. British Minister to the United States, Baron Richard Lyons, repeatedly voiced his government’s objections to U.S. Secretary of State William Henry Seward, prompting Seward to invite Lyons to a meeting with President Lincoln. During this meeting Lyons persuaded Lincoln to adopt British neutrality policies by promising that the British Government would continue to view the blockade as a legitimate tool of war.

Effects on International Trade

The blockade had a negative impact on the economies of other countries. Textile manufacturing areas in Britain and France that depended on Southern cotton entered periods of high unemployment, while French producers of wine, brandy and silk also suffered when their markets in the Confederacy were cut off. Although Confederate leaders were confident that Southern economic power would compel European powers to intervene in the Civil War on behalf of the Confederacy, Britain and France remained neutral despite their economic problems, and later in the war developed new sources of cotton in Egypt and India. Although British Prime Minister Henry John Temple, Viscount Palmerston, was personally sympathetic to the Confederacy, and many other elite Britons felt similarly, strong domestic abolitionist sentiment in Britain and in his cabinet prevented Palmerston from taking stronger steps toward assisting the Confederacy. Napoleon III of France was also sympathetic to the Confederacy, but wanted to pursue a joint policy with Britain regarding the U.S. Civil War, and so remained neutral. Moreover, Napoleon III’s chief concern during the Civil War years was France’s intervention in Mexico.

As the war progressed and more territory came under Union control, the blockade became more effective, but less of an international issue. However, until the capture of Fort Fisher in 1865, the Confederate Army was still able to obtain some supplies via blockade running ships.

The British Blockade of Germany, or the Blockade of Europe, occurred from 1914 to 1919. It led to Germany declaring waters surrounding Britain to be a war zone, which led to the sinking of a US vessel and the entrance of the United States into the War.

British Blockade of Germany

While a so-called close blockade, where a belligerent stopped traffic with its enemy’s ports by stationing ships within a three-mile limit, was considered legitimate, a distant blockade of the kind in which Britain was engaged was not. In a distant blockade, one side simply declares whole areas of the seas to be off-limits. In this case, the British mined the North Sea so that even neutral ships would travel in peril. So while an opposing force had the right to search ships carrying cargo to its enemy, British mines indiscriminately destroyed anything with which they came into contact. “By sowing mines in international waters,” historian John Coogan explains, “Britain deliberately replaced the belligerent right of visit and search in the North Sea with a new rule: explode and sink.”

Moreover, food intended for civilian use was not considered contraband by anyone—except Britain. But given the relatively mild international response to Britain’s conduct, the British government concluded that “the neutral powers seem to satisfy themselves with theoretical protest.” It was in that spirit that the Germans expected their submarine policy to be accepted as well—but in the case of President Wilson at least, they were in for a surprise.

On February 4, 1915, the German government announced that it would retaliate against the illegal British blockade:

All the waters surrounding Great Britain and Ireland, including the whole of the English Channel, are hereby declared to be a war zone. From February 18 onwards every enemy merchant vessel found within this war zone will be destroyed without it always being possible to avoid danger to the crews and passengers. Neutral ships will also be exposed to danger in the war zone, as, in view of the misuse of neutral flags ordered on January 31 by the British Government, and owing to unforeseen incidents to which naval warfare is liable, it is impossible to avoid attacks being made on neutral ships in mistake for those of the enemy.

The reference to “the misuse of neutral flags” recalled the occasional British practice of decorating their ships with the flags of neutral countries to shield them from attack. By early 1915 Churchill was encouraging such a policy, and crews were being urged to don civilian clothing in order to lure German subs to the surface—where they would then be destroyed. For that reason, and because of the general danger that always exists during wartime, even neutral ships could not be assured of their safety when traveling through the war zone. Thus both the British and, in retaliation, the Germans, were guilty of violating the rights of neutral nations.

By January 1917 the German situation was becoming more and more difficult, with the starvation blockade taking a terrible toll on civilians. The German military managed to persuade the civilian leadership that it was necessary to engage in unrestricted submarine warfare, even if it meant war with the United States. They believed that Germany could sink enough enemy shipping that the war would be won by the time the Americans could send an expeditionary force to Europe.

Not surprisingly, fewer and fewer American ship captains dared venture into the war zone, not wanting to be sunk by a German submarine. Now for those historians who, out of a misplaced devotion to Wilson’s memory, try to claim that the president was a lover of peace who desperately tried to avoid American involvement in the war, it is difficult to account for what Wilson did next. Breaking with all previous American tradition, the president called for arming merchant ships with U.S. Navy guns and staffing them with Navy crews, and instructing them to fire on any surfacing submarine they encountered. Bearing such instructions, American merchant ships headed for the war zone. Four of them had been sunk by the time Wilson requested a declaration of war from Congress in April.

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