The American Journal of International Law (Volume 10) (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: SOME PHASES OF THE LAW OF BLOCKADE Although the development of international law has tended more and more to confine the operations of war to such as are directed against the armed forces of the belligerents and to relieve the peaceful population from their immediate effects, nevertheless a number of practices employed principally for the purpose of bringing economic pressure to bear upon the general mass of enemy non-combatants, still survive in full vigor and are well recognized as legitimate. One of the most important of this class of operations is blockade. The end of blockade is to cut off trade and intercourse with specified ports or with a specified coast line in possession of the enemy. There have been a few expressions to the effect that a blockade must be limited to particular ports. This doctrine was enunciated by Monroe in 1816 1 and by Clayton in 1849.2 It is, however, a principle now unanimously accepted by writers on international law that a blockade may extend to an entire coast line.3 The Civil War blockade, which affected 3000 miles of coast and the legality of which is unquestioned, set at rest whatever doubt there was upon this subject. The fundamental principle governing blockades is that a blockade in order to be binding must be effective. This rule was formulated in the Declaration of Paris of 1856 in the following language: "Blockades in order to be binding must be effective, that is to say, maintained by a force sufficient really to prevent access to the coast of an enemy." It will be noticed that this statement is somewhat indefinite and that there is no attempt to explain in detail what is necessary to constitute "a force sufficient really to prevent access to the coast of an enemy." This question has given rise to considerable debate and has re...