The Industrial Revolution

Bibliographic data

Monograph

Identifikator:: 1027928145

URN:: urn:nbn:de:zbw-retromon-159926

Document type:: Monograph

Author:: Cunningham, William http://d-nb.info/gnd/128907487

Title:: The Industrial Revolution

Place of publication:: Cambridge

Publisher:: The University Press

Year of publication:: 1922

Scope:: xxii S., S. 404-886

Digitisation:: 2021

Collection:: Economics Books

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THE WAR AND FLUCTUATIONS IN MARITIME INTERCOURSE 671 She insisted that neutral vessels should be allowed to trade AD, 11% freely from port to port on the coasts of nations at war, and that all goods belonging to the subjects of belligerent Powers should be free in neutral ships. These principles made it to the dis. impossible for a belligerent to cut off the commerce of an ofthe enemy, and they were favourable to the Americans, since their 294k: trade could go on unchecked. This doctrine was also advan- tageous to the smaller maritime Powers, which could claim a right to continue and develop a carrying trade, when England was hampered by hostilities. Sweden and Denmark immedi- ately adopted the same policy as Russia, and Austria, Portugal and the Two Sicilies also joined the Armed Neutrality, These Powers refused to recognise any blockade which was not rendered effective, and thus the different questions, which that which Vattel laid down when he maintained that ‘the effects belonging to an enemy found on board a neutral ship are seizable by the rights of war’ (Drovts des Gens, book mmr. § 115). * * * The right of a belligerent to confiscate all goods belonging to an enemy found on neutral vessels had been fully recognised in the Consolato del Mare, which chiefly regulated the maritime law of the Middle Ages. It appears then to have been undisputed, and it is not too much to say that it had been asserted and acted on in more modern times by every considerable naval Power. An ordinance of Lewis XIV., indeed, in 1681, went much beyond the English doctrine, and asserted, in accordance with what is said to have been the earlier French practice, the right of a belligerent to confiscate any neutral vessel containing an enemy's goods ; and this was the received French doctrine for the next sixty-three years, and the received Spanish doctrine for a considerably longer period. In 1744, however, a new French ordinance adopted the English rule that the goods, but the goods only, were liable to confiscation. Holland, in her practice and her professions, had hitherto agreed with England, and the right of a belligerent to confiscate an enemy's property in neutral ships was clearly laid down in the beginning of the eighteenth century by Bynkershoek, the chief Dutch authority on maritime law. Russia herself, during her late war with the Turks, had systematically confiscated Turkish property in neutral vessels (Malmesbury, Diaries, 1. 806, 807). The importance, indeed, to any great naval power of stopping the commerce of its enemy, and preventing the influx of indispensable stores into its ports, was so manifest, that it is not surprising that it should have been insisted on; and it is equally nataral that nentral Powers which had little or no prospect of obtaining any naval ascendancy, should have disliked it, and should have greatly coveted the opportunity which a war might give them of carrying on in their own ships the trade of the belligerents. The doctrine that free ships make free goods appears to have been first put forward in 2 Prussian memorial in 1752, at & time when Prussian merchantmen had begun, on some considerable scale, to carry on trade for the Powers which were then at war; but it never received any sanction from the great maritime Powers till France, with the object of injuring England, adopted it in 1778. The accession of Russia in 1780 at once gave it an almost general authority.” Lecky, op. cit. Iv. 156. 1 Koch and Schoell, 1. 477. 479.

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