Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
  1. Home
  2. Search

Refine search

Refine search

Access:
Content type:
Publication date:
Apply   From and To filters
Subject: Show more
Journals Show more
Publishers: Show more
Societies Show more
Series: Show more
Collections: Show more

Actions for selected content:

Select all | Deselect all
  • View selected items
  • Export citations
  • Download PDF (zip)
  • Save to Kindle
  • Save to Dropbox
  • Save to Google Drive

Save Search

You can save your searches here and later view and run them again in "My saved searches".

Please provide a title, maximum of 40 characters.
Cancel
×

1 results

  • Bibliographical essays

  • Edited by Jay Winter, Yale University, Connecticut
  • Book:
    The Cambridge History of the First World War
    Published online:
    05 December 2013
    Print publication:
    09 January 2014, pp 672-718

  • Summary

    This chapter describes the British hunger blockade and economic warfare of Germany during the First World War. Economic warfare is a part of strategy, and in the years before 1914 it was the British Government's main strategic approach to the impending threat of European war. It represented a step on the road to total warfare in the twentieth century. Taken together, blockade and the broader measures of economic warfare probably contributed half of the exogenous effect on German food supply; endogenous factors probably accounted for far greater declines in food availability. The long-term shortages of key industrial raw materials and oil, partly caused by the blockade, partly by the Central Powers' declining ability to pay for imports, but mostly by their enemies' ownership of the resources, were more decisive in shifting the military balance than shortages of food.