Morality and Admiralty
Jacky' Fisher, Economic Warfare and the Laws of War
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 10073265 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Avner Offer (0000-0003-4762-0277, corresponding author) |
| Year | 1988 |
| Volume | 23 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 99-118 |
| Publication date | 1988-01-01 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Journal of Contemporary History (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0022-0094 • E-ISSN: 1461-7250 |
| Publisher | SAGE Publishing (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1177/002200948802300106 |
| OpenAlex | W2071909440 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 4 |
| References cited | 3 |
When international law comes into conflict with political or military expediency, it poses a problem for statesmen and soldiers - a problem they sometimes refuse to admit. In 1888, the Royal Navy subjected some seaboard towns to a mock bombardment during its annual manoeuvres. In the controversy that followed, a naval captain wrote to The Times: 'The talk about international law is all nonsense. Who can enforce it?' This opinion was held as firmly by other officers who wrote to the paper, with a single exception.' But if such a dismissive view of the law is granted, especially if it is granted, the problem does not disappear. If the edifice of the law, with its conferences and treaties, its teachers and textbooks, its conventions and platitudes - if all that has no validity, then what purpose does it exist to serve? When Imperial Germany planned to violate Belgian neutrality, it did not flinch from placing raison d'etat above international law. A similar contradiction also bedevilled some British war plans. Before the first world war, the strategic ideas of the Royal Navy clashed with a legal code that the Admiralty had itself helped to negotiate, codify and promote. Two Edwardian Liberal projects came into conflict: first, the plans for economic warfare as a method of overcoming Germany in a future war, and second, the reform of maritime law which took place in stages from 1907 onwards. This contradiction forms the subject of the first part of this essay. The latter part goes on to account for the potency of international law, and why leaders
Contradiction · International law · Law of war · Navy · Negotiation · Neutrality · Political science · Politics · Subject (documents · Historical Economic and Social Studies · Law · Philosophy
| Citations per year | 0.13 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 1996 - 2022 (27) |
| Highly cited | No |