Saphroneth
Lt. Colonel
- Joined
- Feb 18, 2017
This came up in another thread, so I thought I'd open a new one to try and get information on the matter.
The Union declared that their blockade would be under Paris Treaty rules in the ACW.
Now, Paris Treaty rules were:
(1) privateering was illegal
(2) a neutral flag covered enemy goods except contraband
(3) neutral goods, except contraband, were not liable to capture under an enemy flag
(4) a blockade, to be legal, had to be effective.
Now, going down the list, the first one is largely irrelevant to the ACW. The CSA originally felt that because it hadn't signed Paris then it could commission privateers, but decided against it when the Union got upset about it (despite this being the exact reason the Union had declined to acede to Paris rules beforehand).
The other three have relevance:
(4) is that a blockade has to be effective to be legal. There's scope to argue that this rule was being bent - British ships record testing the blockade to see whether their warships were even noticed, and early on they weren't in some cases - but the meaning of "effective" is slippery and the interpretation used at the time and subsequently was largely "if you're complaining about it, it's clearly effective".
But (2) and (3) are where I think there is a problem.
Because I don't know of any official list of Union contraband. (Paris didn't lay out rules like later treaties would on what could be declared contraband, so there's no fallback list.)
The reason why this matters is that I know of at least one case where a British ship was captured by blockading Union vessels when carrying a cargo of grain. Here both the goods and the flag are neutral, which would imply that unless the grain was explicitly declared contraband then this would be outside the terms of a Paris-rules blockade.
So: does anyone know of a source for what the Union considered to be contraband in the ACW?
The Union declared that their blockade would be under Paris Treaty rules in the ACW.
Now, Paris Treaty rules were:
(1) privateering was illegal
(2) a neutral flag covered enemy goods except contraband
(3) neutral goods, except contraband, were not liable to capture under an enemy flag
(4) a blockade, to be legal, had to be effective.
Now, going down the list, the first one is largely irrelevant to the ACW. The CSA originally felt that because it hadn't signed Paris then it could commission privateers, but decided against it when the Union got upset about it (despite this being the exact reason the Union had declined to acede to Paris rules beforehand).
The other three have relevance:
(4) is that a blockade has to be effective to be legal. There's scope to argue that this rule was being bent - British ships record testing the blockade to see whether their warships were even noticed, and early on they weren't in some cases - but the meaning of "effective" is slippery and the interpretation used at the time and subsequently was largely "if you're complaining about it, it's clearly effective".
But (2) and (3) are where I think there is a problem.
Because I don't know of any official list of Union contraband. (Paris didn't lay out rules like later treaties would on what could be declared contraband, so there's no fallback list.)
The reason why this matters is that I know of at least one case where a British ship was captured by blockading Union vessels when carrying a cargo of grain. Here both the goods and the flag are neutral, which would imply that unless the grain was explicitly declared contraband then this would be outside the terms of a Paris-rules blockade.
So: does anyone know of a source for what the Union considered to be contraband in the ACW?