Introduction
Introduction
Strategy, Economics, and the Sea
This chapter explains the rationale for the volume, arguing that historical studies of economic warfare require greater nuance than has traditionally been afforded by an overreliance on conceptions developed by classical naval theorists such as Alfred Thayer Mahan. It presents an overview of the chapters in this collection, which are grouped around four key themes: neutrals and neutrality; the role of non-naval bureaucracies in conducting campaigns of economic warfare; the ways in which non-state actors have interacted with and taken advantage of episodes of economic warfare; and studies of economic warfare as an element in the broader grand strategy of states. The chapter concludes by offering suggestions for new approaches to understanding economic warfare and the sea. A more international approach which deconstructs the workings of the global economy promises rich rewards for new studies. Similarly, interrogating ideas about economic warfare, and the rhetoric surrounding its potency, may offer a better guide to understanding the reasons for its use in the past. Lastly, given that sea power matters chiefly in the ways in which it influences events on land, more must be done to excavate the link between action at sea and how it impinges on military operations on land.
Keywords: Economic Warfare, Grand Strategy, Sea Power, Navies, Alfred Thayer Mahan, Globalisation
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