What if The US was able to export equally during WWI

Total 122 dead. And, of course, the Americans will be almost as offended by an unarmed neutral merchant ship being sunk when nobody dies, as by an unarmed neutral merchant ship being sunk where one person dies and the rest manage to take to the rafts.


How often would the issue arise?

I can't str any case - certainly prior to Feb 1917- where any (non-American) neutral vessel with Americans on board was attacked. And that's the only situation where Wilson is likely to have anything to say.
 
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BooNZ

Banned
You are conflating international law, which has a hugely varied (largely self serving) interpretation with the London Declaration that is relatively defined and clear cut.

No. What article 9 deals with is the notification of a blockade, and indicates that you must announce to neutrals the destinations which run the risk of capture. Nowhere does it say anything about where the blockading force must be.


No: nowhere in the article is it stated that a blockade must be held within a certain distance of the port. A ship travelling to Germany is approaching a blockaded port when it passes through the Channel. Neutral ships coming out are in the same position as other neutral ships in that they "may not be captured for breach of blockade except within the area of operations of the warships detailed to render the blockade effective". However, there is no geographical limit placed on that area of operations.
Contemporary commentary on Art 17 of the Declaration states the following:

...The area of operations of a blockading naval force may be rather wide, but as it depends on the number of ships contributing to the effectiveness of the blockade and is always limited by the condition that it should be effective, it will never reach distant seas where merchant vessels sail which are, perhaps, making for the blockaded ports, but whose destination is contingent on the changes which circumstances may produce in the blockade during their voyage To sum up, the idea of the area of operations joined with that of effectiveness, as we have tried to define it " that is to say, including the zone of operations of the blockading forces" allows the belligerent effectively to exercise the right of blockade, which he admittedly possesses, and, on the other hand, saves neutrals from exposure to the drawbacks of blockade at a great distance, while it leaves them free to run the risk which they knowingly incur by approaching points to which access is forbidden by the belligerent

Further;

'Art. 18. The blockading forces must not bar access to neutral ports or coasts.' "This rule has been thought necessary the better to protect the commercial interests of neutral countries; it completes article 1, according to which a blockade must not extend beyond the ports and coasts of the enemy, which implies that, as it is an operation of war, it must not be directed against a neutral port, in spite of the importance to a belligerent of the part played by that neutral port in supplying his adversary.

The Entente treating the North Sea as its area of operations effectively results in the blockade of the neutral ports of Norway, Sweden, Denmark and the Netherlands, which clearly represents multiple breaches of the intent and wording of the 1909 London Declaration.

As I've shown already, article 1 is simply to say that you can't blockade neutrals. The key statement is article 2, which says:
In accordance with the Declaration of Paris of 1856, a blockade, in order to be binding, must be effective -- that is to say, it must be maintained by a force sufficient really to prevent access to the enemy coastline.
Your examples relate to the Crimean War, which predates the Declaration of Paris [which therefore cannot be under its terms] and further are unlikely to have been distant due to technology of the time and the naval resources aligned against Russia.

Under the terms of the Declaration of Paris, there were a number of blockades that were considered both effective and distant. Some were provided here- perhaps you missed them- and then there was, of course, the Union blockade, in which the Circassian was condemned despite being 7-8 miles off the coast of Cuba and heading towards Havana at the time. As such, if the 1909 Declaration of London was intended to ban distant blockades, they would have stipulated it as explicitly as the 1856 declaration of Paris did with privateering.

The Circassian was seized under the continuous journey doctrine, on the basis that the ultimate destination was New Orleans, which was effectively under close blockade - to the extent land forces were involved! The continuous journey doctrine was effectively outlawed under the Declaration of London, at least to the extent it applied to conditional contraband.

I mean, you could just look at a few secondary sources and confirm that my reading of the primary evidence is correct. For instance:

although in 1914 the international laws governing blockades were in a state of flux, it was generally recognized that the major features of the law in the case of belligerent powers were roughly as follows:
1) Blockades were legal, but only if they were effective – that is, they must be enforced in large part by naval means and “every port of the blockaded country must be effectually blocked by the blockading fleet.” No longer, however, was it necessary to maintain a “close” blockade – the blockading force could be stationed outside of the range of artillery, aircraft, mines, and, hopefully, submarines.

(Lance E. Davis and Stanley L. Engerman, Naval Blockades in Peace and War: An Economic History since 1750, [Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, 2006] p.16)
Again, the reference you provided is referring to international law, not the London convention that was largely ignored. If you refer to page 15 of the reference you provided, you will note that the USA denounced the British Blockade as Illegal in 1915, so even by the much looser 'international' standard, the British were acting illegally - miss that reference?

So you're saying the only reason that the US got more offended at the drowning of 128 Americans than judicial proceedings being held against American ships was Anglo-Saxon solidarity? You don't see any possible way in which one might be considered more offensive than another?

Materially, no

Any set of rules only work if there's a certain element of quid pro quo. The quid pro quo for food's conditional contraband status is that both the blockading power and the importing power allow food to go to civilians. If the importing power tries to bypass the regulations by (for instance) requisitioning vast quantities of domestic food for the use of its army and plugging the gap with imports, that's breaching the spirit of the rules, which is that depriving the enemy military of supplies is a legitimate way to end the war quicker.
Again you are conflating international law, where belligerents did what they could get away with, with the London Convention that sought to put together a coherent set of rules agreed by all the naval powers. There was a doctrine of retaliation where belligerents would react to breaches by enemy powers (which was essentially what was happening in 1914), but 'quid pro quo' has no basis in law. Essentially you're suggesting naval powers can legally ignore rules if they were disadvantageous - why bother with rules at all.

As Bismarck said in 1885:

any disadvantage our commercial and carrying interests may suffer by the treatment of rice as contraband of war, does not justify our opposing a measure which it has been thought fit to take in carrying on a foreign war. Every war is a calamity, which entails evil consequences not only on the combatants but also on neutrals. These evils may easily be increased by the interference of a neutral Power with the way in which a third carries on the war, to the disadvantage of the subjects of the interfering Power, and by this means German commerce might be weighted with far heavier losses than a transitory prohibition of the rice trade in Chinese waters. The measure in question has for its object the shortening of the war by increasing the difficulties of the enemy, and is a justifiable step in war if impartially enforced against all neutral ships.

Now, it becomes clear within fairly short order that the Germans are trying to breach this quid pro quo. For instance, in November 1914 the British stop the Kim and three other steamers. These ships are carrying 19,000,000lb of lard from New York to Copenhagen; however, Denmark only imported 1,459,000lb of lard the previous year. These kind of actions weren't anticipated when the London declaration was drawn up, any more than the Confederacy importing goods through Matamoros and Brownsville was anticipated when the Union launched their blockade.

Firstly, quid quo pro is a legal doctrine you just made up (soo cute). Further, those loopholes were expressly contemplated - refer again to the contemporary commentary above relating to Art 18. ...it must not be directed against a neutral port, in spite of the importance to a belligerent of the part played by that neutral port in supplying his adversary. Further, the British were operating outside international law, since no declaration of Blockade was issued until 1915.
 
Yep. Trying to starve an island surrounded by fish and suitable for growing potatoes was never a very promising tactic.

A lot of fish would have to be caught and a lot of potatoes would have to be harvested every day for the 50+ million population in that tiny island to be fed. Never mind that the Germans laid mines around the coast of Britain. True, Britain had minesweepers but German submarines have the ability to lay new mines while submerged.
 
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