NEUTRALITY IN WORLD HISTORY

Neutrality in World History provides a cogent synthesis of five hundred years ofneutrality in global history. Author Leos Müller argues that neutrality and neutralstates, such as Switzerland, Sweden and Belgium, have played an importanthistorical role in implementing the free trade paradigm, shaping the laws ofnations and humanitarianism, and serving as key global centres of trade andfinance. Offering an intriguing alternative to dominant world history narratives,which hinge primarily on the international relations and policies of empires andglobal powers, Neutrality in World History provides students with a distinctiveintroduction to neutrality’s place in world history.

Leos Müller is Professor of History and Head of the Centre for Maritime Studiesat Stockholm University.

Themes in World HistorySeries editor: Peter N. Stearns

The Themes in World History series offers focused treatment of a range of humanexperiences and institutions in the world history context. The purpose is toprovide serious, if brief, discussions of important topics as additions to textbookcoverage and document collections. The treatments will allow students to probeparticular facets of the human story in greater depth than textbook coverageallows, and to gain a fuller sense of historians’ analytical methods and debates inthe process. Each topic is handled over time—allowing discussions of changes andcontinuities. Each topic is assessed in terms of a range of different societies andreligions—allowing comparisons of relevant similarities and differences. Eachbook in the series helps readers deal with world history in action, evaluatingglobal contexts as they work through some of the key components of humansociety and human life.

Agriculture in World HistoryMark B. Tauger

Science in World HistoryJames Trefil

Alcohol in World HistoryGina Hames

Human Rights in World HistoryPeter N. Stearns

Peace in World HistoryPeter N. Stearns

The Atlantic Slave Trade in World HistoryJeremy Black

Aging in World HistoryDavid G. Troyansky

The Industrial Turn in World HistoryPeter N. Stearns

Tolerance in World HistoryPeter N. Stearns

Neutrality in World HistoryLeos Müller

NEUTRALITY IN WORLDHISTORY

Leos Müller

First published 2019by Routledge52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017

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CONTENTS

List of Tables viiiAcknowledgements ix

1 Introduction: Why Neutrality? 1Why Neutrality? 1Arguments for Studying Neutrality 2What Is Neutrality? 4Is There a World History of Neutrality? 6Territorial and Maritime Neutrality 8Is Neutrality Possible? 10Collective Security and Neutrality 13Neutrality and International Relations Theory 14Remarks to the Reader 15Further Reading 16

2 Birth of Maritime Neutrality: 1500–1650 18Introduction 18The Scramble for the Oceans, 1492–1522 19Oceanic Claims and the Asian Political Order 23Oceanic Claims and the European Political Order 26Hugo Grotius and Mare Liberum 30Hugo Grotius and Neutrality: The Bellum Justum Doctrine 35Neutral Flags: From Consolato to the Principle “Free Ship—Free Goods” 36Conclusion 39Further Reading 41

3 Neutrality at Sea: 1650–1815 43Introduction 43International Relations after the Peace of Westphalia 44Trade Wars and Naval Power 46Mercantilism versus Free Trade 48Asian World Order between 1600 and 1800 50Practice of Maritime Neutrality, 1650–1720 53Great Powers, the Rise of the Atlantic World and Eighteenth-CenturyNeutrality 55The American Revolutionary War and the League of ArmedNeutrality 59The Economy of Maritime Neutrality in the American RevolutionaryWar 64Maritime Neutrality in the French Revolutionary Wars 65The Case of the Ship Maria: Maritime Neutrality in a Total War 73The Napoleonic Wars and the End of Maritime Neutrality,1803–1815 75Conclusion 80Further Reading 81

4 The Golden Age of Neutrality: 1814–1914 84Introduction 84The Vienna Congress and After 89International Relations and Internationalism: Ideological Roots 94Neutrality in the New World 101The Crimean War and the Alabama Claims: Codification ofInternational Law 104International Law, Internationalism and Peace Movements,1840–1914 111The Hague Peace Conferences, 1899 and 1907 116Conclusion 120Further Reading 122

5 Neutrality in Trouble: 1914–2016 124The First World War and Neutrality 124The Paris Peace Conference of 1919 and the League of Nations 130Neutrality in the Second World War 135Sweden, Switzerland and Ireland 138After 1945: Neutrality and the United Nations 144The Cold War and Neutrality 149Decolonization of the World and the Non-Aligned Movement 153

vi Contents

The End of the Cold War and Expansions of the European Unionand NATO 157Conclusion 159Further Reading 161

6 Concluding Remarks: Neutrality in the Past, Presentand Future 164

Index 170

Contents vii

TABLES

2.1 Important treaties, wars and events, 1490–1650 203.1 European and northern-European wars and peace settlements,

1648–1815 454.1 Important wars, peace treaties and congresses, 1814–1914 855.1 Important events regarding the history of neutrality, 1914–2016 144

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I am an early modern historian; most of my research is concerned with eighteenth-century Swedish history, often incorporating seventeenth-century developments andglobal perspectives. This is where I feel at home. Writing on nineteenth- andtwentieth-century international relations has left me feel like a tourist visiting anew, unknown big city. Luckily for me I have not lacked my tourist guides, in theforms of books and articles; the literature listed under “Further Readings” isindicative of where I searched and found answers to many of my questions.

Writing a history book is never a solitary activity, particularly if the topic isworld history, and there are many people I wish to thank.

My first thanks go to my first readers. To Hanna Hodacs, who read themanuscript in different versions and who made my English a little bit morecomprehensible. Many arguments of the book developed in talks with Hanna.Thanks to Dan H. Andersen from Copenhagen, whose work on Danish maritimeneutrality inspired me many years ago. Thanks to Silvia Marzagalli from Nice, afriend, a colleague and a very attentive reader. Thanks to Margaret Hunt fromUppsala, who also provided valuable input. Thanks to Mats Hallenberg, who readand commented on the early modern chapters of the book. Thanks to AryoMakko, who read the modern parts of the book and provided valuable remarksand corrections. Thanks to Klas Åmark, who commented extensively on the partregarding neutrality in the Second World War. Thanks to Steve Murdoch, withwhom I spent much time talking about privateers and neutrality.

I have been working on the history of neutrality for two decades. I amindebted to numerous people I met over the years: colleagues, historians andstudents, who inspired and challenged me with their comments and questions. Iwould particularly like to mention two sessions/conferences that made an impact.In 2012, together with Jari Eloranta and Peter Hedberg, I organized a session atthe World Economic History Congress in Stellenbosch, focusing on the impact

of warfare on small neutral states from a long historical perspective. In 2017 Iparticipated in the conference on neutrality, “Lessons from the Past and Visionfor the 21th Century”, organized by Pascal Lottaz. Gathering leading experts onthe history of neutrality, it provided me with a much-needed, up-to-date contextfor this book.

My final thanks go to my language editor, Jeremy Lowe in England, to Peter N.Stearns for encouraging me to write a book for the Routledge series Themes inWorld History, and my Routledge editor and editorial assistant, Eve Mayer andTheodore Meyer.

x Acknowledgements

1INTRODUCTION

Why Neutrality?

You know as well as we do that right, as the world goes, is only in questionbetween equals in power, while the strong do what they can the weaksuffer what they must.

Melian Dialogue, Athenians on the address of Melianswho refused to ally with Athens1

What is this thing. Neutrality? I do not get it. There is nothing to it.The Swedish king Gustavus Adolphus on the address of the

Brandenburg neutrality 16302

Why Neutrality?

On 22 April 1793, President George Washington issued the first Proclamation ofNeutrality of the United States. It declared that the United States would stayimpartial in the European conflict between revolutionary France and GreatBritain and its allies. For much of the long lasting French Revolutionary andNapoleonic Wars (1793–1815) the United States stayed out of the conflict; onlythe short War of 1812 against the British broke the American stance. In 1914,President Woodrow Wilson declared the neutrality of the United States in the FirstWorld War, and the United States upheld this position for almost three years—until March 1917. US Congress passed further Neutrality Acts in 1935, 1936, 1937and 1939, faced with the possible outbreak of what would become the SecondWorld War, but, following Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor the United Statesdefinitely abandoned its position. Today, it seems remarkable that the UnitedStates had stayed out of major wars for almost 150 years—for most of its history.Neutrality does not seem compatible with the United States’ role in the SecondWorld War, the Cold War and the recent War on Terror. The US President

George W. Bush’s statement after 9/11 that “Every nation, in every region, nowhas a decision to make. Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists” madeit clear that neutrality was not an option in that conflict. Why had it been anoption in other wars?

Neutrality is a strange thing. It has been dismissed as either unrealistic orimmoral—or both. But in spite of its long history of being despised, it still is aliveand still considered as a foreign policy option. European long-term neutralnations, past and present, are successful small states. Switzerland, Sweden,Norway, Denmark, the Netherlands, Austria, Ireland and Finland are among thebest countries to live in. They are socially and culturally developed, and theyenjoy high living standards. They have well-functioning welfare states. Theyfunction, too, as competitive economies, free-traders, well-endowed to prosper intoday’s global economy. We find these states at the top of the ranking lists ofmost competitive economies, the best countries to live in, the wealthiest nations.And they all share a long history of neutrality. Moreover, for many of them,neutrality is an important component of their modern national identity. I do notclaim that neutrality is the reason for these countries’ success, but, apparently,neutrality has not been a disadvantage. In fact, neutrality offers a plausibleexplanation for a few of their competitive advantages.

In addition to the European nations, and the long-standing impartiality of theUnited States, there are many Latin American nations that have adopted thispolicy. Nevertheless, it is more difficult to find examples of neutrality in theworld outside the Americas and Europe. But the so-called Non-Aligned Move-ment, consisting of 120 developing countries, is siding with the principle of non-alignment, closely related to neutrality. The movement includes many influentialUN nations that wished to stay impartial throughout the Cold War of the 1960sand 1970s. And neutrality has recently been discussed as a possible solution to thetensions between Vladimir Putin’s Russia and NATO in countries such asUkraine and Moldova. Thus, neutrality still is a relevant, rational and realisticoption for many nations.

Arguments for Studying Neutrality

This book presents four major arguments for the study of neutrality. First, I arguethat neutral states have played an important role in shaping the modern worldorder by providing an alternative to the early modern warlike and unpredictableaspects of international relations. These processes took place mainly in the eight-eenth century, one of the most bellicose in human history. After the end of theFrench Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars in 1815, neutrality became astandpoint in many international conflicts, and it functioned as a leading principlein international relations. And, in spite of the carnage of the two world wars andthe Cold War, and in spite of the widespread criticism and rejection of it,neutrality is still a part of international relations in the modern world. We

2 Introduction

cannot understand the history of international relations without seriously con-sidering this political stance.

Second, I argue that neutral states were key agents in implementing the free-trade paradigm in international trade. Neutral maritime states fought for theirrights to trade and navigate freely during wartime, with anyone and anywhere.They also employed legal arguments for ensuring the freedom of the sea, and theytook steps to enforce their trade rights. Even in this case, the struggles toimplement laws guaranteeing the freedom of the sea and the free-trade paradigmtook centuries to carry out. By the mid-nineteenth century, the two paradigmswere embodied in international law.

Third, I suggest that neutral states were and are important trading, shippingand industrial nations, and represent centres of finance. They have had animportant role in the world economy for at least three centuries. Neutral tradehas often been perceived as a morally wicked phenomenon, a way of makingmoney through others’ bloodshed. But that kind of trade has always been a partof international trade over the course of centuries in which warfare was a normalstate of things; neutral trade, in fact, often reduced the damaging economicimpact of warfare. In general, the economic development of small, free-tradingneutrals has been better than, or as good as, the development of great powers andstates with grand military ambitions.

The fourth claim is that neutrality is a key concept of international law, and inthis way neutrality has also played a role in the rise of internationalism, humani-tarianism and the peace movement, and so has contributed to the foundations ofthe twentieth-century international organizations such as the League of Nationsand the United Nations. More than great powers, small neutral nations areinterested in the establishment of the rule of international law (law of nations),because this law guarantees their sovereignty and independence. Since the earlyeighteenth century, lawyers of neutral nations have built up the body of interna-tional law and argued for its implementation in inter-state relations. Neutralityhas been at the core of internationalism.

What is decisive for these four arguments is neutrality’s connection to the sea, thefact that the leading neutrals until the nineteenth century were maritime nations.Trade and shipping under neutral flags were especially important in the eighteenthcentury, when many maritime states (the Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, theUnited States, Tuscany, Portugal and others) started to apply a long-term neutralstrategy. And the early modern maritime states continued with their policy ofneutrality throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This connectionbetween maritime trade and neutrality might seem odd today, considering that themost typical neutral is the landlocked Switzerland, while the Netherlands, Denmarkand the United States are no longer neutral. But what the early modern maritimeneutrals shared with the Switzerland of today is the concern with free trade, peacefulinternational relations, and a safe and stable world order.

The chronological focus of the book is on the five centuries between 1500and the present, a short period in the context of world history. This does not

Introduction 3

mean that there had not been neutrality before 1500. Neutrality existed inantiquity, as well as in medieval times. But I argue that 1500 marks a crucial breakingpoint. After 1500, neutrality became a key component of international relations.After 1500, we cannot understand the working of international relations—the worldorder—without also understanding neutrality. This post-1500 role of neutrality isrelated to two early modern European “inventions”: the rise of the specificallyEuropean sovereign state and its system—which I call here, for reasons of conve-nience, the Westphalian state system—and the fact that the oceanic space afterColumbus and Magellan was divided between territorial and international waters.The two points of departure, the birth of Westphalian sovereignty and its state systemand the invention of international waters (“the free sea”) will receive much attentionin the book.

The dilemmas of neutrality policy in the twentieth century have made usignorant of neutrality’s role in shaping the modern world. When looking at thefailures of neutrality in the First and Second World Wars and the abortive Leagueof Nations in the inter-war period 1919–1939, it is easy to dismiss neutralityas irrelevant, immoral and unrealistic. The aim of this book is to redress thismisjudgement.

What Is Neutrality?

Undoubtedly, the meaning of neutrality varies depending on context and time, orthe agent employing the term. We might start with the simple statement thatneutrality is a policy employed in war. Strictly speaking, neutrality does not existin peacetime. But because warfare has characterized a great part of our history,not least in the last five centuries, neutrality is a relevant and useful concept in aworld dominated by military conflicts. Neutrality assumes an armed conflictbetween two legally equal sovereign parts, and where a third (neutral) part staysimpartial. Of course, in modern times the term neutrality is used also in peace-time. Here, neutrality means either long-term non-alignment, a pledge that onestate makes to not ally itself with any part in a future war; or there is permanentneutrality, a declaration of neutrality by a state directed to the internationalcommunity. The legal or political status of non-alignment or declarations ofpermanent neutrality vary, but in principle they both imply that the neutral statewill stay neutral in an upcoming armed conflict. The policy of neutrality inpeacetime has been adopted especially in the post-war period, in the Cold War,which, in fact, was a “cold” conflict between the West and the East.

The concept of neutrality in war thus also presumes a definition of “war” in aconsistent way. War is here understood as an armed conflict between twosovereign polities. The sovereignty (equality in legal terms) is founded on ageneral acknowledgement by the international community that the belligerentstates are sovereign states. Uprisings, revolutions or civil wars taking place on theterritory of a sovereign state are not truly legitimate wars. Such a distinctionbetween a legitimate war between two sovereign states and an internal conflict

4 Introduction

within a sovereign state is crucial in declarations of neutrality, as we will see.Neutrality cannot be declared in a civil conflict because this would, de facto,mean that the neutral state acknowledges the sovereignty of either of thesefighting parts. This was a matter of great significance in the transformation ofthe American Revolutionary War from a rebellion of British colonial subjectsinto a legitimate war: when the French acknowledged the United States assovereign nation and entered the war on the US side, neutrality became legaloption. With the rising number of internal conflicts (civil wars) in the twentiethcentury, questions about the legality of a war and thus options about adopting aposition of neutrality have once again been raised.

In a legal sense, special focus must be put on the inactivity and impartiality of aneutral state. If a neutral state abstains from taking a stance in favour of one partin an armed conflict, then it is crucial it breaks all its contacts with both sides andstays inactive, or at least treats the belligerents in an equally “impartial” way. Inthis way the seventeenth-century Dutch scholar Hugo Grotius understoodneutrality, and in this way the duties and rights of neutrals were defined in theHague Conferences of 1899 and 1907 which drew up the law of neutrality. Butsuch a legal ideal of impartiality has been far removed from the reality of maritimeneutrality in early modern times, or from the realities of the Swiss or Swedishtrades with Nazi Germany. We have to put different understandings of neutralityinto proper historical context.

The differences in the meaning of neutrality are not only related to legal,economic, political or other contexts, but also to the fact that neutrality has beenemployed in different ways by different states. In a very broad sense, we can makedistinctions between three different uses of the term, which also correspond withdifferent periods of time. The most traditional understanding of neutrality impliesa one-sided declaration of neutrality in a war. This does not necessarily mean thatthe neutral state would stay neutral during the whole war, and it did not compelthe state to stay neutral in an ensuing conflict. Such “occasional” neutrality wasemployed in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, for example by England,Sweden and Denmark. The same kind of occasional neutrality was frequentlyemployed by states in the nineteenth century. It was adopted by both greatpowers and small states. Many nineteenth-century wars started with multipledeclarations of neutrality by states not engaged in a conflict. This was the caseeven at the beginning of the First and Second World Wars. The purpose of suchoccasional neutralities was to contain the conflict and, hopefully, draw economicor strategic benefits from it. Such neutrality expressed only a short-term realistpolicy that did not entail any long-term commitment.

The second kind of neutrality has been adopted by “long-term voluntary”neutrals. These were states that adopted neutrality as a long-term strategy in theirforeign policy. Long-term neutrality was typically adopted by small states withlimited military resources. The first long-term neutrals were states with consider-able maritime interests, such as the Netherlands and Denmark. From the lateeighteenth century even Sweden and the United States could be added to the

Introduction 5

group. What distinguished the long-term neutrals from the occasional ones wasthe declaration of neutrality as a long-term aim of their foreign policy, and theendeavour to institutionalize neutrality as a part of international law, internationalcooperation or international institutions. Long-term voluntary neutrals were veryactive members of the international community in the nineteenth century, whenneutrality thrived. What is important to stress here is that long-term neutrals,even if they did not take part in great-power wars, made substantial investmentsin their defence capabilities, making their neutrality tenable.

The third type of neutrality, permanent neutrality, was an outcome of thenineteenth-century conference system. It was neutrality guaranteed to a neutralstate by an agreement among great powers. Two classical cases of permanentneutrality were Switzerland and Belgium. Swiss neutrality was guaranteed byBritain, France, Russia, Prussia and Austria at the Vienna Congress of 1814–1815. Belgium first became an independent state in 1830, and its internationalneutral status was guaranteed by European great powers in upcoming years. Inboth cases, permanent neutrality was a solution that was supposed to minimizetensions between the great powers. Permanent neutrality was also firstemployed in plausible conflict zones between the great powers. For centuries,the territories of the Low Countries (the Netherlands and Belgium) made up aconflict zone between France, the German states (the Habsburg Empire,Prussia and Germany) and Britain. Also, the Swiss cantons were a vulnerablearea of conflict between French, Austrian and Italian interests. In the case ofSwitzerland, “neutralization” was a great success. Neutralization from abovewas transformed into a long-term neutrality that provided the Swiss federationwith a new kind of international legitimacy, and the Swiss with a nationalidentity. Notably, maritime neutrality did not play any significant role in thepermanent neutralization of these two states.

In the nineteenth century, neutralization by a great-powers agreement hadbeen tested in a number of conflict situations outside Europe, for example in thecases of the Suez Canal or Siam (present-day Thailand), where British and Frenchimperial interests clashed. After 1945, permanent neutrality has been used toresolve tensions between the Soviet bloc and the West in Austria and Finland. InAustria’s case, permanent neutrality was an outcome of the agreement betweenthe wartime Allies. In the Finnish case, permanent neutrality was a condition ofthe treaty between Finland and the Soviet Union which normalized Finland’ssituation after the Second World War. Both in Ukraine and Moldova, two post-Soviet republics with a troublesome relationship with Russia, neutralization hasbeen discussed as possible way to negotiate between Russia and NATO.

Is There a World History of Neutrality?

World history has too often been written as a history of empires, ancient ormodern, and their relations and conflicts. After 1500, the narrative of worldhistory has been about European great powers, their colonial expansion, and

6 Introduction

nineteenth-century imperialism. The role of small states, even European ones, hastoo often been explained away or ignored. But an exclusive empire or great-power perspective on world history makes it incomprehensible why small stateshave survived, and indeed thrived. I argue here that small states have played amore important role in the history of the world order than we usually admit, andthat neutrality is an important part of that argument. We have to remember, too,that many nations altered their status over time. For example, Sweden, Denmarkand the Netherlands were great powers in the early modern period, but havemore recently turned into long-term neutrals. On the other hand, the UnitedStates was a “peripheral” neutral nation throughout most of its history. In thisrespect, by focusing on small neutral nations, this book offers an alternativeperspective on world history.

The history of neutrality here is studied mainly through the lens of Europeanneutrality. This is not a sign of the author’s Eurocentric perspective, but aconsequence of the points of departure of the book, the European state modeland its international relations, and the sea. The European sovereign state hasbecome, over time, a model for the majority of the world’s nations, andconsequently the European state system has become diffused all over the world.I call this system the Westphalian state system, even though I do not mean thatthe European sovereign state or the European state system was invented in 1648in a kind of “Big Bang” of the Peace of Westphalia. The European sovereignstate and its system is an outcome of a drawn-out evolutionary development, notof a single peace settlement.

This European state system is not the only one; there had been other,competing systems in the world. Naturally, European and non-European statesrelated to each other before 1648, and we have to pay attention to these relations.Nevertheless, neutrality as it is understood here entered international relationsfirst in the context of the European state system at this time. This neutrality basedon sovereignty and equality could not have existed in international relationsbetween, for example, the Chinese Ming Empire and Asian or European politiesbecause China did not recognize European sovereignty. Also, neutrality onlybecame a relevant policy in the eighteenth-century Atlantic world, and indeed itwas adopted by the young American Republic. In Chapter 4 we will see thatneutrality became a favourite policy of the United States and the newly indepen-dent states in South America once these nations became acknowledged membersof the extended Westphalian state system.

Neutrality also became an important tool in solving conflicts between colonialpowers outside Europe. By a “neutralization” of conflict zones in Asia and Africa,European states avoided armed conflicts and extended their international orderacross the world. A typical example of such a solution was the neutralization ofthe Congo Basin in the Berlin Conference of 1884–1885 in the final stages of thecolonization of Africa. It was no accident that the administration of Congo wasgiven to the leading European neutral state, Belgium. Also, the neutralization ofimportant waterways and canals, such as the Suez Canal, can be mentioned in this

Introduction 7

context. Neutrality was a great tool for reducing tensions between Europeanpowers; it worked especially well for Great Britain and France. But it did notwork for non-European states. When Korea, in the 1890s, asked the Europeanpowers to guarantee its neutrality—and thus also its sovereignty—according tothe same neutralization procedure they had made in the case of Belgium, thegreat powers declined. In 1910 Korea was occupied by Japan.

Finally, the formation of the League of Nations and the United Nations in thetwentieth century made sovereignty a global phenomenon. The process ofdecolonization and the transformation of former colonies into sovereign nationstates increased the number of states enormously. The majority of the new stateswere small polities that preferred to stay impartial throughout the Cold War.The Non-Aligned Movement is a good example of this global appeal ofneutrality in a bipolar world. And the concept did not disappear after the endof the Cold War. The present-day world is multipolar, consisting of almost 200sovereign nations, which makes international relations very complex andunpredictable. Neutrality, impartiality, and non-alignment are reasonable for-eign policy choices in such a world.

Territorial and Maritime Neutrality

In the long history of neutrality there is a crucial distinction between neutrality atsea, here also called maritime neutrality, and territorial neutrality. Territorialneutrality is related to a state’s declaration that its territory is neutral, meaningthat belligerents are forbidden to enter or to use it. In everyday language this isthe most usual understanding of neutrality. When we talk about the violations ofBelgian, Dutch, Danish and Norwegian neutralities during the Second WorldWar we mean that Germany violated their territorial integrity. Territorialneutrality is most difficult to uphold simply because it presupposes a small neutralstate’s capability to stop the antagonist. This difficulty is a strong reason whyneutrality is perceived as being an unrealistic policy.

Most of the tangible history of neutrality between 1500 and 1800 actuallyconcerns maritime neutrality, however, it also was important in the nineteenthcentury and throughout the First and Second World Wars. Maritime neutrality isabout the use of neutral flags in international waters. Ships of a neutral state cruisethe open seas to trade and carry goods to or from other neutrals, but often alsobelligerents. A precondition of neutral shipping is “the freedom of the seas”—namely, the freedom of every sovereign nation to sail and trade in internationalwaters.

The practice of maritime neutrality has been a part of trade in the Mediterra-nean since the middle ages, since which time there have been generally acknowl-edged principles of what is legal and illegal in neutral shipping. Neutral shippingis and has been a matter of fact. Nevertheless, following the boom in Mediterra-nean trade in the fifteenth century, three issues emerged that formed the core ofdisputes between maritime neutrals and belligerents. The first one concerned the

8 Introduction

rights of ships under a neutral flag to carry any kind of goods, even the propertyof a belligerent, on board. Belligerents dismissed the idea that neutrals had suchrights to help their enemies. The second issue concerned the rights of neutralships to sail to and from any port or coast, including ports or coasts of states atwar. From the belligerents’ point of view, even this right was a help to theirenemies and did not constitute impartiality in war, or proper neutrality. Thisdebate came to revolve around the nature of the blockading of enemy ports andcoasts. The third question related to supplies of war necessities, so-called contra-band of war. The belligerents maintained that any war necessities that could bedelivered to their enemies and instantly used in war (arms, guns, ammunitionsand money) were to be confiscated as contraband of war.

Maritime neutrality often concerned states at the periphery. As overseas tradecould not be limited to wartime theatres (conflict zones), maritime neutrality wasapplicable to small states away from the conflict zones. Sweden and Denmark, atthe northern periphery of Europe, as well as Portugal on the Atlantic seaboard ofEurope, were such cases. We can look at this in the same way as the UnitedStates’ neutrality in the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. All this,naturally, changed with the developments that have taken place over the last fewcenturies with the changed “global” character of warfare. In the Cold War, forinstance, Sweden was very much in the conflict zone between NATO and theSoviet Union.

Obviously, neutral trade and shipping in wartime had always been veryprofitable; the more useful the supplies were for belligerents the more profitablethe business. But the trade with belligerents contradicts the claim of impartiality,identified above as a condition of proper neutrality. This did not stop ship-owners and merchants from neutral countries carrying on such trade. Ships underneutral flags have transported goods to and from belligerents and between neutralsin the past. The belligerents themselves—their navies and privateers—have doneeverything to stop these trade flows; in order to damage their enemies they haveseized neutral ships, confiscated their cargoes, and declared them as trophies(prizes) at special wartime courts, so-called prize courts. Privateering was anordinary business, and many ship-owners and merchants switched to it whentheir country got involved in a war. They applied for privateering licences (letterof marque), and equipped and manned their ordinary vessels for the business. Inspite of some superficial similarities, privateering was not piracy, and privateerswho breached the licensed regulations were punished.

The neutrals, on their part, endeavoured to pursue their right to trade and sailfreely, acted for the release of confiscated ships and, if that failed, to seekcompensation. Long-term shipping under neutral flags developed into a highlyregulated wartime business in which neutral ship-owners and merchants balancedthe risks of being taken as a prize against the benefits of making hefty wartimeprofits. This was the contested practice of maritime neutrality until the mid-nineteenth century—privateering as a tool of naval warfare was outlawed first in1856, in the Paris Declaration Respecting Maritime Law.

Introduction 9

There are two factors that altered the role of maritime neutrality after the endof the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. First, Britain’s naval power,in combination with the expansion of British trade and shipping, made maritimeneutrality much less interesting as a “business strategy”. The seas in the nine-teenth century became peaceful. In a maritime world dominated by Britain’sRoyal Navy, a neutral flag no longer gave a competitive advantage. Moreover,over the course of the century Britain endorsed the core principles of themaritime neutrality stance: free trade, prohibiting of privateering, freedom of thesea, and international law—exactly the same standards that Britain had refused torecognize for two centuries. In the nineteenth century Britain also became aspecial “neutral”—it repeatedly declared its neutrality at the outbreaks of con-tinental wars and eventually began a foreign policy of “splendid isolation”. At thesame time, Britain undoubtedly was the world’s dominant maritime power andthe world’s leading economy, characteristics that did not square with the idea ofneutrality as being equivalent to a weak, third-rank power.

Second, a new transformation of war into the “total wars” after 1914 madeneutrality much more vulnerable. The belligerents stopped respecting the neu-trality of smaller states. Armies overran their territories and neutral ships weresunk. It was the German attacks on neutral US shipping that drew the world’sbiggest neutral state into the conflict, eventually shifting the military balance infavour of the Allies. The cases of Nazi Germany’s invasions of Belgium, theNetherlands, Denmark, Norway and others show that, at the time, militarypriorities weighed heavier than respect for neutrality.

The fact that much recent writing on neutrality concerns the modern uses of it(especially the First and Second World Wars and the Cold War) conceals theessential differences between territorial and maritime neutralities. Their historicaltrajectories, the ways they have been practised and understood in business, lawand diplomacy, provide two fairly distinct stories. The focus on maritimeneutrality in this book explains these differences and provides an argument forpaying more attention to neutrality’s maritime past. This is also a step towards along-term history of neutrality in practice. By focusing on early modern maritimehistory we are able to see how neutrality was a realistic option before 1800, andwe are able to trace the transition from early modern maritime neutralities tonineteenth-century neutrality.

The history of neutrality from the bottom up, the evolution of practice ofneutral trade and shipping, offers a complementary history to those of the top-down discourses on the history of neutrality as either unrealistic or immoral.Exactly this part of the narrative is often missing from the surveys of the history ofinternational relations.

Is Neutrality Possible?

Almost every book on neutrality opens with a few quotes by political thinkers,historians or statesmen scorning neutrality as an impossible stance. The Melian

10 Introduction

Dialogue in Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War is a classical case. TheMelians, inhabitants of the island of Melos, pronounced their neutrality in thewar between Sparta and Athens. Following their siege of the island (416 BC),the Athenians dismissed Melian neutrality on the basis of the rights of thestronger power. They expressed their position in these words: “The strong dowhat they can and the weak suffer what they must.” After the sack of Melos, asThucydides wrote, the Athenians killed all adult Melos males and sold all thewomen and children into slavery.

We find the same “realist argument” against the neutrality of a weaker state inMachiavelli’s The Prince, and in almost every work on political science mention-ing neutrality since then. Failures of neutrality in the twentieth century, from theGerman invasion of neutral Belgium in 1914 to the Nazi occupations of neutralNorway, Denmark, Belgium and the Netherlands, have been explained as due toa lack of political realism. From a realist point of view, for a weaker state,neutrality is a foolish policy.

Neutrality is seen as immoral too. In the Second World War, neutral nationssuch as Switzerland and Sweden traded with both the Allies and the Axis Powers.They avoided occupation and wartime destruction, and they made handsomeprofits into the bargain. They were late, it is said, in condemning both Nazicrimes in occupied countries and the Holocaust. The Swiss banks even harboureddeposits of gold stolen from the Jews, which, decades after the war, led to legalproceedings against the banks. Ireland, another democratic neutral in the SecondWorld War, was accused of being blind to Hitler’s policy. Over the course of theCold War, Sweden’s policy of neutrality was dismissed as deceitful, because whileSweden publicly declared its neutrality between the West and the East, it secretlycollaborated with NATO.

The view of neutrality as immoral and dishonest goes back far in history,even if the grounds for dismissing neutrality’s immorality has shifted over time.The accusation goes to the ancient concept of the “just war”—bellum justum.According to this original understanding of war, war is justifiable only if itscause is just, and only if the war’s aim is to restore peace in society. Frommedieval times onwards, warfare has consequently been perceived as a strugglebetween Good and Evil. In such a struggle, it is immoral not to choose a side,to stay impartial. In Dante’s Inferno, there is a place at the gate to Hell reservedfor the angels who were not able choose between God and the Devil—theneutrals. The argument for a “just war”, of course, is the argument forreligious warfare, from the crusades to the religious wars of the sixteenth andseventeenth centuries.

The discourse of a “just war” entered the early modern debates on the rightsand duties of belligerents; in a moral and legal sense, then, it did play animportant role in the development of the legal concept of neutrality. We willpay greater attention to it when we look at the foundations of international lawand the role of neutrality in it (Chapter 2). Only by questioning the “just war”argument did neutrality become a legitimate option in violent conflicts between

Introduction 11

states. So, for much of the recent five centuries the question of justification forwar has been closely related to neutrality.

Undoubtedly, some wars were perceived as less “just” then others, openingthe way for neutrality to be seen as a morally and legally appropriate stance. If awar between two states is perceived merely as a means of continuation of theirforeign policy, then neutrality is a morally acceptable, and even superior, option.For example, when we look at the character of the eighteenth-century strugglefor hegemony between Great Britain and France, these wars were not perceivedas particularly just or righteous by outsiders. The chaotic inter-state relations ofthe century were challenged by ideas of an alternative peaceful order (forexample, in the Perpetual Peace of Immanuel Kant); or, as a more concretealternative, by outspoken declarations of neutrality and the cooperation betweenneutral states (leagues of armed neutrality). The foreign policy of the UnitedStates until 1917—in fact until 1941—is a good example of the combination of amoral and realistic neutral stance.

The Cold War is another example of a war that is not perceived as a just war.From the perspective of the Third World countries (former colonies) it was onlyanother struggle for world hegemony between the West and the East. The Non-Aligned Movement started as an outcome of this hegemonic understanding of theCold War. The initiative, raised by a Yugoslavia trapped in the Cold Warbetween the West and the Soviet Union, grew in the 1970s and 1980s. Notably,no European neutrals became members.

On the other hand, when we look at the French Revolutionary Wars, theSecond World War, or the more recent Global War on Terrorism, the language of a“just war” is there, in spite of the fact that the term itself is not in use. Such just warstoo often slip into the language of religious warfare. President George W. Bush’s“crusade” on terrorism, declared in 2001, is perhaps a most recent example, but wewill find the same righteous religious language in many other modern conflicts.

To make the moral dilemma of neutrality easily comprehensible, we maycompare it with the bad-guy-good-guy plot of action movies. Think of a movieabout a fight between a drug cartel and the police. Drug cartels are bad guys, thepolice are good guys. The line between good and evil is clearly defined; the fightagainst drugs is just and fair; and a neutral stance in such a fight is unquestionablywrong. Participants have to choose a side. But what if the police are corrupt, or,even worse, if the police turn into another drug cartel, just using the label to hidetheir proper aim, namely to destroy the rival cartel? And what about if the headof the state authority fighting drugs cooperates with the police, without acknowl-edging they too are bad guys? The narrative becomes too complex to make easychoices. Reality, and good movies such as Steven Soderbergh’s Traffic (2000),reflects on the complications associated with deciding who is bad and who isgood. In such a situation, standing aside—staying impartial or neutral—can beseen not only as an acceptable stance, but in fact can be seen as the morallysuperior stance. A neutral can be a good guy. As we will see in this book, theargument for neutrality has often been grounded in exactly this standpoint.

12 Introduction

Collective Security and Neutrality

One of the reasons why neutrality in the twentieth century became ambiguous isthe contradiction between collective security and neutrality. While neutralitypresupposes impartiality in a war, collective security expresses the state’s obliga-tion to secure peace with other members of the international community,together and even with the use of violent means. By their collective action,member states of international communities guarantee a peaceful world order.The idea of collective security has a very long history, but it was first embodiedin international law in the Covenant (Charter) of the League of Nations in 1920.After the First World War, collective security was seen as a better tool for guarantee-ing small states’ territorial integrity and security than neutrality, and the majority ofneutral states enthusiastically joined the League. The contradiction between neutral-ity and collective security meant that European neutrals abolished their neutrality intandem—for a while. As soon as it became obvious—in the early 1930s—thatcollective security did not work, the small states returned to neutrality.

Membership of the United Nations also means, in principle, that the UNmembers guarantee to defend each other in case of illegitimate aggression(Chapter VII, Charter of the United Nations). This claim is contradictory toneutrality, and it had been the reason why the world’s most quintessentialneutral—Switzerland—refused to join the UN until 2002, over 50 years afterthe UN’s foundation. But other neutrals, such as Sweden, Finland, Ireland andAustria, joined the UN early. Here, apparently, UN membership has not beenantithetical to a neutral stance.

The varying ways in which neutral states treat the contradiction betweenneutrality and collective security illustrates the distance between a narrow,legalistic understanding of neutrality and the foreign policy practices of neutralstates. It shows, in a way, the paradox of neutrality as an expression of isolation-ism and internationalism at the same time. At present, this paradox is vivid in theinternational activism of present-day neutrals. Neutral nations do play a veryimportant role in the UN, in the UN peacekeeping missions all around theworld, and in the UN agencies. Neutral cities such as Geneva and Vienna housethe UN headquarters. Switzerland and Sweden, together with Poland and theCzech Republic (former Czechoslovakia)—the so-called Neutral Nations Super-visory Commission—have even been supervising the Armistice Line betweenSouth and North Korea since the Korean War (1950–1953). This is the reasonwhy Sweden mediates the diplomatic contact between the United States andNorth Korea.

This combination of strong international engagement and policy of neutralityis nothing new. The odd combination of internationalism and isolationism hadcharacterized much of the United States’ foreign policy since its first declarationof neutrality in 1793. We will find it, also, in the collaboration of neutral states,the leagues of armed neutralities, in the eighteenth century. In the past, neutralstates perceived themselves as representatives of better and more just international

Introduction 13

relations. They stayed for an alternative peaceful international order in contrast togreat powers’ struggles for hegemony. This was indeed an expression of inter-nationalism, not isolationism. This feature of engaged international neutralitybecame predominant in the nineteenth century, the age of neutrals, and it stillmarks present-day commitment to the UN.

Neutrality and International Relations Theory

Since the end of the Second World War, the study of international relations hasbeen an expanding field. At present, the field stretches across political science,history, diplomatic history, area studies, peace and conflict studies, and relateddisciplines. Neutrality is a policy applied in international relations and so,naturally, the field has much to say about it. I acknowledge here the importanceof international relations theory for the study of neutrality, but I have also tomaintain that the often abstract approach of international relations theory missesthe complexity of the historical situations in which neutrality has been appliedsince the early modern period. In general, academics in international relations donot pay enough attention to small or weaker states which often adhere to aneutrality policy.

Contemporary international relations theory does include a number of theore-tical models applicable to a study of neutrality, including realism, neo-realism,idealism, liberalism, Marxism, constructivism, and feminism and gender studies.From the point of view of the history of neutrality, two contradictory models arethe most relevant: realism and liberalism. Realism, and its recent version, neo-realism, links the functioning of international relations to power. State power (inprinciple meaning military power) is the only real factor that decides relationsbetween states. International relations have two major forms: balance of powerand hegemony. If the powers of states within the state system are relatively equal,meaning that no state has the capability to dominate other states, then interna-tional relations are characterized by a balance of power. This also involves usingthe term “multilateral system”. Such a situation is unstable, as the relative powersof states are shifting, leading to a world order characterized by a high probabilityof conflict. This is the world of Machiavelli’s Italian city states, the world of theWestphalian state system of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and verymuch our post-2000 world. The number of states that define the balance ofpower is limited; the eighteenth-century balance of power in Europe, forinstance, was decided by five great powers: Britain, France, Austria, Prussia andRussia. Obviously, this was a very unstable world order entailing many conflicts.

The other system of international relations built according to realism ishegemony. This is a situation in which one powerful state dominates all otherstates. Such a system is defined by hierarchical international relations and thesubordination of the foreign policy of non-hegemonic states. Something inbetween is a bipolar world dominated by two great powers vastly more powerfulthan other states. The Cold-War balance of power between the United States and

14 Introduction

the Soviet Union and their allies is a typical example of such a bipolar world. Butthe nineteenth-century balance of power between Russia and the British Empire,established for a few decades in the aftermath of the Vienna Congress of 1815, is asimilar case.

The problem with realism, and the two ideal models of the world state systemthat it proposes, is that it attributes a limited, if not in fact insignificant, role toweak or small states. Neutrality as a foreign policy of weak or small states does notfit well into any of the two models. As regards the balance of power conditionscharacterized by unpredictability, neutrality is perceived to be an unrealisticpolicy, as the Athenians explained to the Melians (notably, Thucydides isconsidered the founding father of realism theory). In a hegemonic world order,characterized by hierarchical relations between a dominant power and dominatedpolities, neutrality is not possible.

Liberalism, in contrast to realism, in international relations has an essentiallyoptimistic view of human nature and the human ability to cooperate. It is basedon the postulate that human beings have an interest in collaborating and coexist-ing in peace. This, indeed, is what characterizes human society. Also, liberalismacknowledges that international relations can be unpredictable, but because theactors (men or states) share common interests the outcome can be a peacefulworld order. Not surprisingly, theorists of liberalism in international relationstheory relate to Adam Smith and his concept of the market economy/anarchy, aswell as to Immanuel Kant and his ideas of perpetual peace and internationalcommunity. Liberalism stresses the significance of commonly acknowledged rulesof international relations—in other words, the significance of international law.

Like realism, liberalism also entered the field of international relations as acoherent theory after the Second World War, and it aims primarily to explain thefunctioning—and failures—of the international state order in the twentiethcentury. The classical liberal arguments about human nature, the humanizingrole of trade, international law, etc., have been incorporated, as we will see, intothe early modern theories of neutrality. But neutrality and its long history did notattract much attention in modern writing on liberalism in international relations.

As a historian of the early modern world, I am inspired by international relationstheory. I see the theory as an important tool illuminating general features of theworld order, and the role of neutral states in it. But I also see theory as too abstractand too abridged to understand the full complexity of the history of internationalrelations. I believe that this lack of interest in the role of small and neutral states leadsto misunderstanding how international relations have worked, and how they worktoday. This lapse is even more apparent if we zoom in on neutrality.

Remarks to the Reader

Any book on neutrality in world history over a 500-year period must involvemaking compromises. On the one hand, the book is too short to give the reader adetailed overview of the different narratives and arguments that the subject

Introduction 15

requires; and you will, for sure, feel that the reasoning is often too compressedand basic. But each chapter includes a list of suggested reading that you areinvited to study and discuss. On the other hand, the book requires from you agood basic knowledge of the political and diplomatic history of Europe and theworld since 1500. It presupposes that the reader has the necessary knowledge ofthe Age of Discoveries, the Dutch Rebellion (1568–1648), the Thirty Years War(1618–1648), the Anglo-Dutch Wars of the late seventeenth century and thedrawn out Anglo-French conflict, stretching from the Glorious Revolution(1688) to the Vienna Congress (1814–1815)—and of course, the history of thetwo world wars and the Cold War.

The history of neutrality, naturally, is also a history of wars, but this book isnot meant to sit on a military history shelf in a library. I am interested in theaspect of neutrality which is “non-participation” in war. I mainly study how theneutrals’ wartime experience shaped international relations, and especially howwars’ endings—peace settlements—formed the frameworks of international rela-tions, and how neutrality fitted in to that process.

Unlike the major bulk of literature on neutrality, I devote half of the book, twolong chapters, to neutrality before the Vienna Congress (Chapters 2 and 3), and Ispend Chapter 4 looking at the rather peaceful nineteenth century. This focus onthe period 1500–1815, and then on “maritime neutrality”, offers the most originalargument of the book. I am convinced that such a broad chronological scope isnecessary to put neutrality in its proper historical context, to show that its history isricher, longer, more progressive and more ethical than its post-1945 historyindicates. The twentieth century, which normally dominates studies of the historyof neutrality, is described in just one chapter (Chapter 5). There is plenty ofpublished research that an interested reader may turn to if they are interested inthis period, as suggested in the extended section on further reading.

Notes

1 Thucydides, The history of the Peloponnesian War, book 5, Chapters 84–116.2 Mikael af Malmborg, Neutrality and state-building in Sweden, Palgrave, Basingstoke, 2001,

28.

Further Reading

The best way to approach the vast field of literature on neutrality is to start with theoverviews of its long history. Perhaps the most comprehensive introduction to thelegal aspects of neutrality, and the law of nations, is provided in Stephen Neff’sworks, for example, The rights and duties of neutrals: a general history, Juris, New York,2000 and War and the law of nations: a general history, Cambridge University Press,Cambridge, 2005. Neff provides a useful introduction to the history of neutrality,explaining at length, for example, the contradictions between the arguments for“just war” and war for “reason of state”. A classic work on neutrality before the

16 Introduction

Second World War is Philip C. Jessup and Francis Deák (eds), Neutrality: its history,economics and law. Vols.1–4, Columbia University Press, New York, 1935–1936,with much focus on the British policy towards neutrals, and on US neutrality.Maartje Abbenhuis has written an excellent history of the nineteenth-centuryhistory of neutrality: An age of neutrals: great power politics, 1815–1914, CambridgeUniversity Press, Cambridge, 2014. I have adopted here Abbenhuis’ typology ofneutrality (occasional, long-term voluntary, and permanent) for the whole periodcovered by the book. A short but penetrating introduction to the problems ofneutrality is provided by Efraim Karsh, Neutrality and small states, Routledge,London, 1988.On the issue of the morality and realism of neutrality in the twentieth century,

see especially Neville Wylie (ed.), European neutrals and non-belligerents during theSecond World War, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2002. Mikael afMalmborg provides an excellent survey of Sweden’s neutrality since early moderntimes in Neutrality and state-building in Sweden, Palgrave, Chippenham, 2001.Regarding international relations theory, as a historian I found especially useful

John G. Ikenberry’s works After victory: institutions, strategic restraint, and the rebuildingof order after major wars, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 2001 and Internationalrelations theory and the consequences of unipolarity, Cambridge University Press, Cam-bridge, 2011. But there are many other introductions and textbooks, from theclassic Kenneth N. Waltz, Theory of international politics, Waveland Press Inc., LongGrove, 2010 [1979] to more recent volumes: Cynthia Weber, International relationstheory: a critical introduction, Routledge, London, 2005 and Joseph M. Grieco, JohnG. Ikenberry and Michael Mastanduno, Introduction to international relations: enduringquestions and contemporary perspectives, Palgrave Macmillan, Houndmills, 2015. Toillustrate the moral superiority of neutrality in a war between equally “bad”belligerents, I highly recommend Steven Soderbergh’s movie Traffic from 2001.

Introduction 17

Introduction The best way to approach the vast field of literature on neutrality is to start with the overviewsof its long history. Perhaps the most comprehensive introduction to the legal aspects ofneutrality, and the law of nations, is provided in Stephen Neff�s works, for example, The rightsand duties of neutrals: a general history, Juris, New York, 2000 and War and the law ofnations: a general history, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2005. Neff provides auseful introduction to the history of neutrality, explaining at length, for example, thecontradictions between the arguments for �just war� and war for �reason of state�. A classic workon neutrality before the 17Second World War is Philip C. Jessup and Francis Deák (eds),Neutrality: its history, economics and law. Vols.1�4, Columbia University Press, New York,1935�1936, with much focus on the British policy towards neutrals, and on US neutrality.Maartje Abbenhuis has written an excellent history of the nineteenth-century history ofneutrality: An age of neutrals: great power politics, 1815�1914, Cambridge University Press,Cambridge, 2014. I have adopted here Abbenhuis� typology of neutrality (occasional, long-term voluntary, and permanent) for the whole period covered by the book. A short butpenetrating introduction to the problems of neutrality is provided by Efraim Karsh, Neutralityand small states, Routledge, London, 1988. On the issue of the morality and realism of neutrality in the twentieth century, see especiallyNeville Wylie (ed.), European neutrals and non-belligerents during the Second World War,Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2002. Mikael af Malmborg provides an excellentsurvey of Sweden�s neutrality since early modern times in Neutrality and state-building inSweden, Palgrave, Chippenham, 2001. Regarding international relations theory, as a historian I found especially useful John G.Ikenberry�s works After victory: institutions, strategic restraint, and the rebuilding of order aftermajor wars, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 2001 and International relations theoryand the consequences of unipolarity, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2011. Butthere are many other introductions and textbooks, from the classic Kenneth N. Waltz, Theoryof international politics, Waveland Press Inc., Long Grove, 2010 [1979] to more recentvolumes: Cynthia Weber, International relations theory: a critical introduction, Routledge,London, 2005 and Joseph M. Grieco, John G. Ikenberry and Michael Mastanduno,Introduction to international relations: enduring questions and contemporary perspectives,Palgrave Macmillan, Houndmills, 2015. To illustrate the moral superiority of neutrality in a warbetween equally �bad� belligerents, I highly recommend Steven Soderbergh�s movie Trafficfrom 2001.

Birth of Maritime Neutrality For a short but useful introduction to the �politicization� of oceans after 1500, see ElizabethMancke, �Oceanic space and the creation of a global international system, 1450�1800�, inDaniel Finamore (ed.), Maritime history as world history, University Press of Florida,Gainesville, 2004, 149�166; and, by the same author, �Early modern expansion and thepoliticization of oceanic space�, The Geographical Review 1999, 89 (2), 225�236. See alsoJames Kraska, Maritime power and the law of the sea: expeditionary operations in worldpolitics, Oxford University Press, New York, 2011. A good introduction to the Portuguese inthe Indian Ocean and Asia is provided by Sanjay Subrahmanyam, The Portuguese empire inAsia, 1500�1700: a political and economic history, Longman, London, 1993. On the Spanishbeginnings in the Pacific Ocean, see Arturo Giráldez, The age of trade: the Manila galleonsand the dawn of the global economy, Rowman & Littlefield, Lanham, 2015. The history ofPortuguese chart-making and specifically Cantino�s Planisphere is the subject of JoaquimF.F.A. 42Gaspar, �From the Portolano chart of the Mediterranean to the latitude chart of theAtlantic� (PhD thesis, Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Lisbon, 2010, available online). On thetreaties between European and Asian polities and an early modern concept of law of nationssee C.H. Alexandrowicz, David Armitage and Jennifer Pitts, The law of nations in globalhistory, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2017. For the claims to territorial waters in sixteenth-century Europe, see Michael Feakes,�Formative influences on the evolution of international law: a case study of territorial waters(1550�1650)� (PhD thesis, University of Hull, Hull, 1994, available online). There is vast literature on Hugo Grotius on his role as the father of international law, as wellas on his Mare liberum and the critical responses to it in Scotland, England, Spain andPortugal. An easily available edition of this classic work is Hugo Grotius, The free sea,

translated by Richard Hakluyt. With William Welwod�s Critique and Grotius�s Reply, with anIntroduction by David Armitage. Liberty Fund Inc., Indianapolis [1609] 2004. See, too, MartineJulia van Ittersum and Hugo Grotius, Profit and principle: Hugo Grotius, natural rightstheories and the rise of Dutch power in the East Indies, 1595�1615, Brill, Leiden, 2006. HelenThornton, �Hugo Grotius and the freedom of the seas�, International Journal of MaritimeHistory 2004, 2, 17�38; Helen Thornton, �John Selden�s response to Hugo Grotius: theargument for closed seas�, International Journal of Maritime History 2006, 2, 105�127; MónicaBrito Vieira, �Mare Liberum vs. Mare Clausum: Grotius, Freitas, and Selden�s debate ondominion over the seas�, Journal of the History of Ideas 2003, 3, 361�377; Martine Julia vanIttersum, �Mare Liberum versus the propriety of the seas? The debate between Hugo Grotius(1583�1645) and William Welwood (1552�1624) and its impact on Anglo-Scotto-Dutch fisherydisputes in the second decade of the seventeenth century�, Edinburgh Law Review 2006,239�276. Hans W. Blom (ed.), Property, piracy and punishment: Hugo Grotius on war andbooty in De iure praedae: concepts and contexts, Brill, Leiden, 2009. On Welwod andScottish maritime claims see, too, Steve Murdoch, The terror of the seas? Scottish maritimewarfare 1513�1713, Brill, Leiden, 2010. David Armitage, The ideological origins of the British Empire, Cambridge University Press,Cambridge, 2000, provides a superb survey of the English, Scottish and British arguments onoceanic claims, free trade, and free and enclosed seas from the age of Elizabeth. OnConsolato del Mare and the development of maritime law, see the relevant part of Stephen C.Neff, The rights and duties of neutrals: a general history, Juris, New York, 2000, and Kraska(2011). On maritime law in the Baltic Sea, see Carsten Jahnke, �The maritime law of the BalticSea�, in M. Balard (ed.), La Mer dans l�Histoire, Le Moyen �ge [The sea in history, the medievalworld], The Boydell Press, Woodbridge, 2017, vol. II, 572�584. Feakes (1994) pays significantattention to the Danish claims on territorial waters in the Baltic and the North Atlantic. OnDanish claims in the North Atlantic and Greenland, see Janus Møller Jensen, Denmark andthe crusades, 1400�1650, Brill, Leiden, 2007, 159�203.

Neutrality at Sea On the role of naval power and the transformation of warfare in early modern time naval andtrade wars see Jan Glete, Navies and nations: warships navies and state building in Europeand America 1500�1860, 2 vols, Stockholm University, Stockholm, 1993 and Warfare at sea:1500�1650: maritime conflicts and the transformation of Europe, Routledge, London, 2000;David Ormrod, The rise of commercial empires. England and the Netherlands in the age ofmercantilism, 1650�1770, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2003; and N.A.M. Rodger,The command of the ocean: a naval history of Britain, 1649�1815, Allen Lane, London, 2004.Istvan Hont provides, in his Jealousy of trade: international competition and the nation-statein historical perspective, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 2005, an excellent reviewof mercantilism and trade wars, and the contradictory views of commerce in the seventeenthand eighteenth centuries. See also Philip J. Stern and Carl Wennerlind (eds), Mercantilismreimagined: political economy in early modern Britain and its empire, Oxford University Press,New York, 2014. On the Asian political order and Europeans (treaty-making, chartered companies, states) seeAdam Clulow�s work, especially his The company and the shogun: the Dutch encounter withTokugawa Japan, Columbia University Press, New York, 2014. On international law as a toolof colonialism see C.H. Alexandrowicz, David Armitage and Jennifer Pitts, The law of nationsin global history, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2017, and Martti Koskenniemi, WalterRech and Manuel Jimenez Fonseca (eds), International law and empire: historicalexplorations, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2017. 82Discourses of maritime neutrality in the eighteenth century have recently attracted muchattention; see Antonella Alimento (ed.), Trade and neutrality: Europe and the Mediterraneanin the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Franco Angeli, Milan, 2011, and KoenStapelbroek (ed.), Trade and war: the neutrality of commerce in the inter-state system,Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies, Helsinki, 2011. Stapelbroek�s edited volumeprovides an introduction to eighteenth-century thinkers on neutrality, Emer de Vattel, MartinHübner and Ferdinando Galliani. A useful review of the eighteenth-century great power systemis provided by H.M. Scott, The birth of a great power system, 1740�1815, Pearson Longman,New York, 2006. The practice of Scandinavian maritime neutrality is best covered in the workof Ole Feldbaek, �Eighteenth-century Danish neutrality: its diplomacy, economics and law�,Scandinavian Journal of History 1983, 8, 3�21. See also Ole Feldbæk, Denmark and the armed

neutrality 1800�1801: small power policy in a world war, Copenhagen University,Copenhagen, 1980, and many other works by the same author; also Dan H. Andersen andHans-Joachim Voth, �The grapes of war: neutrality and Mediterranean shipping under Danishflag, 1747�1807�, Scandinavian Economic History Review, 2000/2001, 5�27, and Leos Müller,Consuls, corsairs, and commerce: the Swedish consular service and long-distance shipping,1720�1815, Uppsala University, Uppsala, 2004. For a history of �the First Salute� in St. Eustatius see Barbara W. Tuchman, The first salute,Knopf, New York, 1988. A history of the First League of Armed Neutrality is studied from theBritish perspective by Isabel de Madariaga, Britain, Russia, and the armed neutrality of 1780:Sir James Harris�s mission to St Petersburg during the American revolution, Yale UniversityPress, New Haven, 1962, and in Leos Müller�s chapter in Stapelbroek (2011). Thetransformation of the French Revolutionary Wars into a total war is the theme of David A.Bell, The first total war: Napoleon�s Europe and the birth of modern warfare, Bloomsbury,London, 2007. On the practice of maritime neutrality in the French Revolutionary Wars seethe Forum of the International Journal of Maritime History, February, 2016. Also see anintroduction by Silvia Marzagalli and Leos Müller, ��In apparent disagreement with all law ofnations in the world�: negotiating neutrality for shipping and trade during the FrenchRevolutionary and Napoleonic Wars�, International Journal of Maritime History 2016, 28 (1),108�117. On Danish trade and shipping, see Pierrick Pourchasse, �Danish shipping in theMediterranean during the Revolutionary wars (1793�1795)�, International Journal of MaritimeHistory 2016, 28 (1), 165�179. On Swedish trade and shipping, see Leos Müller, �Swedishmerchant shipping in troubled times: The French Revolutionary Wars and Sweden�s neutrality1793�1801�, International Journal of Maritime History 2016, 28 (1), 147�164. And on US tradeand shipping, see Silvia Marzagalli, ��However illegal, extraordinary or almost incredible suchconduct might be�: Americans and neutrality issues in the Mediterranean during the FrenchWars�, International Journal of Maritime History 2016, 28 (1), 118�132. Marzagalli alsoprovides data on the US trade and shipping in the Mediterranean. The Swedish convoy crisisof 1798�1799 and its legal consequences (�case Maria�) is studied in detail by Leos Müller(2016), see above. Eli F. Heckscher, 83 The continental system: an economic interpretation,The Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1922 is a classic study of Napoleon�s continental system,written from a critical liberal perspective. For a more nuanced recent understanding see, forexample, Ronald Findlay and Kevin H. O�Rourke, Power and plenty: trade, war, and the worldeconomy in the second millennium, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 2007. On thehistory of naval blockades see Lance E. Davis and Stanley L. Engerman, Naval blockades inpeace and war: an economic history since 1750, Cambridge University Press, New York,2006. For US maritime neutrality see Silvia Marzagalli (2016), above, and François Crouzet,�America and the crisis of the British imperial economy, 1803�1807�, in John J. McCusker andKenneth Morgan (eds), The early modern Atlantic economy, Cambridge University Press,Cambridge, 2000, 278�315. This chapter also pays much attention to the original writings of a number of seventeenth-and eighteenth-century authors. All the mentioned works are available on the internet. Martin Hübner, De la saisie des batimens neutres, ou du droit qu�on les nations bellligérantesd�arrêter les navires des peuples amis, The Hague, 1759; Immanuel Kant, Toward perpetualpeace: a philosophical sketch, 1795; Thomas Paine, Compact maritime, under the followingheads: I. Dissertation on the law of nations. II. On the Jacobinism of the English at sea. III.Compact maritime for the protection of neutral commerce, and securing the liberty of theseas. IV. Observations on some passages in the discourse of the judge of the Englishadmiralty, City of Washington, 1801. J.F.W. Schlegel, An examination of the sentence in the case of the Swedish Convoypronounced in England on the eleventh of June, 1799, translated from the Danish, London,1800; Robert Ward, A treatise of the relative rights and duties of Belligerent and neutralpowers in maritime affairs: In which the principles of armed neutralities, and the opinions ofHubner and Schlegel are fully discussed, London, 1801.

The Golden Age of Neutrality The Vienna Congress and its role in the nineteenth-century international system attractedmuch attention among historians and political scientists. For a political science perspectivesee especially John G. Ikenberry, After victory: institutions, strategic restraint, and therebuilding of order after major wars, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 2001. For a recenthistorical assessment based on participants� writings and correspondence see Adam

Zamoyski, Rites of peace: the fall of Napoleon & the Congress of Vienna, HarperCollins, NewYork, 2007. Henry Kissinger studied, as a diplomatic historian, the building of the nineteenth-century international system. See for example his A world restored: Metternich, Castlereaghand the problems of peace 1812�1822, Phoenix, London, 2000 (orig. 1957); but see also hisrecent World order, Penguin, London, 2015. A classic diplomatic history of the transformationof the old regime is provided by Paul W. Schroeder in his The transformation of Europeanpolitics 1763�1848, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1994, and his �Did the Vienna Settlement rest ona balance of power?�, American Historical Review, 1992, 97 (2), 683�706. For a globalperspective on the age of revolutions see David Armitage and Sanjay Subrahmanyam (eds),The age of revolutions in global context, c. 1760�1840, Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke,2009. Maartje M. Abbenhuis, An age of neutrals: great power politics, 1815�1914, CambridgeUniversity Press, Cambridge, 2014 provides a major framework for the view of nineteenth-century neutrality presented in this book. But I made great use of Stephen C. Neff, The rightsand duties of neutrals: a general history, Juris, New York, 1232000, and Mikael af Malmborg,Neutrality and state-building in Sweden, Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke, 2001. The relationship between nineteenth-century internationalism and ideologies (Mazzini, Marx,Cobden) set out here is based mainly on Mark Mazower�s superb Governing the world: thehistory of an idea, Allen Lane, London, 2010. For reading Mazzini, see the new editedtranslation, Giuseppe Mazzini, A cosmopolitanism of nations: Giuseppe Mazzini�s writings ondemocracy, nation building, and international relations, Princeton University Press, Princeton,2009. Regarding Marxism, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The Communist manifesto (1848)provides the best introduction. For the history of the North�s blockade of the Confederacy look at Lance E. Davis and StanleyL. Engerman, Naval blockades in peace and war: an economic history since 1750,Cambridge University Press, New York, 2006. For the codification of international law,internationalism and the world peace movement, see relevant chapters in Abbenhuis (2014),and Mazower (2010). Specifically for the British peace movement see Paul Laity, The Britishpeace movement, 1870�1914, Clarendon, Oxford, 2001. Martti Koskenniemi�s The gentlecivilizer of nations: the rise and fall of international law 1870�1960, Cambridge UniversityPress, Cambridge, 2001, focuses on legal theorists and lawyers of international law in thelate nineteenth century. For a recent global perspective on the Crimean War see Andrew C. Rath, The Crimean Warin imperial context, 1854�1856, Palgrave Macmillan, New York, 2015. C.A. Bayly, The birth ofthe modern world, 1780�1914: global connections and comparisons, Blackwell, Oxford, 2004is a standard work on the nineteenth-century transformation of the world. See too Kevin H.O�Rourke and Jeffrey G. Williamson, Globalization and history: the evolution of a nineteenth-century Atlantic economy, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 1999, which pays attention to thebreakthrough of liberalism and its impact on economic globalization in the mid-century. At the end of the chapter I mention Norman Angell�s Great illusion. It was first published in1910, with the full title The great illusion: a study of the relation of military power in nations totheir economic and social advantage, London. There are many later editions.

Neutrality in Trouble The twentieth-century history of neutrality is a huge and rapidly expanding field. Unlikeprevious periods, neutrality is often studied from specific national perspectives, and oftenfocuses on neutrality in the Second World War or the Cold War. I list here books that focusboth on relevant incidents, organizations, treaties, etc., and on national stories of neutrality. Agood general introduction is provided by Efraim Karsh, Neutrality and small states,Routledge, London, 1988. Excellent 162general introductions to the First World War, theParis Peace Conference and its consequences are: Margaret MacMillan, Peacemakers: theParis Conference of 1919 and its attempt to end war, John Murray, London, 2003; andMargaret MacMillan, The war that ended peace: the road to 1914, Random House, NewYork, 2013; Niall Ferguson, The war of the world: history�s age of hatred, Allen Lane, London,2006. For the economic aspects of the First World War see Stephen N. Broadberry and MarkHarrison (eds), The economics of World War I, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge,2005. Specifically on neutrals and neutrality in the early nineteenth century see Johan denHertog and Samuël Kruizinga (eds), Caught in the middle: neutrals, neutrality, and the FirstWorld War, Aksant, Amsterdam, 2011; and Rebecka Lettevall, Geert Somsen and SvenWidmalm (eds), Neutrality in twentieth-century Europe: intersections of science, culture, and

politics after the First World War, Routledge, New York, 2012. For the origins of the League of Nations and the United Nations see Susan Pedersen, Theguardians: the League of Nations and the crisis of empire, Oxford University Press, Oxford,2015; Paul M. Kennedy, The parliament of man: the past, present, and future of the UnitedNations, Vintage, New York, 2006; Mark Mazower, No enchanted palace: the end of empireand the ideological origins of the United Nations, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 2009;and Mark Mazower, Governing the world: the history of an idea, Allen Lane, London, 2010. For the interwar policy of neutrality see Nils �rvik, The decline of neutrality 1914�1941: withspecial reference to the United States and the Northern neutrals, Cass, London, 1971. On theinter-war pacifism form and Kellogg-Briand Pact see Oona Anne Hathaway and ScottShapiro, The internationalists: how a radical plan to outlaw war remade the world, Simon &Schuster, New York, 2017. An excellent survey of neutral policies in the Second World War from different nationalperspectives is provided by Neville Wylie (ed.), European neutrals and non-belligerentsduring the Second World War, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2002; and ChristianLeitz, Sympathy for the devil: neutral Europe and Nazi Germany in World War II, New YorkUniversity Press, New York, 2001. Specifically for Swedish policy: Klas �mark, �Sweden:Negotiated neutrality�, in Richard J. B. Bosworth and Joseph A. Maiolo (eds), The Cambridgehistory of the Second World War. Vol. 2, Politics and ideology, Cambridge University Press,Cambridge, 2015, 350�373. On Irish neutrality in the Second World War see Robert Fisk, Intime of war: Ireland, Ulster and the price of neutrality 1939�1945, Deutsch, London, 1983;Bryce Evans, Ireland during the second world war: farewell to Plato�s Cave, ManchesterUniversity Press, Manchester, 2015. For the economic policy and trade of Switzerland,Sweden and Spain in the Second World War see Eric Golson, �The economics of neutrality:Spain, Sweden and Switzerland in the Second World War� (PhD thesis, London School ofEconomics, 2011). On the American concept of neutrality see Jürg Martin Gabriel, TheAmerican conception of neutrality after 1941, Macmillan, Basingstoke, 1999. The history of neutrality is correlated with the histories of internationalism andhumanitarianism, which is the reason why neutral states play such an outstanding 163role inthe international organizations. For a history of the Red Cross Movement and its role in theSecond World War see Jean-Claude Favez, The Red Cross and the Holocaust, CambridgeUniversity Press, Cambridge, 1999; and Gerald Steinacher, Humanitarians at war: the RedCross in the shadow of the Holocaust, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2017. On NGOs ingeneral see Thomas Richard Davies, NGOs: a new history of transnational civil society,Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2014. A great introduction to problems of neutrality in theCold War is provided by Juhana Aunesluoma, Thomas C. Fischer and Aryo Makko (eds),Neutrality and world politics during the Cold War, themed issue, Journal of Cold War Studies2016, 18 (3). On Swedish plans to acquire nuclear weapons see Thomas Jonter, The key tonuclear restraint: the Swedish plans to acquire nuclear weapons during the Cold War,Palgrave Macmillan, London, 2016. On the relationship between the military industrialcomplex and neutrality in Sweden see, for example, Per Lundin, Niklas Stenlås and JohanGribbe (eds), Science for welfare and warfare: technology and state initiative in cold warSweden, Science History Publications/USA, Sagamore Beach, 2010. On the HelsinkiProcess and the neutrals� role in it see Thomas Fischer, Neutral power in the CSCE: the N+Nstates and the making of the Helsinki Accords 1975, Nomos, Baden-Baden, 2009; AryoMakko, Ambassadors of realpolitik: Sweden, the CSCE and the Cold War, Berghahn Books,New York, 2017. On the construction of neutral identity in Sweden see Christine Agius, Thesocial construction of Swedish neutrality: challenges to Swedish identity and sovereignty,Manchester University Press, Manchester, 2006. And for a broad review of Sweden�s modernneutrality see Mikael af Malmborg, Neutrality and state-building in Sweden, Palgrave,Basingstoke, 2001. On Austrian neutrality see Günter Bischof, Anton Pelinka and Ruth Wodak(eds), Neutrality in Austria, Transaction Publishers, New Brunswick, 2001. Finland�s neutralityis studied by Raimo Väyrynen, Stability and change in Finnish foreign policy, HelsinkiUniversity, Helsinki, 1982; and Ireland�s modern neutrality by Patrick Keatinge, A singularstance: Irish neutrality in the 1980s, Institute of Public Administration, Dublin, 1984. On therole of developing countries in the post-war world see Luis Eslava, Michael Fakhri and VasukiNesiah (eds), Bandung, global history, and international law: critical pasts and pendingfutures, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2017. For a general history of the Cold War and post-1989 world see Odd Arne Westad, The ColdWar: a world history, Allen Lane, 2017, and Mary Elise Sarotte, 1989: the struggle to createpost-Cold War Europe, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 2009. Finally, on the legaldoctrine of law of modern neutrality see Pål Wrange, �Impartial or uninvolved? The anatomy of20th century doctrine on the law of neutrality� (Diss., Stockholm University, Stockholm, 2007).