The blockade of Germany, Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria, and Turkey during the Great War is well-known. Some apologists for the blockade have noted that while the 1909 Declaration of London required that certain procedures be followed subsequent to and during a blockade, it was never ratified by the House of Lords and thus was not legally binding. What has often been left out of this debate on the legality of the blockade are the unanticipated consequences that the blockade had on civilians within the borders of the blockade, and beyond. This lecture will explore a few of these.
Speaker: Mary Elisabeth Cox is an Assistant Professor in International Relations at Central European University in Vienna, Austria. Prior to her appointment at CEU, she was a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Oxford and the William Golding Junior Research Fellow at Brasenose College. Her doctoral dissertation was awarded the Dev Family Book prize for the best dissertation in the history of medicine at the University of Oxford in 2015, and in 2016 she was awarded the Alexander Prize by the Royal Historical Society for an article she published in the ‘Economic History Review’. Cox’s first book, ‘Hunger in War & Peace: Women & Children in Germany, 1914-1924’ was published in 2019 by Oxford University Press.
