First Allied conference on economic warfare

On 3 June 1915 representatives of the four Entente powers, France, Britain, Russia and Italy, met at the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs on the Quai d’Orsay in Paris. A British chronology of the war calls this meeting the first session of the Allied conference on economic warfare. According to the inventory of the French foreign ministry archives, the talks lasted until 8 June. The delegates were to agree on how to cut Germany and its allies off more effectively from goods from abroad.

Each on its own

Since the beginning of the war Britain and France had largely waged economic warfare separately. Each state announced its own contraband lists and its own regulations, modelled on the Declaration of London of 1909, though often stricter than it. In March 1915 both governments tightened their course: London issued the Reprisals Order and Paris similar decrees, under which goods bound to and from Germany were stopped.

An informal division of roles emerged in the process. The British, who ruled the sea, controlled shipping and dealt above all with the neutral states of northern Europe. The French concentrated on Switzerland and Spain. The biggest gap was Germany’s neutral neighbours: Switzerland, the Netherlands and the three Scandinavian states. Through their ports and borders goods were still flowing to the Reich which the Allies could not stop directly. They could only restrict the trade of the neutrals themselves. The French were increasingly irritated that the British were making arrangements with the northern states on their own, and demanded a common blockade policy. The Paris conference was the result of their insistence.

For the first time as four

Earlier there had mainly been Franco-British talks, and at the beginning of February the finance ministers of France, Britain and Russia had agreed in Paris on joint financing of the war. The meeting of 3 June, however, was the first conference on contraband in which all four powers took part. For the first time the Italians, who had entered the war ten days earlier, took part in such talks. The hosts fielded the largest delegation, of six or seven people. It was chaired by Gout, deputy director for Asia (sous-directeur d’Asie) at the French foreign ministry. The other delegations numbered from two to four people.

Common lists and quotas

According to the British official history, Italy and Russia agreed to adopt contraband lists similar to the French and British ones, and the participants called for uniform methods of action. They also discussed a system of control in which imports into neutral states, above all Switzerland, the Netherlands and the Scandinavian countries, were to be limited to monthly quotas calculated on the basis of customs data for 1913, the last normal year before the war. The guarantee was to be provided by organisations of merchants in the neutral states, set up on the model of the Netherlands Overseas Trust, which had been operating since November 1914. They were to ensure that the imported goods did not go on to Germany.

Agreement did not come easily. There were disputes over the interpretation of the rules, because even the Declaration of London left room for different readings, and governments interpreted it in line with their own commercial interests. The French generally favoured a harder line than the British, who paid more regard to the interests of their own merchants and to the reaction of the United States. Putting the new system into practice met resistance from merchants and governments in the neutral states and took a long time. The next conference, with the Belgians also taking part, met on 11 September 1915. Uniform blockade rules came only with the inter-Allied economic conference in Paris in June 1916. The British official history nevertheless regarded the meeting of June 1915 as the beginning of the gradual tightening of the blockade around Central Europe.