The "Unintended Consequences" of Confederate Trade Legislation

Abstract

The immediate purpose of this paper is to focus on how import and blockade regulations enacted by the Confederacy affected the course of the war in its final days, but the issue of the economic effects of blockades has broader implications. Economic policies have been used as weapons, at least since the times of Pericles' Megaran Decree in 432 B.C., and have probably only grown in importance as economies have grown less autarkic and more interdependent over time. Since 1790, there have been at least four major global wars that have involved prolonged fighting, heavy losses, and severe bouts of inflation: the Napoleonic Wars, the American Civil War, World War I, and World War II. In all four of these conflicts, embargoes and blockades were an important component of the war planning of the eventual victor.Macroeconomics; Transitional Economies