Page:EB1911 - Volume 20.djvu/468

 sentenced to six years’ imprisonment. The British government resented this treatment as “not only cruel and unjust towards Mr Russell, but disrespectful towards the British nation,” and demanded the dismissal of the officials implicated and £1000 damages “as some compensation for the cruel injuries which had been inflicted upon Mr Russell” (State Papers, 1837–1838, p. 183). The New Granada government refused to comply with these demands, and the British representative, acting upon his instructions, called in the assistance of the West Indian fleet, but observed in his communication to the British naval officer in command that it was desirable to avoid hostilities, and to endeavour to bring about the desired result by a strict blockade only. This seems to be the first occasion on which it had occurred to anybody that a blockade without war might serve the purpose of war. This precedent was shortly afterwards followed by another somewhat similar case, in which from the 16th of April to the 28th of November 1838 the French government blockaded the Mexican ports, to coerce the Mexican government into acceptance of certain demands on behalf of French subjects who had suffered injury to their persons and damage to their property through insufficient protection by the Mexican authorities.

The blockade of Buenos Aires and the Argentine coast from the 28th of March 1838 to the 7th of November 1840 by the French fleet, a coercive measure consequent upon vexatious laws affecting foreign residents in the Argentine Republic, seems to have been the first case in which the operation was notified to the different representatives of foreign states. This notification was given in Paris, and at Buenos Aires, and to every ship approaching the blockaded places. This precedent of notification was, a few years later (1845), followed in another blockade against the same country by Great Britain and France, and in one in 1842 and 1844 by Great Britain against the port of Greytown in Nicaragua. In 1850 Great Britain blockaded the ports of Greece in order to compel the Hellenic government to give satisfaction in the Don Pacifico case. Don Pacifico, a British subject, claimed £32,000 as damages for unprovoked pillage of his house by an Athenian mob. Greek vessels only were seized, and these were only sequestered. Greek vessels bona fide carrying cargoes belonging to foreigners were allowed to enter the blockaded ports.

Before the next case of blockade which can be described as “pacific” occurred came the Declaration of Paris (April 15, 1856), requiring that “blockades in order to be binding must be effective; that is to say, maintained by a force sufficient really to prevent access to the coast of the enemy.”

Some ill-defined measures of blockade followed, such as that of 1860, when Victor Emmanuel, then king of Sardinia, joined the revolutionary government of Naples in blockading ports in Sicily, then held by the king of Naples, without any rupture of pacific relations between the two governments; that of 1862, in which Great Britain blockaded the port of Rio de Janeiro, to exact redress for pillage of an English vessel by the local population, at the same time declaring that she continued to be on friendly terms with the emperor of Brazil; and that in 1880, when a demonstration was made before the port of Dulcigno by a fleet of British, German, French, Austrian, Russian and Italian men-of-war, to compel the Turkish government to carry out the treaty conceding this town to Montenegro, and it was announced that if the town was not given up by the Turkish forces it would be blockaded.

The blockade which first gave rise to serious theoretical discussion on the subject was that instituted by France in 1884 in Chinese waters. On the 20th of October 1884 Admiral Courbet declared a blockade of all the ports and road steads between certain specified points of the island of Formosa. The British government protested that Admiral Coubert had not enough ships to render the blockade effective, and that it was therefore a violation of one of the articles of the Declaration of Paris of 1856; moreover, that the French government could only interfere with neutral vessels violating the blockade if there was a state of war. If a state of war existed, England as a neutral was bound to close her coaling stations to belligerents. The British government held that in the circumstances France was waging war and not entitled to combine the rights of peace and warfare for her own benefit. Since then pacific blockades have only been exercised by the great powers as a joint measure in their common interest, which has also been that of peace; and in this respect the term is taking a new signification in accordance with the ordinary sense of the word “pacific.”

In 1886 Greece was blockaded by Great Britain, Austria, Germany, Italy and Russia, to prevent her from engaging in war with Turkey, and thus forcing the powers to define their attitude towards the latter power. The instructions given to the British commander were to detain every ship under the Greek flag coming out of or entering any of the blockaded ports or harbours, or communicating with any ports within the limit blockaded; but if any parts of the cargo on board of such ships belonged to any subject or citizen of any foreign power other than Greece, and other than Austria, Germany, Italy and Russia, and had been shipped before notification of the blockade or after such notification, but under a charter made before the notification, such ship was not to be detained.

On the blockade of Crete in 1897 it was notified that “the admirals in command of the British, Austro-Hungarian, French, German, Italian, and Russian naval forces” had decided to put the island of Crete in a state of blockade, that “the blockade would be general for all ships under the Greek flag,” and that “ships of the six powers or neutral powers may enter into the ports occupied by the powers and land their merchandise, but only if it is not for the Greek troops or the interior of the island,” and that “these ships may be visited by the ships of the international fleets.”

Since the adoption of the Hague Convention of 1907 respecting the limitation of the employment of force for the recovery of contract debts, the contracting powers are under agreement “not to have recourse to armed force for the recovery of contract debts claimed from the government of one country by the government of another country as being due to its nationals,” unless “the debtor state refuses or neglects to reply to an offer of arbitration, or after accepting the offer prevents any compromis from being agreed on, or after the arbitration fails to submit to the award” (Art. 1). Though this does not affect pacific blockades in principle, it supersedes them in practice by a new procedure for some of the cases in which they have hitherto been employed.

PACIFIC OCEAN, the largest division of the hydrosphere, lying between Asia and Australia and North and South America. It is nearly landlocked to the N., communicating with the Arctic Ocean only by Bering Strait, which is 36 m. wide and of small depth. The southern boundary is generally regarded as the parallel of 40° S., but sometimes the part of the great Southern Ocean (40° to ° S.) between the meridians passing through South Cape in Tasmania and Cape Horn is included. The north to south distance from Bering Strait to the Antarctic circle is 9300 m., and the Pacific attains its greatest breadth, 10,000 m., at the equator. The coasts of the Pacific are of varied contour. The American coasts are for the most part mountainous and unbroken, the chief indentation being the Gulf of California; but the general type is departed from in the extreme north and south, the southern coast of South America consisting of bays and fjords with scattered islands, while the coast of Alaska is similarly broken in the south and becomes low and swampy towards the north. The coast of Australia is high and unbroken; there are no inlets of considerable size, although the small openings include some of the finest harbours in the world, as Moreton Bay and Port Jackson. The Asiatic coasts are for the most part low and irregular, and a number of seas are more or less completely enclosed and cut off from communication with the open ocean. Bering Sea is bounded by the Alaskan Peninsula and the chain of the Aleutian Islands; the sea of Okhotsk is enclosed by the peninsula of Kamchatka and the Kurile Islands; the Sea of Japan is shut off by Sakhalin Island, the Japanese Islands and the peninsula of Korea; the Yellow Sea is an opening between the coast of China and Korea;