British Blacklists in Spain during the First World War: The Spanish Case Study as a Belligerent Battlefield

Abstract

This article deals with the implementation of British blacklists in Spain, leading to a case study not widely seen before in the international historiography of the First World War. It shows how British intervention in the southern and eastern Spanish markets set a de facto model for the operation of the embargo system. Under the strong stimulus of economic nationalism, the British actions regarding the commercial vetoes were tested against Spanish local interests during the short war (1914–15). The initiative was supposedly fuelled by a sense of revenge against pre-war Germany’s commercial progress as well as the desire to control a very appetizing market share, for the British and French alike. In a climate of inter-Allied commercial rivalry, this study focuses on the key role played by members of the consular service. It explains the spurious motivations that in many cases underlay the practical implementation of the blockade from below, and analyses how partisan procedures which lacked homogenized and clarified criteria for collecting and applying commercial intelligence challenged British strategies and the inter-Allied united front in Spain until well into 1917.