British Patriots and Spies in Italy (1914-1915): Fighting the Enemy of the Neutral Frontline

Abstract

[EN] The study of economic warfare is a key aspect to understand how the Great War affected states at large not only in their political and social configurations, but also in their peoples’ emotions and hopes for the future. The economic war waged between 1914 and 1918, to a large extent, was the expression of national expectations for the postwar period, especially for Great Britain, the first world economy. The British naval and commercial retaliation against the Germans all around the world, the so-called Great Blockade, reveals a broad picture of the multifarious forms that economic nationalism took in wartime within the greatest imperial network.