Summary of Nicholas Mulder's The Economic Weapon

By IRB Media

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book.

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#1 The blockade of Germany was a transnational economic enterprise that gathered intelligence, produced knowledge, and developed policy instruments to enforce the isolation of Germany.

#2 The Allied blockade was one of the most consequential experiments in global economic governance of the twentieth century. It launched the Allies on a voyage of discovery, which led to the control of raw materials and the development of financial blockade.

#3 Manganese is a chunky, silver-gray metal found in lumps and arteries in the earth’s crust. It has long been known to have the capacity to harden iron objects. In nineteenth-century Central Europe, blacksmiths used small amounts of manganese when smelting pig iron in their furnaces to produce a tougher, shiny product called Spiegeleisen.

#4 The needs of German steel producers drove considerable manganese imports. The transport infrastructure was poor, and the Russian manganese mines at Chiatura were a hotbed of revolutionary agitation.

• Language: English
• Publisher: IRB Media
• Release date: Apr 2, 2022
• ISBN: 9781669381402

IRB Media

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Insights on Nicholas Mulder's The Economic Weapon

Contents

Insights from Chapter 1

Insights from Chapter 2

Insights from Chapter 3

Insights from Chapter 1

#1

The blockade of Germany was a transnational economic enterprise that gathered intelligence, produced knowledge, and developed policy instruments to enforce the isolation of Germany.

#2

The Allied blockade was one of the most consequential experiments in global economic governance of the twentieth century. It launched the Allies on a voyage of discovery, which led to the control of raw materials and the development of financial blockade.

#3

Manganese is a chunky, silver-gray metal found in lumps and arteries in the earth’s crust. It has long been known to have the capacity to harden iron objects. In nineteenth-century Central Europe, blacksmiths used small amounts of manganese when smelting pig iron in their furnaces to produce a tougher, shiny product called Spiegeleisen.

#4

The needs of German steel producers drove considerable manganese imports. The transport infrastructure was poor, and the Russian manganese mines at Chiatura were a hotbed of revolutionary agitation.

#5

The steel company sent orders with desired amounts to its London agent, who matched requirements with the offers of suppliers in the global mining industry concentrated in the British capital. The agent then arranged trade financing by forwarding the order to Deutsche Bank. As the second-largest bank in the world, Deutsche Bank was able to dispense the trade credit through a special Latin American subsidiary.

#6

The material supply chain in minerals trading had a financial counterpart in an international chain of payments. With this prospective payment, Krupp cleared its trade debt to Deutsche Bank.

#7

The Itabira-Krupp manganese contract was a very normal transaction in the highly globalized environment of 1914. The most knowledgeable people involved were the mining company officials and bankers in London, but they had limited control over certain aspects of the trade.

#8

Britain was the center of the global economic system. It was the largest merchant marine in the world, and its shipping companies carried 55 percent of the world’s seaborne trade.

#9

The blockade that did emerge was enforced by the Royal Navy’s surface fleet, but it was handled primarily by the Foreign Office rather than by the Admiralty. The blockade was a system of contraband control, a policy looser than a full legal blockade.

#10

The blockade was a governance system that required continuous diplomacy with neutral countries to manage the conflicts that arose with them. The Trade Clearing House was a section of the Treasury’s War Trade Department, and it scoured all the sources at its disposal to gather information.

#11

The WTD handled all the applications for import and export licenses from merchants who wanted to circumvent the blockade. The activities of the WTD and the TCH produced a stream of information that ended up in front of the Restricting of Enemy Supplies Committee.

#12

The French blockaders’ approach to the blockade differed from that of their British colleagues. They thought that economic pressure against the enemy was impossible without some pecuniary loss to the Entente.

#13

By late 1915,

Reviews for Summary of Nicholas Mulder's The Economic Weapon

[Michael Buster · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I really appreciate whoever put the work into this. It really helped me crystalize what I'd already heard when listening to this full audio book.