A blockade is a physical blockage of a port or other place. Usually used of enemy ships surrounding a port.
By extension, a blockade is any effort to make sure that supplies, troops, information or aid do not reach an opposing force. Blockades are used in nearly all military campaigns and the tool of choice for economic warfare on an opposing nation. The International Criminal Court planned to include blockades against coasts and ports in its list of acts of war in 2009.
Historical blockades include:
- The Spartan blockade of Athens following the Battle of Aegospotami, depriving Athens of the ability to import grain or communicate with its empire.
- The Dutch Republic's blockade of the Scheldt between 1585 and 1792, denying Spanish-ruled Antwerp's access to international trade and shifting much of its trade to Amsterdam.
- British blockade of France and its allies during the French Revolutionary War and Napoleonic War
- British blockade of the United States east coast during the War of 1812
- Union Blockade – the Union blockading the coasts of the Confederacy as part of the Anaconda Plan during the American Civil War
- Battle of Iquique during the War of the Pacific
- British blockade of Germany during World War I as a part of the First Battle of the Atlantic resulted in many deaths
- The Second Battle of the Atlantic during World War II
- United States blockade of Japan during World War II
- The German blockade of the Scheldt between September 1944 and November 1944, denying to allied shipping use of the port of Antwerp. (See Battle of the Scheldt).
- Soviet land blockade of West Berlin, 1948–1949, known as the Berlin Blockade.
- Egyptian blockades of the Straits of Tiran prior to the 1956 Suez War and the 1967 Arab-Israeli War.
- United States blockade of Cuba during the Cuban missile crisis in 1962
- India blockade of East Pakistan during the 1971 Bangladesh War
- NATO blockade of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia 1993–1996 during Operation Sharp Guard
- Israeli sea and land blockade of the Gaza Strip since the outbreak of the Second Intifada (2000) and up to the present.
- Israeli blockades of some or all the shores of Lebanon at various times during the Lebanese Civil War (1975–1990), the 1982 Lebanon War, and the 1982–2000 South Lebanon conflict – resumed during the 2006 Israel-Lebanon conflict.
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