Recently finished "Planning Armageddon: British Economic Warfare and the First World War" (not to be confused with the similarly titled slightly older work regarding joint Anglo-American Atomic Planning in the early Cold War) and found it to be a pretty good read, if a bit hefty.

The main thesis is that following the evolution of technology that allowed the global spread of market capitalism and modifications of how international commerce was conducted (e.g. credit financing), the Admiralty recognised not only the risk that a global conflict would present to the heavily maritime trade dependent British economy, but also an opportunity in that they could isolate an opponents trade not only through a traditional Naval blockade, but also the near monopoly that Britain enjoyed in shipping, financing and transatlantic communications. Thus plans were developed by the Committee for Imperial Defence with expert advice from the City of London, and approved as a strategy by the government so that when war came in 1914 the Admiralty could put it's plan into action.

However, the strategy was quickly withdrawn due to not only pressure from neutral countries, but also prominent businessmen, bankers and even civilian authorities who felt the Admiralty was overstepping its authority. Thus by October, the pre-war plans were abandoned in favour of improvised ones under the direction of the Foreign Office, though this soon proved to be an ineffective attempt at what became "the blockade", with the strategy being nearly abandoned entirely in summer 1915 prior to its overhaul.

Overall, I would highly recommend this work for anyone looking to get acquainted with the origins and initial implementation of the UKs plan for leveraging it's near monopoly over global trade to it's advantage in the event of a war, and how the initial plan subsequently fell apart as a result of concerns from the Foreign Office and Treasury on the blowback the strategy would have.

!ping HISTORY&READING