Diplomacy and Statecraft, 19: 210–235, 2008

Copyright © Taylor & Francis Group, LLC

ISSN 0959-2296 print/1557-301X online
DOI: 10.1080/09592290802096257

1557-301X and Statecraft

0959-2296
FDPS
Diplomacy Statecraft, Vol. 19, No. 2, April 2008: pp. 1–42

“THE WORST OF ALL WORLDS:” OIL SANCTIONS

AND ITALY’S INVASION OF ABYSSINIA, 1935–1936

G. Bruce Strang
OilBruce
G. Sanctions
Strang
and Italy’s Invasion of Abyssinia

Italy’s invasion of Abyssinia in 1935 caused a crisis for the League of

Nations. League members imposed limited sanctions against Italy and
debated at length the imposition of an embargo on oil shipments to Italy,
which came to stand as a symbol of the League’s determination to punish
the Italian aggressor. The British government conducted a detailed
investigation to determine whether or not an oil sanction could compel
Italy to abandon its invasion. Although Italy imported the vast majority
of its oil, British and League experts concluded that an oil embargo
would not succeed. Even if the League instituted a comprehensive
embargo amongst its members, Italy could still have secured sufficient
supplies from non-members, particularly the United States, which could
not legally prevent American companies from trading with Italy. Italy
could also have secured additional supplies through third-party trans-
shipments. An additional ban preventing Italy from using League tank-
ers to carry its purchases would not have succeeded either, although the
various sanctions together would have increased Italy’s costs to import oil
and the amount of pressure on its gold reserves. In spite of the technical
difficulties involved in implementing an embargo, the British Cabinet
continued to support the idea for domestic political reasons; it needed to
placate the British public that considered it vitally important to put into
practice the League’s collective security rhetoric. The League’s unwilling-
ness to impose an oil sanction and its evident failure to prevent Italy’s
conquest of Abyssinia discredited the League and its collective security
provisions.

Italy’s invasion of Abyssinia on 3 October 1935 created both a great

opportunity and a grave crisis for the League of Nations. Italy’s flagrant
violation of its obligations under the Covenant directly challenged the
League and its collective security principles. Moving with rare speed, the
League invoked economic sanctions in an effort to convince Benito Mus-
solini, the Fascist Italian dictator, to abandon the invasion and to return to
the negotiating table in an effort to solve his dispute with Abyssinia.
Based on decisions in 1921 that limited the stark application of military
Oil Sanctions and Italy’s Invasion of Abyssinia 211

sanctions provided for under Article 16 of the Covenant, the League

established a Coordination Committee of members concerned about
applying sanctions and chose a smaller and more manageable Committee
of Eighteen to determine an appropriate response. By 19 October, the
League had resolved that it would recommend that members should
impose four sanctions against Italy: an arms embargo, a prohibition on
loans, an embargo on imports from Italy, and an embargo on the export of
certain materials to Italy that it could use to support its war effort, includ-
ing horses, rubber, tin, and some ores. Proponents of these sanctions
hoped that they would be strong enough to induce Mussolini to halt
his invasion without being so damaging that they would provoke him to
withdraw from the League or to resort to a wider war against League
members.
In light of these concerns, the Committee of Eighteen chose not to
place an embargo on oil shipments to Italy in this initial stage, and
observers then and historians since have sharply criticized the League for
its timid failure to take the step that appeared to offer the best chance to
coerce Italian cooperation. A.J. Barker, for example, condemned the
League for its failure to embargo coal and oil, measures that would have
had considerable effect if applied.1 Frank Hardie echoed these concerns.
He qualified his criticism, recognizing that the United States would have
had to cooperate to some degree with a League oil embargo, but he
believed that that cooperation would have been possible had the League
moved more rapidly.2 Anthony Adamthwaite confidently asserted, “We
now know that if the oil sanction had been imposed Mussolini, according
to his own statement, would have made peace within 24 hours.” Adamth-
waite also argued that, even if the United States continued to ship oil to
Italy, “determined Anglo–French naval action could have cut off those
supplies.”3 Of course, Mussolini’s comment was an off-hand remark and
was unknown to politicians and diplomats at the time; we have no evi-
dence that would confirm that Mussolini actually meant what he said.
One can only wonder what the Italian, and still less the American reaction
would have been to a naval blockade.
Cristiano Andrea Ristuccia recently assessed the effects of sanctions
on the Italian economy. He worked with Italian records and League statis-
tics, uncovering valuable new evidence. He concluded that sanctions that
had included oil and other raw materials would have succeeded, seriously
impinging the mobility of the Italian army and interfering with Italy’s
road transport system. Ultimately, Italy could only have staved off disas-
ter for some four months. This argument is compelling within its own
limits, but the article also does not discuss difficulties in securing compli-
ance from League members and the practicality of League sanctions.
Most importantly, Ristuccia predicated his analysis on the case that the
212 G. Bruce Strang

United States would agree to limit its exports to Italy to peacetime levels,
which is an extremely problematic assumption to make. Ultimately, this
article considered what would have happened to Italy had the League
been able to implement an effective embargo, but it did not assess the
League’s ability to control oil supplies heading to Italy.4 George Baer’s
Test Case: Italy, Ethiopia, and the League of Nations presents the best
published discussion of the possible effectiveness of an oil sanction. He
covers the British reaction to the experts’ report in February 1936 in
some detail, for example, although his complaints about the League’s atti-
tude toward American policy seem too harsh and too dismissive of the
experts’ legitimate concerns. Baer’s account does not cover the earlier
discussions in November and December 1935 about the effectiveness of
an oil embargo in much detail, however, leaving a substantial hole in his
analysis.5
The literature on the subject of collective security measures under
League auspices does not include a systematic attempt to address a fun-
damental question: did League governments have reason to believe that
an embargo on oil shipments to Italy would have compelled it to aban-
don its invasion of Abyssinia? The answer to this question needs to
assess four central issues. First, how much oil did Italy need? Second,
what supplies could Italy secure from League and non-League mem-
bers? Third, could the League secure compliance in imposing sanctions
from potential vendors? Fourth, could the League control Italy’s use of
foreign tankers that could carry oil from non-compliant countries to
Italy? In order to answer these questions, this study will focus on delib-
erations within the British policy-making elite, for two reasons. The
first is practical. Owing to the nature of the decision-making and record-
keeping in the British civil service, the best repository of records dis-
cussing the relative merits of sanctions and their consequences is
housed in the British national archives. The second reason is that the
British government had an enormously powerful, albeit equivocal, role
to play in the imposition of League sanctions. By virtue of its status as a
Great Power with an imperial reach, its public declarations of support
for the League in 1935, its comparative military muscle, and its moral
authority, Britain could exercise enormous influence over League mem-
bers. Had Britain firmly opposed sanctions, it is unlikely that the
League would have gone as far as it did. Had Britain pushed for more
sanctions with greater determination, then the smaller powers in the
League would have been more likely to have imposed harsher measures
seeking to impede Italy’s invasion. An assessment of British policy for-
mation on this issue will demonstrate the tremendous potential of sanc-
tions but also indicate some of the difficulties in creating efficient
collective security measures.
Oil Sanctions and Italy’s Invasion of Abyssinia 213

Treasury Department and Foreign Office officials began to assess the

possibility of sanctions in the summer of 1935. Initial inquiries dealt in
generalities. Neville Chamberlain, the Chancellor of the Exchequer,
argued for example that Italy was “peculiarly vulnerable” to economic
sanctions, especially to a blockade of seaborne shipments. Chamberlain
assumed that a blockade would lead to war, however, so he thought it best
to consider a trade boycott. He asked Treasury officials to prepare a report
on the likely effects of a League prohibition on trade with Italy. He sug-
gested that the report should assume that neither Germany, for political
reasons, nor the United States, for constitutional ones, would adhere to
such a boycott.6 The resulting reports estimated that a comprehensive
League boycott would impinge so severely on Italy’s economy that it
would be forced to come to terms with the League within nine to fourteen
months, as Italy’s foreign exchange reserves would dry up, and it would
no longer be able to purchase goods from countries that chose not to
adhere to the sanctions.7
By the end of August, the Cabinet ruled out any unilateral effort to
impose a boycott, but determined that Britain and France should explore
the practicability of League sanctions. Some Cabinet members thought
that any such sanctions would be doomed to failure by German and
American trade and that Britain would be able to inform the League that
sanctions would not work. Chamberlain for one hoped that the obvious
failure of the collective security provisions in Article 16 would allow
Britain to reform the League and, more importantly, to create a political
climate in Britain more favourable to rearmament so that men such as
Mussolini would not be able to flout Britain’s will in the future.8
As Mussolini’s invasion force in Eritrea and Italian Somaliland pre-
pared for war, Foreign Secretary Sir Samuel Hoare and French Premier
and Foreign Minister Pierre Laval met in Geneva on 10 September 1935.
They ruled out extreme measures that might lead to war with Italy, such
as military sanctions or the closure of the Suez Canal.9 The next day,
Hoare addressed the League Assembly, affirming that “the League stands,
and my country stands with it, for the collective maintenance of the Cove-
nant in its entirety.” He indicated the depth of the British people’s
resolve; support for the League was “no variable and unreliable senti-
ment, but a principle of international conduct to which they and their gov-
ernment hold with firm, enduring, and universal persistence.”10 To its
Dominion representatives, His Majesty’s Government extolled the virtues
of collective security. Reiterating Hoare’s speech, it said that the United
Kingdom would be “second to none” in fulfilling obligations to the
League Covenant and would demonstrate its “unwavering fidelity” to col-
lective security principles. The British public was united with its govern-
ment in this staunch determination, and together they would show “steady
214 G. Bruce Strang

and collective resistance to all acts of unprovoked aggression.”11 Of

course, this lofty rhetoric, designed for the consumption of the British and
international publics, understated the government’s ambivalence and
overstated its resolve. Nevertheless, the dictates of public opinion and the
imminent election compelled the Cabinet to pursue collective security, or
at least to present to the British public that the National Government was
steadfast in its support of the League.12 Still, the threat that Italy might
resort to war when faced with potentially crippling sanctions suggested
caution. The Committee of Imperial Defence warned that the inclusion of
items such as coal and oil in any list of embargoed goods might provoke
Italy to desperate action in light of its lack of vital raw materials. After
Mussolini’s troops invaded Abyssinia, therefore, the Cabinet decided that
it would support limited sanctions and would consider the issue of prohi-
bition of coal and oil shipments to Italy in spite of the potential damage to
the Welsh coal industry and British oil companies.13
After having supported the initial stage of sanctions in October and
November, British officials considered the possibility of an oil sanction in
more detail late in November and early in December 1935 after the
League had raised the prospect of extending measures to cover that com-
modity. On the surface, Italy was very vulnerable to a sanction that would
prevent oil imports. Italy produced very little of its own oil, some 25,000
tons per year. It could rely on supplies from Albania of little more than
50,000 tons per year of poor quality oil.14 Obviously, given this paltry
domestic production, Italy had to import the vast majority of its supplies.
Board of Trade officials assessed that Italy had some three to four months
of oil supplies stockpiled in Italy and in Italian East Africa, so Italy would
need to find continued sources of new shipments in order to be able to
withstand pressure that aimed to end the war and to compel it to negotiate
a compromise peace. In order to build its stockpile within the strict limits
of its storage capacity, Italy had increased its imports in the months pre-
ceding its invasion (see Table 1).
Much of the increase in oil shipments came from Rumania. Italy had
purchased 280,000 tons of Rumanian oil from July to September 1934,
but 727,000 tons in the same period in 1935. Rumania had become Italy’s

Table 1. Italian imports of oil products15

Year Total Imports
(in metric tons)

1933 1,738,000
1934 1,856,000
1935 (January–June) 1,012,000
1935 (January–September) 1,543,000
Oil Sanctions and Italy’s Invasion of Abyssinia 215

most important supplier, in part because its Black Sea ports were rela-
tively close to Italy and to Italian East Africa. Italy also purchased sub-
stantial supplies from Venezuela, which accounted for more than 12% of
Italy’s imports, and from the United States, which had increased ship-
ments almost threefold when measured against an average of the usual
shipments from prior years (see Tables 2 and 3).
The changed trade patterns showed Italy’s clear preferences: increased
purchases from a Rumanian industry all too eager to sell, and increased
reliance on American and Venezuelan oil. Although those two countries
were far from Italian ports, their attitudes toward the League of Nations

Table 2. Percentage of imports deriving from major suppliers16

Country 1933 1934 1935 1935
(January–June) (August to
15 November)

Rumania 35.2 34.1 40.6 59.1

USSR 29.6 21.7 16.0 10.0
Iran 9.8 11.9 15.0 3.2
US 9.0 11.2 7.1 8.5
Dutch West Indies 7.5 8.2 10.7 not available
Others 8.9 12.9 10.6 19.2

Table 3. Total Italian imports of oil products17

Country Italian Imports (in thousands of metric tons)

Jan.–Sept. 1935 Oct.–Dec. 1935* Jan.–Dec. 1935

France 10.7 17.1 27.8

Rumania 706.3 389.6 1,095.9
U.S.S.R. 199.7 128.9 328.6
Netherlands Indies 20.2 0 20.2
Iran 187.3 39.0 226.3
Columbia 45.3 0 45.3
Netherlands Antilles 169.9 112.7 282.6
United States 95.3 157.1 252.4
Venezuela 15.9 0† 15.9
Others 62.1 37.6 99.7
Totals 1,522.7 882.0 2,406.7

*No Italian statistics were available. Totals estimated from tankers’ arrivals in Italian ports.
†
Italy normally refined Venezuelan crude in the Netherlands Antilles, so the increase in the
October to December total for the Netherlands Antilles actually represents increased Italian
purchases of crude oil from Venezuela.
216 G. Bruce Strang

indicated that they would be more likely to continue to provide a steady

supply of oil in spite of any sanctions that might arise.
For British officials, three overwhelming obstacles to a successful
sanctions policy prohibiting oil shipments to Italy presented themselves.
The first was a political and military issue rather than an economic one,
but it bears mentioning. The most serious objections to implementing
sanctions came not on economic grounds but on military ones. Mussolini
repeatedly threatened to go to war against Britain if the League imposed
an oil embargo.18 Robert Vansittart, the Permanent Undersecretary of
State at the Foreign Office, strongly opposed extending sanctions, as he
thought Britain woefully unprepared for a single-handed war against
Italy. He insisted that Britain would need active French cooperation,
which was difficult to foresee in light of serious internal divisions and
Pierre Laval’s political problems. The lack of military measures taken by
other League members meant that they were hiding “timorously” behind
Great Britain. The United Kingdom, he argued, should be “neither the
League’s policeman nor its whipping-boy,” and he warned his political
superiors that they pursued a “very dangerous course” if they sought to
impose an oil sanction.19 Vansittart was not alone. Although local British
commanders were confident that they could win a war against Italy, the
Chiefs of Staff and the Cabinet were loath to risk war with Italy.20 The
Cabinet wanted to secure military support from French Foreign Minister
and Premier Pierre Laval, but he faced enormous problems of his own,
and he was reluctant to grant military aid to Britain, especially when the
British government refused to promise reciprocal support should France
find itself in difficulties with Germany.21
The outlook for a successful oil embargo was not much rosier on eco-
nomic grounds. The second difficulty was the approach of League export-
ers to the crisis. Rumania was the largest single supplier of oil to Italy, so
its attitude was of central importance. The Soviet Union was also a signif-
icant supplier, although Italy had increased the percentage of its pur-
chases coming from Rumanian exporters dramatically in the latter half of
1935. Taken together, Rumania and the Soviet Union supplied close to
seventy percent of Italy’s imports. Both countries’ governments indicated
that they would comply with any League sanction on oil, but only in the
event that all other exporting countries also conformed to League policy.22
Such unanimity was unlikely. Venezuela indicated that it would not
adhere to any sanctions, but the attitude of the Venezuelan government
was conditioned by the fact that Anglo–Dutch and American companies
controlled almost all export Venezuelan production. If the League intro-
duced sanctions, then Britain and the Netherlands would be able to con-
strain these companies’ exports to Italy. The Roosevelt administration in
the United States could not comply with sanctions, however, as it lacked
Oil Sanctions and Italy’s Invasion of Abyssinia 217

the legal authority to restrict American companies’ ability to conduct

legitimate trade. With this very notable gap in the sanctions front, could
the League get agreement from the Soviet and Rumanian governments to
block oil shipments to Italy?23 Without Soviet and especially Rumanian
agreement, an oil sanction would have no teeth whatsoever.
The third problem, therefore, was potential sanctions busting by United
States oil companies. The United States produced more than fifty percent
of the world’s production, so American adhesion to sanctions was of fun-
damental importance, even though American trade comprised only a
small percentage of Italy’s total imports in normal conditions. If American
companies increased shipments to Italy in response to sanctions, they
could supply more than enough oil to meet Italy’s relatively modest
needs. In certain sectors, moreover, the United States dominated trade
with Italy. American companies supplied almost eighty percent of Italy’s
lubricating oils prior to the outbreak of war in 1935, for example, and
although Italy also began to produce larger quantities of lubricating oils
from Rumania and the Soviet Union late in 1935, America still supplied a
clear majority of Italy’s imports. Obviously, during wartime, lubricating
oils were a vital commodity.24 Given American dominance in the world
market, the attitude of American political and business leaders could have
a decisive influence on the effectiveness of any sanction.
Given the possibility of League sanctions, Italy had dramatically
increased its purchases of American oil and petroleum products, and
American companies seemed all too eager to sell whatever Italy could
afford to buy. From July to September 1934, Italy had imported 34,885
tons of American oil. The total for the same time period in 1935 was
96,245 tons, and the totals were higher still for the following months.25
The Roosevelt administration had reacted to increased American trade
with Italy with alarm, however, and the President and Secretary of State
Cordell had called on American businessmen not to seek profits by
exploiting the state of war. In President Roosevelt’s words, “in the course
of war, tempting trade opportunities may be offered to our people to sup-
ply materials which would prolong the war. I do not believe that the
American people will wish for abnormally increased profits that tempo-
rarily might be secured by greatly extending our trade in such materials;
nor would they wish the struggles on the battlefield to be prolonged
because of profits accruing to a comparatively small number of American
citizens.”26 Cordell Hull echoed this call for a moral embargo, calling
increased American trade with Italy “directly contrary to the policy of this
government.”27 Had the United States government followed these horta-
tory exhortations with effective action, actually limiting exports to Italy to
normal levels, it would have caused Italy potentially severe difficulties.
Considering the month of September 1935 alone, Italy imported 9,500
218 G. Bruce Strang

Table 4. Actual and estimated Italian imports, September 193528

Country Crude Lubricating Petroleum Motor Spirit Oil Residuals

A B A B A B A B A B

Rumania 6.1 – 1.3 – 15.4 – 24.9 – 64.3 –

U.S.S.R. – – 4.2 – 1.6 – 2.8 – 6.4 –
Colombia 3.4 – – – – – – – – –
US – 2.0 7.4 4.3 .3 1.9 1.3 1.9 5.0 5.6
Dutch Indies – – – – .2 – 3.2 – .1 –
Iran – – – – 2.3 – 6.3 – 5.2 –
Venezuela – – – – .1 – .1 – – –
Others – – – – 1.1 – 4.7 – 10.9 –
Total 9.5 2.0 13.3 4.3 21.0 1.9 43.3 1.9 91.9 5.6

Column A reflects the actual imports and column B the estimated potential United States
exports given previous years’ levels (in tons).

tons of crude oil. Had a comprehensive League embargo been in place

plus a voluntary limit to normal levels of American exports, Italy would
have been able to secure only 2,000 tons of crude oil from the United
States to replace supplies lost from League exporters (see Table 4).
Italy would have faced serious shortfalls in all categories of oil prod-
ucts, including lubricating oils, petroleum, motor fuel, and oil residuals.
These shortfalls would have been chronic, and Italy would have had to
have drawn down its stockpiles very rapidly.
In spite of Roosevelt’s strong statements, however, the administration
found itself constrained by the August 1935 neutrality legislation from
taking any direct action to limit exports, and it declined to take any seri-
ous actions to prohibit trade. Hull insisted that American policy remained
entirely independent of the League’s.29 In one limited initiative, the
administration did consult with the major American oil companies and
sought assurances that they would not expand oil shipments to Italy.
While the executive heads of the largest American oil companies indi-
cated that they would comply with an official request, they complained
that one hundred smaller companies would not do so. Any such measure
by the administration would serve merely to curtail the trade of larger
companies to the benefit of their smaller competitors.30 Italy only needed
to import 8,000 tons of oil per day in order to supply the domestic market
and to keep military operations running, and American independent com-
panies could ship 80,000 tons per day. Even if the large companies volun-
tarily limited their exports to normal levels, independent companies could
more than make up the difference. Larger companies could also appear to
limit public shipments to normal levels in order to placate the Roosevelt
administration and isolationist public opinion while actually concealing
Oil Sanctions and Italy’s Invasion of Abyssinia 219

their trade by sending transshipments through third-party countries, such

as Japan, or more likely, Austria. American firms could export oil to
Austria through the free port of Trieste, for example, but once the oil was
in territory under Italian control, the League would be unable to prevent
the Italians from taking delivery.31 Accordingly, the success of a sanction
prohibiting Italian oil imports depended largely on the attitude and actions
of the Roosevelt administration and American companies. The Board of
Trade concluded that without the participation of the United States,
“petroleum sanctions would surely fail,” as Italy would be able to secure
supplies from smaller companies in the United States, even if Rumania
and the Soviet Union departed from their declared policy and joined a
sanctions regime in spite of the lack of American adhesion.32
Ultimately, officials in the Foreign Office and at the Board of Trade
concluded that constitutional and political difficulties meant that the
Roosevelt administration would be unable to limit United States ship-
ments to normal levels.33 Even if this estimate proved incorrect and the
administration somehow had pulled off this sleight of hand, limiting ship-
ments to normal levels would still not constrain Italy sufficiently to
induce it to cease its invasion immediately, as Italy had stocks available
and could be able to secure some supplies through third-party transship-
ments.34 For Foreign Office officials, the only tangible result of a sanction
introduced in these conditions would be to make Italian imports more dif-
ficult, as transshipment through third countries would be more time-
consuming, complicated, and costly. The real benefit, therefore, would be
to increase the stress on Italy’s foreign currency reserves, as it would need
hard currency to purchase oil in the United States rather than relying on
its current trade arrangements with countries such as the Soviet Union and
Rumania.35
In addition to considering an embargo on oil shipments to Italy, British
officials also pondered the possibility of limiting trade with Italy by con-
trolling the tankers that could deliver oil. The initial report delivered to
the Cabinet dismissed the possibility, as it contended that Italy had suffi-
cient tanker capacity in its own fleet to handle all of its imports. This esti-
mate came from the Petroleum Department, however, and it was
inaccurate, as subsequent information from the Mercantile Marine
Department clearly showed.36 In fact, a more detailed study by the
Mercantile Marine Department of the Board of Trade indicated that Italy
had slightly more than 400,000 tons in its fleet, plus another 38,000 tons
of capacity in laid-up tankers. If Italy had been able to use all of that
capacity for trade, it would have been able to supply its needs only if the
ships had been bringing oil from ports in Rumania and the Soviet Union
on the Black Sea, roughly 2,800 miles away from Italian ports and little
further away from Eritrean ports. Had Italy needed to bring oil from the
220 G. Bruce Strang

United States, its fleet would have been capable of carrying only Italy’s
normal requirements, not the increased needs of the war effort, as the
journey from the Gulf coast to Italy covered 10,000 miles, while the dis-
tance to Eritrea was 15,000 miles. If bringing the bulk of its oil from the
United States, according to officials at the Board of Trade, the most opti-
mistic estimate would be that Italy would be able to import 2,250,000 tons
of oil and petroleum products, short of the 2,950,000 required. In these
circumstances, Italy would need to charter tankers from companies in
other countries.37 Substantial excess tanker capacity existed in the United
States, Scandinavia, and Britain, so the League would potentially need
cooperation from League members, especially the Scandinavian countries
that had the largest usable laid-up capacity outside of Great Britain
(see Table 5).
Most of the United States fleet was involved in coastal trade, and those
vessels were unsuitable for trans-Atlantic crossings, so Italy would be
unlikely to be able to charter much capacity there. Still, provided that the
Committee of Eighteen did secure members’ compliance, then a sanction
preventing League members from carrying Italian oil in their nations’
hulls would have increased the pressure on Italy. Nevertheless, Board of
Trade officials considered an embargo on foreign tanker trade as espe-
cially provocative to Italy, and they feared Mussolini’s reaction if the
League attempted to implement an embargo. Accordingly, they recom-
mended caution in implementing an embargo on shipments in League
members’ vessels.39
The Mercantile Marine Department also considered the possibility of
limiting Italian refueling in foreign ports. This measure would cause fur-
ther complications for Italy, as it would increase the total amount of oil
that Italy would need to purchase abroad from 2,950,000 to 3,543,000
tons (see Table 6).

Table 5. Oil tanker carrying capacity38

Country Carrying Carrying
Capacity–Active Capacity–Laid-up
(in tons) (in tons)

Great Britain 2,869,010 437,956

US 3,462,195 97,345
Scandinavia 2,033,911 128,649
Holland 455,902 6,174
Japan 176,187 none
France 345,750 19,767
Italy 404,076 38,502
Others 1,112,054 42,198
Total 10,859,085 770,591
Oil Sanctions and Italy’s Invasion of Abyssinia 221

Table 6. Italian merchant tanker refueling in

league-controlled ports40
Port or Region Amount
(in metric tons)

Constanta, Istanbul, & Batum 172,000

Port Said 134,000
Suez 16,300
Alexandria & Port Sudan 63,000
Algiers 120,000
Other 37,700
Total 593,000

This figure would rise by as much as 500,000 tons if one included for-
eign refueling by ships of the Italian navy, the Regia Marina. Italian ships
heading to the United States would be able to refuel there, for example,
but then would deplete their bunkers on the return trip and would have to
refuel in Italy, decreasing the amount of oil that Italy would have avail-
able for other purposes. In spite of the stresses that this measure would
cause for Italy, civil servants in the Mercantile Marine Department con-
sidered a ban on Italian refueling extremely provocative, and they
strongly opposed the idea that the League should impose such a measure.
They considered a ban on Italian refueling to be the equivalent of a blockade,
which Italy could interpret as a casus belli.41
Taken together, Treasury Department, Board of Trade, and Foreign
Office officials thought oil sanctions impractical, as the likely lack of
compliance from the United States meant that Italy would be able to pur-
chase sufficient amounts of oil unless the Roosevelt administration went
much further than it had indicated it was prepared to go. The best that the
League could do on its own would be to embargo the oil trade, provided
that Rumania and the Soviet Union agreed, and to prevent the shipment of
oil to Italy in League hulls. These measures would impede Italy’s ability
to carry out its war on Ethiopia, although it would be able to continue for
several months.
In spite of the seemingly overwhelming objections raised by his staff,
however, Samuel Hoare continued to hope that the United States might
somehow limit its exports to Italy, either through the President’s moral
embargo or, more likely, through a change of the neutrality legislation
that Congress could enact in January or February 1936. Hoare believed
that oil companies were unpopular with the American public and that
Roosevelt gained popularity by putting pressure on them. If this public
pressure compelled Congress to change its attitude toward neutrality
legislation, Hoare thought, a sanction could become effective. In the
222 G. Bruce Strang

meantime, however, American oil shipments to Italy continued to rise, so

he thought it wise to delay making a decision while pursuing negotiations
under League auspices to seek a mediated end to the war—the negotiations
that eventually led to the ill-fated Hoare-Laval plan and ultimately to
Hoare’s resignation.42 The Cabinet essentially endorsed these conclu-
sions, arguing that an oil sanction would be ineffective without American
adhesion; in those circumstances, it was better to pursue a peace deal
immediately rather than to wait for possible changes in American policy.
During the Cabinet debates in December, Prime Minister Baldwin intro-
duced a further proviso; the League of Nations would need to conduct a
thorough investigation of the effectiveness of an oil sanction before
Britain would agree to implement one.43 In the latter part of 1935, therefore,
the British government determined that it would seek to delay the exten-
sion of sanctions to include oil products while carrying out further negoti-
ations. Of course, those negotiations failed to settle the conflict, requiring
the League and the British government to revisit the issue in the
New Year.
The failure of the Hoare-Laval plan meant that sanctions would continue
to be part of the League’s deliberations in 1936, and British officials con-
tinued to discuss the practicality of various approaches early in 1936.
Officials at the Board of Trade continued to oppose the idea of controlling
the ships delivering oil to Italy. If the United States did embargo oil, they
argued, a tanker ban was not necessary. If the Roosevelt administration
failed to do so, then a tanker ban would not prevent Italy from importing
sufficient oil. While they admitted that a ban would make it more difficult
and expensive for Italy to import oil, they thought the measure needlessly
provocative and therefore dangerous. Board of Trade officials also wor-
ried that a sanction controlling the use of tankers could lead other countries to
change their policies. Rather than chartering British or Scandinavian
vessels, which could in the future be subject to League sanctions, many
countries might argue that their security required building their own
domestic tanker fleets. In the long run, such a development would seri-
ously damage Britain’s ship building and shipping industries that served
foreign customers and foreign charters.44
Board of Trade officials also raised a further complication. The League
would need to prevent Italy from chartering vessels from its members.
Presumably, provided various signatories to the Covenant agreed, that
prohibition would be possible to implement. Many countries would not
do so, however, including Japan and Germany, both opponents of the
League, and the United States, which was unlikely to seek to control its
shipping companies through measures that exceeded the Roosevelt
administration’s legal authority. In these circumstances, what was to pre-
vent companies barred from carrying Italian oil shipments from selling
Oil Sanctions and Italy’s Invasion of Abyssinia 223

their ships to firms in non-compliant countries that would then be able to

charter the ships to Italy? Not only would the League need to ban sales of
shipping to Italy, it would also need to prevent the sales of ships or the
chartering of ships to all countries that refused to comply with the embargo.
Obviously, these measures would ruffle American feathers. The only
alternative to this kind of embargo would be to create an elaborate vessel
and voyage licensing system, entailing the creation of a large bureaucracy
to police the activities of shipping companies based in League nations.45
Foreign Office officials did not entirely agree with the Board of
Trade’s point of view. Gladwyn Jebb argued that it was the Foreign
Office’s job to estimate the relative level of provocation that sanctions
might pose for Italy, not the Board of Trade’s. Nevertheless, he accepted
that a tanker ban would carry with it potential risks, and Jebb agreed that a
voyage licensing system might prove less inflammatory. He disagreed
with other elements of the Board’s analysis. He argued that it would take
considerable time for entrepôt trade to develop through, say, American
transshipments through Germany or Austria that ultimately would end up
in Italian hands. Germany would be unlikely to accord Italy sufficient
trade credits to purchase oil supplies through increased Italian exports, so
Italy would need to draw on its already dwindling gold reserves. Finally,
Jebb thought that while Japan might seek to build up its tanker fleet in
order to evade the possibility of future sanctions, this issue was hardly a
major concern. He discounted the idea that Germany would do so, as it
would be more likely to rely on purchases of Rumanian oil rather than
seeking large-scale overseas imports. Given the political and diplomatic
imperatives at stake, Jebb thought a tanker ban in combination with a
League embargo was well worth consideration, as it would increase
Italy’s difficulties and costs in securing adequate oil supplies and could
induce Italy to modify its course of action in Abyssinia.46 Jebb’s views,
however, did not win favour with one of his superiors. Vansittart thought
the dismal state of Italy’s campaign in Abyssinia, where Italian forces
were bogged down and fighting defensive battles, made increasing the
pressure through an oil sanction an academic issue; it would increase
Britain’s risk without significantly changing the outcome. Vansittart
believed that the sanctions already in place would eventually compel
Mussolini to the bargaining table long before Italian troops had vanquished
Abyssinian resistance.47
In spite of these concerns, however, Anthony Eden, Hoare’s replacement
as the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, thought the idea of a tanker
ban had merit as a further impetus for Italy to abandon its invasion, and he
brought the issue of sanctions to the Cabinet on 15 January 1936.48 The
Cabinet decided that it would agree to the League’s explicit examination
of the effectiveness of an oil sanction in spite of the difficulties Board of
224 G. Bruce Strang

Trade and Foreign Office officials saw in the implementation of any plan.
In order to overcome the resistance to sanctions inherent in the Board of
Trade’s position, the Cabinet instructed British members of the committee
of experts that the League appointed to investigate the issue had to be
absolutely impartial in their deliberations.49
The experts’ committee, meeting in Geneva in early February 1936,
carried out an intensive investigation of possible Italian use of oil sub-
stitutes in order to limit its need for imported oil, ultimately concluding
that Italy would still need to import 2,950,000 tons of oil and petroleum
products given the increased level of wartime demand. The League
committee worked with clear knowledge that neutrality legislation in
the United States would prevent the Roosevelt administration from
imposing any effective limits on American exports to Italy.50 In light of
these considerations, the committee concentrated on determining
whether or not Italy had the capacity to transport increased shipments
from the United States to Italy, basing their assessment on the assump-
tion that diplomatic pressure could induce Rumania and the Soviet
Union to join a sanctions regime even without American and Venezue-
lan compliance. As of January 1936, Italy’s effective merchant tanker
fleet consisted of 356,000 gross tons. This number represented an
increase of more than 26,000 tons since the summer of 1935, as Italy
had purchased new tankers in order to limit the potential effectiveness
of sanctions. In addition, the Regia Marina had 70,000 tons of available
tanker capacity that could carry oil products. The League committee
departed from earlier British estimates in one central way. In the com-
mittee’s calculations, not all of Italy’s tankers could make the trans-
Atlantic voyage to the United States or Venezuela, limiting the total
available tonnage to 270,000; the remainder was too old or too slow to
make the journey safely, although it could carry shipments from Italy to
Italian East Africa, lessening the distance that the more modern ships
would need to travel. Other ships lay idle, or served as storage facilities
in Mogadishu, which lacked adequate port facilities. In an emergency,
Italy could likely devote as much as 320,000 tons to trade with the
Americas. Modern ships would be able to make 5 to 6 return trips from
Italy to the United States, but given the age of the Italian fleet, the
experts argued that the average Italian tanker would only be able to
make 4.75 return trips in a year, as the journey from Italy to the United
States was roughly 10,000 miles, and the distance from the United
States to Eritrea was 15,000 miles. Normally, ships could carry one-
third more cargo than their rated tonnage. Based on these assumptions,
the experts calculated that Italy could carry between 1,750,000 and
2,000,000 tons per year, depending on the level of commitment of pre-
viously laid-up tanker capacity. Obviously, both of these numbers fell
Oil Sanctions and Italy’s Invasion of Abyssinia 225

far short of the estimated 2,950,000 tons that Italy needed. In order to
meet its wartime needs, Italy would need to charter tankers with an
additional 225,000 tons of capacity.51
A ban on use of League tankers carried further complications. The
League would need to ensure not only that Italy could not charter
League members’ vessels but also that it could not purchase them. It
would be relatively easy to enact a ban on direct sales to Italy; provided
that League members accepted the concept of the ban in the first place,
this additional step would not cause enormous new obligations. What
would stop League members from either chartering or selling ships to
companies or governments in non-League countries that could then
charter them or re-sell them to Italy? In order to close this potential
loophole, the League would need to ban the sale or chartering of tankers
by League members to any country that failed to implement League
sanctions.52
The League committee of experts presented a grim picture. It did allow
that in certain circumstances, an embargo could work. Based on a series
of optimistic assumptions—that the Soviet Union and Rumania would
impose an embargo even without the cooperation of the United States and
Venezuela, that the League could prevent Italy from procuring more
tankers, that the League could control Italian chartering of vessels from
non-League members, that the League could control entrepôt trade with
third party countries—then Italy would be unable to import sufficient oil
supplies in the long run. This series of events was unlikely, and the com-
mittee of experts left outside observers to draw their own conclusions.
Even if a universal embargo were imposed, which was of course impossible
to realize given American neutrality legislation, it would take at least
three to three-and-a-half months for the embargo to become effective, as
Italy had some 700,000 to 800,000 tons of oil stockpiled. If the United
States limited shipping to normal levels and Rumania and the Soviet
Union agreed to an embargo in spite of United States non-compliance,
events that seemed unlikely in February 1936, the embargo would prevent
Italy from securing sufficient supplies and would make what purchases
Italy could make more difficult and expensive. An embargo on oil ship-
ments and on the use of League tankers confined to League members
would likely see enough leakage through American firms so that the
tanker ban would similarly serve merely to make Italian purchases more
expensive.53 In short, without complete American cooperation, “Italy
would, despite a League embargo, be able to procure as much oil as she
needs and can pay for.”54 The only real justification for an embargo was
that it could increase the cost of oil that Italy could import, thus decreasing its
overall purchases or increasing the rate of drain on Italy’s gold reserves.
Was that goal worth the inherent risks?
226 G. Bruce Strang

Some hope did lie in the state of Italy’s gold and currency reserves,
which had contracted dramatically as a result of the sanctions that League
members imposed. At the end of September 1935, the Bank of Italy held
reserves of 4.7 billion lire, with the total of reserves and liquidity
exceeding 5 billion lire. By 1 January 1936, the Bank’s reserves had fallen to
3.3 billion lire, with total reserves and liquidity of roughly 4 billion lire.
The fall in reserves was not linear, however, as the steepest declines had
come in 1935. After the turn of the year, the rate of decline leveled off,
although the sanctions in place still meant that Italy was steadily hemor-
rhaging its reserves. Italy had to sell gold in order to purchase foreign cur-
rency so that it could pay for most of its imports, as its export markets in
many League countries had dried up.55 The League of Nations Coordinat-
ing Committee noted that Italy had exported large amounts of gold from
November 1935 through to February 1936, totaling more than
1,411,700,000 Italian lire. The possibility that Italy’s gold reserves had
decreased by half since the start of the war did indicate that Italy would
eventually succumb to the effects of sanctions, as at some point it would
no longer have a supply of gold available with which to purchase the foreign
currency needed to buy foreign goods.56
Ultimately, the British Cabinet decided to override the experts’ report
and to continue to support the implementation of an oil sanction in
Geneva. The major issues that the Cabinet discussed, however, indicate
a high degree of ambivalence and its emphasis on domestic political
concerns rather than on any compelling economic case. As the United
States and Venezuela would neither impose sanctions nor any effective
control on shipments, little prospect existed that an oil sanction in and of
itself could induce Italy to abandon its invasion. An oil sanction did still
carry the potential risk of war with Italy, but most members thought that
outcome unlikely, as British defenses in the Mediterranean had
improved since the previous year. Isolating Italy in this fashion could
prompt Italy to turn towards an alliance with Germany, although the
Cabinet minimized the risk, assuming incorrectly that Hitler held con-
tempt for Italy. Nevertheless, more important issues took precedence
over these concerns. Even if an oil sanction would not be immediately
decisive, it would increase the pressure on Italy, drawing heavily on
Italy’s already strained gold reserves. Failure to apply further sanctions
would also carry great costs: alienating public opinion in the United
States and the Dominions, limiting the possibility of Labour cooperation
in carrying out industrial mobilization and rearmament in Britain, and,
above all, damaging the credibility of the League and its collective secu-
rity system. The imposition of an oil sanction, in effect, had become a
symbol of the League’s determination to pursue collective security, and
the National Government’s electoral strategy had intimately tied its
Oil Sanctions and Italy’s Invasion of Abyssinia 227

credibility to the League’s. Accordingly, Prime Minister Baldwin

argued that the position of the government depended on its public sup-
port for the collective security principles of the Covenant. Given these
imperatives, the Cabinet approved the concept of a League sanction on
oil shipments to Italy, in spite of clear evidence that the sanction had no
real prospect of success.57
In the end, of course, the League never did impose an oil embargo on
Italy. Abyssinian resistance crumbled in April and May of 1936, and Ital-
ian troops conquered Addis Ababa. Haile Selassie fled into exile. The cri-
sis shattered the League’s credibility as an organization capable of
ensuring collective security. The catastrophic failure of the League’s
inadequate effort has helped to create the impression that imposition of
more stringent measures, including an oil embargo, could proverbially
have saved the day. Certainly, Italy was extremely vulnerable to sanctions
prohibiting it from importing oil. It produced only a miniscule percentage
of its needs and could rely only on small amounts from Albania. League
members, especially Rumania and to a lesser degree the Soviet Union,
dominated the export trade to Italy. Had the League curtailed this trade
and found some way to secure the cooperation of the Roosevelt adminis-
tration, the results would have been devastating for Italy’s economy, par-
alyzing Italy’s domestic truck transport and limiting industrial
production. Eventually, Mussolini’s forces in East Africa would have run
out of fuel, immobilizing the troops and preventing their re-supply. The
invasion would have ended in disaster. Even with the unhelpful attitude of
the United States, imposing an oil embargo would have hastened the drain
on Italy’s gold reserves, increasing the risk Mussolini ran while carrying
through his campaign.
One of the central actors later rued the League’s apparent lack of una-
nimity and resolve. When Mussolini fell from power in 1943, Anthony
Eden mused about the League’s failure to prevent Italy’s conquest of
Abyssinia and its subsequent failure to prevent the outbreak of the Sec-
ond World War: “Looking back the thought comes again. Should we not
have shown more determination in pressing through with sanctions in
1935 and if we had could we not have called Mussolini’s bluff and at
least postponed this war? The answer, I am sure, is yes.”58 Whatever
the answer to Eden’s highly speculative question, though, one must
question whether or not an oil sanction was the best way to show that
resolve.
In the circumstances extant in 1935 and 1936, the possibility of a suc-
cessful oil embargo against Italy was slim; too many conditions conspired
against the League and its collective security apparatus. Rumania was by
far the largest supplier of oil to Italy, but it predicated its adhesion to sanc-
tions on the fundamental condition that all exporting countries would have
228 G. Bruce Strang

to join an embargo, as did the Soviet Union. Given that that condition was
impossible to meet, was there any real hope that the League could rally
even its own members to impose an embargo, especially given the extreme
reticence of France’s political leadership? With no American limits to its oil
exports to Italy, a League embargo would simply serve to redirect trade to
the United States away from League exporters. While this move would
have increased Italy’s costs, it would have had no realistic chance of induc-
ing Mussolini to abandon the invasion and would not have saved Abyssinia.
Had the United States limited exports to so-called normal levels, then a
League embargo and a comprehensive tanker ban could have increased this
pressure much further, but this set of circumstances was unrealizable in late
1935 or early 1936. Given sufficient time, the sanctions regime instituted in
November 1935 would have depleted Italian currency reserves, and an oil
embargo could have shortened that amount of time, but given the nature of
the world oil business, the available evidence gives us no reason to believe
that a League embargo could have been effective in time to prevent Italy’s
victory. In essence, the absence of the world’s largest oil producer from any
sanctions regime and the relatively rapid progress that Italy made in the
spring of 1936 doomed Abyssinia, whether or not League members had
implemented an oil embargo.
This examination of the practical aspects of an oil sanction suggests
that common narratives of the road to war need some further revision.
Did allegedly weak-kneed appeasers really miss an opportunity to
thwart the aggressive will of the dictators, to provide a stern warning
that would have dissuaded Hitler from his path of aggression, or at least
to have given him pause for second thought? Such a scenario seems
unlikely. What is interesting about this issue is how persistently British
political leaders kept the issue alive, not because they had any reason-
able hope that an oil sanction would prove effective, but because it had
become such a potent symbol. Critics of the British Cabinet, Board of
Trade, and Foreign Office officials should also consider another
counter-factual argument: would not the imposition of an oil sanction,
with all its attendant costs for League members, followed by the very
strong possibility of its failure to prevent Italy’s conquest, have dam-
aged the League’s credibility equally as badly as did the unwillingness
to impose such a sanction in the first place? In spite of its symbolic
value, an oil sanction was not practical in 1935 or 1936, and it should
not remain as part of our narrative about the alleged failure of the Brit-
ish political leadership in the 1930s.
This analysis, nonetheless, does not suggest that British and French
policies somehow reached their objectives, nor does it exculpate Hoare or
Eden, or Laval or Flandin. As Robert Vansittart later wrote, they in fact
realized “the worst of all worlds,” failing to save Abyssinia while alienating
Oil Sanctions and Italy’s Invasion of Abyssinia 229

Mussolini in the process. If one examines counterfactual approaches to

the issue, however, an oil sanction certainly could have worked had these
conditions been somewhat different. Italy was intensely vulnerable to an
oil sanction, and had the United States, the world’s largest producer, been
willing to join with League members, then Italy would have been in an
extremely difficult position. Rumania and the Soviet Union had also com-
mitted to ban exports provided other producers agreed, and Italy would
have had a difficult time securing sufficient supplies from countries such
as Venezuela and through transshipment from third countries. It is not
that an oil embargo could not have worked in ideal conditions; it is simply
that political conditions in America destroyed the League’s ability to
implement one effectively. The potential leakage in the sanctions front
undermined the case of those who wished to impose sanctions, however
tepid their advocacy, and gave comfort to those such as successive French
Foreign Ministers Pierre Laval and Pierre Étienne Flandin who feared
alienating a potential Italian ally. The League of the 1930s was an incom-
plete organization, missing centrally important Great Powers that oper-
ated outside its mandate and Powers within that sought security (or
expansion, for that matter) through conventional diplomacy, regional
alliances, and military power rather than through collective security. Nev-
ertheless, it would be unwise to assume from this one episode that
economic sanctions cannot work. Mutatis mutandis; in other conditions,
economic sanctions could prove to have powerful coercive effects,
however ineffective their application may have been during the squalid
episode of Italy’s invasion of Abyssinia.

NOTES

I would like to thank the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of
Canada and the Lakehead University Senate Research Committee for funding part
of the research for this article.

1. A. J. Barker, The Civilizing Mission: The Italo–Ethiopian War (London, 1968),

pp. 199–200.
2. Frank Hardie, The Abyssinian Crisis (London, 1974), p. 205.
3. Anthony Adamthwaite, Grandeur and Misery: France 1914–1940 (London,
1995), 199. Anthony Adamthwaite, France and the Coming of the Second World
War, 1936–1939 (London, 1977), p. 36. Richard Pankhurst, a specialist on
Ethiopia, used similar language. See, for example, his review of Brice Harris Jr.,
The United States and the Italo–Ethiopian Crisis (Stanford, 1964), in the Journal
of Modern African Studies, Vol. 3 (1965), p. 312–314. For more context on
blockades and issues that would have arisen had the League followed Adamth-
waite’s highly unusual advice, see Barry D. Hunt, “British Policy on the Issue of
Belligerent and Neutral Rights, 1919–1939,” in Craig L. Symonds et al., eds.,
230 G. Bruce Strang

New Aspects of Naval History: Selected Papers Presented at the Fourth Naval History
Symposium, United States Naval Academy, 25–26 October 1979 (Annapolis, MD,
1981), pp. 279–290; B. J. C. McKercher, “A British View of American Policy:
The Settlement of Blockade Claims, 1924–1927,” International History Review,
Vol. 3 (1981), pp. 368–384; and B. J. C. McKercher, “Belligerent Rights in
1927–1929: Foreign Policy versus Naval Policy in the Second Baldwin Govern-
ment,” Historical Journal, Vol. 29 (1986), pp. 963–974.
4. Cristiano Andrea Ristuccia, “The 1935 Sanctions against Italy: Would coal and
oil have made a difference?” European Review of Economic History, Vol. 4 (2000),
pp. 86, 107. Ristuccia’s assumption that the United States would have cooper-
ated with the League sanctions lies within the dominant American historiogra-
phy. See, for example, Brice Harris Jr., The United States and the Italo–Ethiopian
Crisis (Stanford, 1964), pp. 96, 102–103. For an account that takes issue with
Ristuccia’s and Harris’s assumptions about American policy, see Michael L.
Roi, ‘“A Completely Immoral and Cowardly Attitude:’ The British Foreign
Office, American Neutrality, and the Hoare–Laval Plan,” Canadian Journal of
History, Vol. 29 (1994), p. 344–349. For a discussion of the effects of sanctions
on Italian citizens, see Kate Ferris, ‘“Fare di ogni famiglia italiana un fortilizio:’
The League of Nation’s Economic Sanctions and everyday life in Venice,” Jour-
nal of Modern Italian History, Vol. 11 (2006), pp. 117–142.
5. George W. Baer, Test Case: Italy, Ethiopia, and the League of Nations (Stanford,
CA, 1976), p. 207–208, 221–227. For a similar view based on similar evidence,
see F.S. Northedge, The League of Nations: its life and times (New York,
1986), p. 235.
6. Chamberlain memorandum, 26 August 1935, T [Treasury Archives, National
Archives, Kew] 172/1838.
7. Treasury memorandum, 30 August 1935, S.D.W. to Sargent, 6 September 1935,
T 172/1838.
8. Neville to Ida Chamberlain, 25 August 1935, in Robert Self, ed., The Neville
Chamberlain Diary Letters, Volume 4: The Downing Street Years, 1934–1940
(Aldershot, UK, 2005), pp. 147–149.
9. For the published record of the meeting, see Documents on British Foreign Policy,
Second Series, Volume 14 (London, 1976), #553, #554, Edmond (Geneva) to
Vansittart, 11 September 1935, pp. 595–601, 601–607; #564, Edmond to
Vansittart, 13 September 1935, pp. 615–620. Chamberlain wrote that Mussolini’s
decision to send so many troops south of the Suez Canal “tied a noose around
his neck and left the end hanging out for anyone with a navy to pull.” Chamberlain
could not discount Mussolini’s threats to go to war, however, and he thought
that the weakness of British defenses made it unwise to risk the possibility of a
war while Britain was so unprepared. Neville to Ida Chamberlain, 8 December
1935, Chamberlain Diary, pp. 164–165.
10. For the full text of the speech, see The Times, 12 September 1935, p. 7.
11. The emphasis is in the original document. Thomas to Dominion High Commis-
sioners, Circular B. #96, 26 September 1935, CAB [Cabinet Archives, National
Archives, Kew] 21/411, 6109A/345.
12. For more on British Public Opinion, see Daniel P. Waley, British Public Opinion
and the Abyssinian War, 1935–6 (London, 1975). Soundings of opposition politi-
Oil Sanctions and Italy’s Invasion of Abyssinia 231

cians and leading backbenchers showed unanimous opinion that the govern-
ment would have to explore collective action through the League. Hoare
Minutes, conversations with Austen Chamberlain, Winston Churchill, David
Lloyd George, George Lansbury, and Herbert Samuel, p. 20–21 August 1935, T
172/1838.
13. CC 45(35), 9 September 1935, CAB 23/82; Committee of Imperial Defence
Memorandum [1188-B], “Economic Pressure on Italy,” 30 September 1935,
CAB 4/23; CC 44(35), 2 October 1935, CC 45(35), 9 October 1935, both CAB
23/82.
14. Waterlow (Athens) to Eden, 24 December 1936, FO [Foreign Office Archives,
National Archives, Kew] 371/19221, J9789/5499/1. Given Albania’s status as
an Italian protectorate, the League would have to treat that production as the
equivalent to domestic Italian production.
15. C. P. 212(35), 27 November 1935, Annex I, Petroleum Department Memoran-
dum, CAB 24/256.
16. Ibid.; “Oil Sanctions and Italy” Memorandum, 4 December 1935, T 172/
1838. The “others” category indicates a substantial increase in supplies from
Venezuela.
17. Skrine-Stevenson (Geneva) to Ashton-Gwatkin, 8 February 1936, FO 371/
20189, J1287/757/1. The League experts’ committee compiled these figures
from Italian statistics and estimates of tanker capacity unloading in Italian
ports.
18. See, for example, Vansittart conversation with Garibaldi, 25 November 1935,
FO 371/19164, J8447/1/1; CC 50(35), 2 December 1935, CAB 23/82.
19. Vansittart memorandum, 23 November 1935, FO 371/19164, J8419/1/1; Vansit-
tart minute, 26 November 1935, FO 371/19164, J8423/1/1. For his concerns about
France, see Vansittart to Clerk (Paris), 18 November 1935, FO 371/19166,
J8767/1/1; Vansittart Minute, 6 December 1935, FO 371/19167, J8911/1/1.
For more discussion of Vansittart’s views, see Michael L. Roi, Alternative to
Appeasement: Sir Robert Vansittart and Alliance Diplomacy, 1934–1937 (Westport,
CT, 1997), pp. 91–108. For Foreign Secretary Samuel Hoare’s concerns, see
C.P. 235(35), 8 December 1935, CAB 24/258. For the pivotal meeting that set
the stage for the Hoare-Laval Plan, see C. P. 233(35), Record of Meeting,
7 December 1935, CAB 24/258. For the French version, see Documents Diplo-
matiques Français, 1e Serie, Tome XIII (Paris, 1984), #352, Compte Rendu,
7 December 1935, 512–524; #358, Compte Rendu, 8 December 1935, 528–541.
Laval indicated that he based his policy in part on warnings from Italian
Ambassador Vittorio Cerruti that Mussolini would consider an oil embargo to
be the equivalent of a military sanction.
20. C. P. 220(35), Extracts from Committee of Imperial Defence, Defence, Policy
and Requirements Sub-committee, 14th meeting, 26 November 1935, CAB 24/258.
Chatfield to Vansittart, 8 August 1935, Vansittart to Vice-Admiral Little,
9 August 1935, both CAB 21/411. Then see Arthur Marder, “The Royal Navy
and the Ethiopian Crisis of 1935–1936,” The American Historical Review,
Vol. 5.5 (1970), pp. 1347–1349; and Steven Morewood, “The Chiefs of Staff,
the ‘men on the spot’ and the Anglo–Abyssinian Emergency, 1935–1936,” in
Dick Richardson and Glyn Stone, eds., Decisions and Diplomacy: Essays in
232 G. Bruce Strang

Twentieth Century International History (London, 1995), pp. 83–107. For Italian
military commanders’ assessments of their dismal chances in the event of war
with Britain, see Fortunato Minniti, “‘Il nemico vero:’ Gli obiettivi dei piani di
operazione contro la Gran Bretagna nel contesto etiopico (maggio 1935–mag-
gio 1936),” Storia Contemporanea, Vol. 26 (1994), pp. 575–602; Robert Mallett,
The Italian Navy and Fascist Expansionism, 1935–1940 (London, 1998), pp. 23–37;
and Robert Mallett, Mussolini and the Origins of the Second World War (Houndmills,
2003), pp. 44–47, 50.
21. CC 47(35), 16 October 1935, CAB 23/82. DCAS 424, Courtney to Wigram, 10
January 1936, FO 371/20159, J515/15/1. For more on the Anglo–French
dimension of the crisis, see among others R.A.C. Parker, “Great Britain, France
and the Ethiopian Crisis, 1935–1936,” English Historical Review, 89(1974), pp.
293–332; Richard Davis, “Mésentente cordiale: The Failure of the Anglo–
French Alliance. Anglo–French Relations during the Ethiopian and Rhineland
Crises, 1934–1936,” European History Quarterly, 23(1993), 513–27; Robert J.
Young, In Command of France: French Foreign Policy and Military Planning,
1933–1940 (Cambridge, MA, 1978), 89–92; Martin S. Alexander, The Republic
in danger: General Maurice Gamelin and the politics of French defence, 1933–1940
(Cambridge, UK, 1992), pp. 72–76; Jean-Baptiste Duroselle, La décadence,
1932–1939 (Paris, 1979), pp. 147–157; H. James Burgwyn, Italian foreign policy
in the interwar period, 1918–1940 (Westport, CT, 1997), pp. 119–120, 127–129;
Reynolds M. Salerno, Vital Crossroads: The Mediterranean Origins of the Second
World War, 1935–1940 (Ithaca, NY, 2002), pp. 11–12; Reynolds M. Salerno,
“Britain, France and the Emerging Italian Threat, 1935–38,” in Martin Sr.
Alexander and William J. Philpott, eds., Anglo–French Defence Relations between
the Wars (London, 2002), p. 74; William I. Shorrock, “The Italian Connection in
the Foreign/Colonial Policy of Pierre Laval, 1934–1936: A Reassessment,” Pro-
ceedings of the Annual Meeting of the French Colonial Historical Society, Vol. 12
(1988), p. 107–120; and Raphaële Ulrich-Pier, René Massigli (1888–1988),
Tome I: Une vie de diplomatie (Brussels, 2006), pp. 309–310.
22. Ronald Hoare (Bucharest) to Samuel Hoare, 5 December 1935, with Eden
minute, 7 December 1935, both FO 371/19219/5499/1.
23. C. P. 212(35), 27 November 1935, CAB 24/256. Skrine-Stevenson minute, 5
December 1935, Vansittart minute, 5 December 1935, both FO 371/19219,
J9232/5499/1.
24. Skrine-Stevenson to Ashton-Gwatkin, 28 November 1935, FO 371/19217,
J8713/5499/1,
25. C. P. 212 (35), Annex I, Petroleum Department Memorandum, 27 November
1935, CAB 24/256. In December 1934, for example, Italy had purchased
$249,400 worth of oil and petroleum products from the United States. The
corresponding figure for December 1935 was $1,363,300. League of Nations
Coordinating Committee, #125, Dispute between Ethiopia and Italy: Statistics of
Trade with Italy and the Italian Colonies, Volume III, December 1935 to March 1936
(Geneva: League of Nations, 1936), pp. 35, 43. The League experts’ committee
later estimated that total American shipments to Italy in the three months from
October to December 1935 comprised 157,100 tons. Skrine-Stevenson (Geneva)
to Ashton-Gwatkin, 8 February 1936, NA, FO 371/20189, J1287/757/1.
Oil Sanctions and Italy’s Invasion of Abyssinia 233

26. Feis to Hull, 7 November 1935, Franklin Delano Roosevelt Presidential Library
[FDRPL], President’s Secretary’s Files [PSF], Diplomatic, Italy: 1933–1948,
Box 41.
27. Hull statement, 15 November 1935, Foreign Relations of the United States
[FRUS], 1935, Volume I (Washington, 1953), 819. For more on American pol-
icy, see, for example, Harris, Ethiopian Crisis, passim; Howard Jablon, Cross-
roads of Decision: the State Department and foreign policy, 1933–1937 (Lexington,
KY, 1983), pp. 102–105; Robert A. Divine, The Illusion of Neutrality (Chicago,
1968), pp. 110–160; Robert Dallek, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and American Foreign
Policy, 1932–1945 (New York, 1995), pp. 101–120; Baer, Test Case, pp. 66–74.
28. Stevenson to Ashton-Gwatkin, 28 November 1935, FO 371 19217 J8713/5499/1.
29. Hull to Wilson (Geneva), 10 October, 26 October 1935, Wilson to Hull,
10 October 1935, FRUS, 1935, I, pp. 842, 843–44, 852–54.
30. Phillips to Hull, 14 November 1935, FDRPL, PSF, Diplomatic, Italy: 1933–1948,
B. 41.
31. C. P. 236(35), 9 December 1935, CAB 24/258.
32. C. P. 236(35), 9 December 1935, CAB 24/258.
33. Starling to Ashton-Gwatkin, 20 November 1935, J8527/5499/1; Lindsay
(Washington) to Hoare, 26 November 1935, FO 271/19217, J8506/5499/1;
Lindsay to Hoare, 23 November 1935, with Oliphant Minute, 25 November
1935, FO 371/19216, J8341/5499/1; Lindsay to Hoare, 4 December 1935, FO
371/19218, J8871/5499/1; Lindsay to Hoare, 7 December 1935; FO 371/
19219, J9066/5499/1; Lindsay to Eden, 10 December 1935, FO 371/19221,
J9761/5499/1. The best account of the influence of American policy on British
decisions is Roi, ‘A Completely Immoral and Cowardly Attitude,’ pp. 333–351.
34. C. P. 236(35), 9 December 1935, CAB 24/258.
35. Jebb Minute, 5 December 1935, Sargent Minute, 5 December 1935, Skrine-
Stevenson Minute, 6 December 1935, all FO 371/19220, J9232/5499/1,.
36. C. P. 212(35), 27 November 1935, NA, CAB 24/256. Ashton-Gwatkin Minute,
1 January 1936, Eden Minute, 6 January 1936, FO 371/19221, J9814/5499/1.
37. “Oil Sanctions and Italy,” 4 December 1935, T 172/1838; Mercantile Marine
Department Memorandum, December 1935, FO 371/19221, J9814/5499/1.
38. “Oil Sanctions and Italy,” 4 December 1935, T 172/1838; Mercantile Marine
Department Memorandum, December 1935, FO 371/19221, J9814/5499/1.
39. “Oil Sanctions and Italy,” 4 December 1935, T 172/1838; Mercantile Marine
Department Memorandum, December 1935, FO 371/19221, J9814/5499/1.
40. “Oil Sanctions and Italy,” 4 December 1935, T 172/1838; Mercantile Marine
Department Memorandum, December 1935, FO 371/19221, J9814/5499/1.
41. Mercantile Marine Department Memorandum, January 1936, FO 371/20180,
J455/216/1. Officials from both the Petroleum Departments and the Mercantile
Marine Department continued to oppose any ban on Italian refueling; they
argued that the League committee should not consider the question at all, as it
constituted a ban on shipping, not on the oil trade per se. They argued therefore
that the question lay outside the League committee’s remit. Foreign
Office Minute, 28 February 1936, FO 371/20180, J2121/216/1; Jebb Minute,
18 February 1936, FO 371/20180, J1609/216/1. For a lengthy quotation from
and further discussion of Jebb’s minute, see Baer, Test Case, p. 207–208.
234 G. Bruce Strang

42. Hoare to Lindsay (Washington), 26 November 1935, FO 371/19216, J8341/

5499/1; Hoare Minute, 6 December 1935, FO 371/19220, J9232/5499/1; CC
50(35), 2 December 1935, CAB 23/82. For more on the ill-fated Hoare-Laval
plan, see, for example, W. N. Medlicott, “The Hoare-Laval Pact Reconsid-
ered,” in David Dilks, ed., Retreat from Power: Studies in Britain’s Foreign Policy
of the Twentieth Century, Volume I (London, 1981), pp. 118–138; J. C. Robert-
son, “The Hoare-Laval Plan,” Journal of Contemporary History, 10(1975),
pp. 433–464; and Roi, Alternative to Appeasement, pp. 91–104. For Neville
Chamberlain’s hopes that Britain might be able to secure some level of coopera-
tion from the Roosevelt administration, see Chamberlain Diary, 29 November
1935, NC [Neville Chamberlain Papers, University of Birmingham Library, Bir-
mingham] 2/23A.
43. CC 50(35), 2 December 1935, NA CAB 23/82; CC 53(35), 10 December 1935,
CAB 23/82; CC 55(35), 17 December 1935, CAB 23/82.
44. Mercantile Marine Department Memorandum, January 1936, FO 371/20180,
J455/216/1.
45. Ibid.
46. Jebb Minute, 14 January 1936, FO 371/20180, J455/216/1. See also Jebb
Minute, 1 January 1936, Peterson Minute, 4 January 1936, FO 371/18221,
J9814/5499/1. Jebb advocated the idea of a tanker ban. He weakened his case,
however, by mistakenly assuming that the bulk of Italy’s fleet would still be car-
rying oil from Rumania. In fact, the very point of the tanker ban was that the
League would impose it as a further condition having already implemented a
League embargo.
47. Jebb Minute, 14 January 1936, FO 371/20180, J455/216/1.
48. Eden Minute, 6 January 1936, FO 371/20180, J9814/5499/1. For estimates
that Italy would be unable to conquer Abyssinia before the commencement of
the rainy season, see Committee of Imperial Defense, Defence, Policy and
Requirements Sub-committee, 14th meeting, 26 November 1935, FO 371/
19165, J8655/1/1.
49. CC 1(36), 15 January 1936, 4(36), 5 February 1936, both CAB 23/83.
50. Skrine-Stevenson (Geneva) to Ashton-Gwatkin, 5 February 1936, Skrine-
Stevenson to Ashton-Gwatkin, 7 February 1936, FO 371/20189, J1286/757/1.
For the impossibility of any American limits on its oil exports to Italy, see Lindsey
(Washington) to Eden, 21 February 1936, FO 371/20178, J1579/136/1. Lindsay
thought it unwise even to approach the Roosevelt administration to ask for any
limitation on exports, because it would merely annoy American politicians and
had no chance of leading to a change in American policy. See also CC 6(36), 12
February 1936, CC 8(36), 19 February 1936, both CAB 23/83; and CC 11(36),
26 February 1936, CAB 23/83.
51. Skrine-Stevenson (Geneva) to Ashton-Gwatkin, 7 February 1936, FO 371/
20189, J1286/757/1.
52. Ibid.
53. Skrine-Stevenson (Geneva) to Ashton-Gwatkin, 12 February 1936, FO 371/
20189, J1376/757/1. See also Eden to Lindsay (Washington), 19 February
1936, Lindsay (Washington) to Eden, 21 February 1936, FO 371/20178, J1579/
136/1.
Oil Sanctions and Italy’s Invasion of Abyssinia 235

54. Skrine-Stevenson (Geneva) to Ashton-Gwatkin, 5 February 1936, FO 371/

20189, J1165/757/1.
55. R. I. De Mattia, Bilanci degli Istituti di Emissione Italiani, 1845–1936: altre serie
Storiche di Interesse Monetario e Fonti, Vol. I, No. II (Roma, 1967), pp. 804–05.
When Badoglio’s column eventually entered Addis Ababa in May 1935, the
Bank’s reserves had dipped to 2.5 billion Lire, with total reserves and liquidity
equally 3.7 billion Lire.
56. League of Nations Coordinating Committee Memorandum, 23 April 1935, FO
371/19189, J3461/757/1.
57. CC 11(36), 26 February 1936, CAB 23/83. C.P. 53(36), Eden Memorandum,
22 February 1936, CAB 24/260. The Cabinet decision was far from heroic,
especially considering determined French opposition to an oil embargo meant
that Britain would be unlikely to have to face the potential ramifications of hav-
ing implemented one. See Eden to the Foreign Office, 2 March 1936, FO 371/
20189, J1971/757/1; CC 15(36), 5 March 1936, CAB 23/83. For more detail,
see also Baer, Test Case, pp. 221–227.
58. Anthony Eden, Facing the Dictators (London, 1962), p. 311.