ABSTRACT
Access to food is humankind’s most basic need, and the “food weapon” refers to the means employed to voluntarily starve a population. The goal of this chapter is to see how, between the 17th and 19th centuries, a period when the question of food became of central importance, the first economists addressed the issue. The analysis examines the forms that the food weapon can take, the conditions for its implementation, its consequences, and the means of protection against it. The first part looks into the mercantilist texts, focused on food security and self-sufficiency, to reduce the potentially dangerous effects that they perceived in the food weapon. The second part turns to the 18th century. Less centred on international economic relations, the century attended to the question from an internal perspective (the food weapon used by leaders or private actors against the people). In the third part, the chapter analyses the 19th century, which gave renewed importance to the weapon wielded by and against States, at a time when France had orchestrated a continental blockade of the United Kingdom. Here the reflection is based primarily on the debates on the Corn Laws, which incorporated the “warring” dimension.
