ABSTRACT
The notion appeared vaguely for the first time in the maritime context around the eleventh century. With its origins trailing back to the age of European feudalism, neutrality found clear expression in the Consolato del mare of the fifteenth century, but it is generally considered to be, in its modern form, a fruit of the nineteenth century. It is generally accepted that the formative period of the law of maritime neutrality extends from roughly the end of the fifteenth century to the mid-eighteenth century. In the maritime context, abstention is concretized in the obligation incumbent upon the neutral state not to supply in any manner, directly or indirectly, a belligerent power with warships, ammunition, or war materials of any kind. In the post-Second World War era, the traditional institutions of maritime neutrality have only rarely operated. The so-called integral conception of neutrality was temporarily abandoned in the 1930s on the occasion of the Italo-Ethiopian crisis.
