Nicholas Mulder, a Cornell historian, provides the first comprehensive history of economic sanctions as a tool of international politics. Tracing sanctions from their origins during World War I through the interwar period, Mulder shows how a weapon developed to wage total war was adopted for peacetime coercion. The book examines the League of Nations' experiments with collective economic pressure, the theoretical debates about whether sanctions could substitute for military force, and the practical difficulties that emerged when sanctions were actually applied. Mulder reveals the dark paradox at the heart of economic warfare: sanctions were designed as a humanitarian alternative to military conflict, yet they are modeled on naval blockades intended to starve civilian populations into submission. He shows how sanctions advocates had to minimize or deny the suffering sanctions caused to maintain the fiction that economic pressure was more humane than armed force. The book traces how this history shaped the sanctions regimes of the Cold War and post-Cold War eras, arguing that contemporary reliance on sanctions carries forward unresolved tensions from their origins. Essential reading for understanding a tool of foreign policy that has become increasingly prevalent while remaining poorly understood in its effects and historical development.