As the west piled sanctions on Russia in response to its invasion of Ukraine, Dmitry Medvedev, Russia’s president from 2008 to 2012, made a threatening observation: “Economic wars quite often turn into real ones”.

Does Medvedev have a point? Anyone looking for an answer would do well to consult Nicholas Mulder’s new book The Economic Weapon: The Rise of Sanctions as a Tool of Modern War (Yale University Press). It is not only exceptionally well-timed, given the situation in Ukraine — it is also lucidly written, scholarly and thought-provoking.

The author is a historian at Cornell University and his narrative stops at 1945. But the history that he outlines provides some crucial context to modern geopolitics. Mulder shows how sanctions evolved from being primarily a weapon of war to being regarded as an alternative to armed conflict. During the first world war, the UK and the US attempted to starve Germany into submission through a blockade.