Commerce raiding is a form of
naval warfare used to destroy or disrupt logistics of the enemy on the open sea by attacking its
merchant shipping, rather than engaging its
combatants or enforcing a
blockade against them. It is also known, in
French, as
guerre de course (literally, "war of the chase") and, in
German,
Handelskrieg ("trade war"), from the nations most heavily committed to it historically as a strategy.