If you read about the 1807 Embargo Act, it was in response to acts of war.
It was not at all attempting to harm the innocent civilians of another nation by starving them of commerce.
It was trying to stop these other bully nations from hijacking our ships and crews.
{...
The
Embargo Act of 1807 was a general trade
embargo on all foreign nations that was enacted by the
United States Congress. As a successor or replacement law for the 1806
Non-importation Act and passed as the
Napoleonic Wars continued, it represented an escalation of attempts to
coerce Britain to stop any
impressment of American sailors and to respect American
sovereignty and
neutrality but also attempted to pressure
France and other nations in the pursuit of general diplomatic and economic leverage.
In the first decade of the 19th century, American shipping grew. During the Napoleonic Wars, rival nations Britain and France targeted neutral American shipping as a means to disrupt the trade of the other nation. American
merchantmen who were trading with "enemy nations" were seized as
contraband of war by European navies. The
British Royal Navy had impressed American sailors who had either been British-born or previously serving on British ships, even if they now claimed to be American citizens with American papers. Incidents such as the
Chesapeake–Leopard affair outraged Americans.
Congress imposed the embargo in direct response to these events.
President Thomas Jefferson acted with restraint, weighed public support for retaliation, and recognized that the United States was militarily far weaker than either Britain or France. He recommended that Congress respond with commercial warfare, a policy that appealed to Jefferson both for being experimental and for foreseeably harming his domestic political opponents more than his allies, whatever its effect on the European belligerents. The
10th Congress was controlled by his allies and agreed to the Act, which was signed into law on December 22, 1807.
...}
en.wikipedia.org
As for the 1906 Geneva Conventions, they are hundreds of pages long, and I an not inclined to go through it again.
It has been years since I did that, but it should be obvious to everyone that the old practice of surrounding a city and starving it into submission, was one of the main accomplishments of the Geneva Conventions.