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Both conferences included negotiations concerning disarmament, the laws of war and war crimes. A major effort in both conferences was the creation of a binding international court for compulsory arbitration to settle international disputes, which was considered necessary to replace the institution of war.
This effort failed at both conferences. Instead, a voluntary forum for arbitration, the Permanent Court of Arbitration, was established. Most of the countries present, including the United States, Great Britain, Russia, France, China and Persia, favoured a process for binding international arbitration, but the provision was vetoed by a few countries, led by Germany.
The First Hague Conference came from a proposal on 24 August 1898 by RussianTsarNicholas II.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Nicholas and CountMikhail Nikolayevich Muravyov, his foreign minister, were instrumental in initiating the conference. The conference opened on 18 May 1899, the Tsar's birthday. The treaties, declarations, and final act of the conference were signed on 29 July of that year, and they entered into force on 4 September 1900. What is referred to as the Hague Convention of 1899 consisted of three main treaties and three additional declarations:
This convention included the creation of the Permanent Court of Arbitration, which exists to this day. The section was ratified by all major powers and many smaller powersTemplate:Spaced ndash26 signatories in total.<ref>Certified true copy of the Convention for the pacific settlement of international disputes (1899).</ref> All signatories would ratify by 1904, except the Ottoman Empire which ratified in 1907.
(II) Convention with respect to the Laws and Customs of War on Land
(IV,3) Declaration concerning the Prohibition of the Use of Bullets which can Easily Expand or Change their Form inside the Human Body such as Bullets with a Hard Covering which does not Completely Cover the Core, or containing Indentations
This declaration states that, in any war between signatory powers, the parties will abstain from using "bullets which expand or flatten easily in the human body". This directly banned soft-point bullets (which had a partial metal jacket and an exposed tip) and "cross-tipped" bullets (which had a cross-shaped incision in their tip to aid in expansion, nicknamed "dum dums" from the Dum Dum Arsenal in India). It was ratified by all major powers, except the United States.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
The Second Hague Conference, in 1907, resulted in conventions containing only few major advancements from the 1899 Convention. However, the meeting of major powers did prefigure later 20th-century attempts at international cooperation.
The second conference was called at the suggestion of U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt in 1904. It was postponed because of the war between Russia and Japan. The Second Peace Conference was held from 15 June to 18 October 1907. The intent of the conference was to expand upon the 1899 Hague Convention by modifying some parts and adding new topics; in particular, the 1907 conference had an increased focus on naval warfare.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>
The British attempted to secure the limitation of armaments, but these efforts were defeated by the other powers, led by Germany, which feared a British attempt to stop the growth of the German fleet. As Britain had the world's largest navy, limits on naval expansion would preserve that dominant position. Germany also rejected proposals for compulsory arbitration. However, the conference did enlarge the machinery for voluntary arbitration and established conventions regulating the collection of debts, rules of war, and the rights and obligations of neutrals.<ref>Barbara Tuchman, The proud tower : a portrait of the world before the war, 1890–1914 (1966) pp. 277–287.</ref><ref>Margaret MacMillan, The War that Ended Peace (2013) pp. 304–305.</ref><ref>David J. Bettez, "Unfulfilled Initiative: Disarmament Negotiations and the Hague Peace Conferences of 1899 and 1907". RUSI Journal: Royal United Services Institute for Defence Studies, (1988) 133#3 pp 57–62.</ref>
The treaties, declarations, and final act of the Second Conference were signed on 18 October 1907; they entered into force on 26 January 1910. The 1907 Convention consists of thirteen treaties—of which twelve were ratified and entered into force—and one declaration:
This convention requires debts between contracting parties to be settled by arbitration (as set out in Convention I) rather than war, unless the debtor refuses to negotiate or reneges on an agreed settlement.
This convention sets out the accepted procedure for a state making a declaration of war. It provides the basis on which, in international law, war reparations may be demanded.<ref name="Hinrichsen 3">Template:Cite book</ref>File:Convention respecting the laws and customs of war on land.svgParties to Convention number IV: Convention respecting the laws and customs of war on land. Countries in purple are founding signatories. Montenegro and Serbia were also signatories, but their successor Yugoslavia was never a party. Some other territories shown as not being parties were bound as part of contracting parties, e.g. Ukraine (Russia) and Bohemia (Austria).
(IV) Convention respecting the Laws and Customs of War on Land<ref>Text on Avalon; PDF</ref>
This convention confirms, with minor modifications, the provisions of Convention (II) of 1899. All major powers ratified it.<ref>Table of parties and reservations, update October 2013 (archived 28 February 2014)</ref>
At the same time an International socialist Congress was standing in Stuttgart, in which the British delegate Harry Quelch labelled the Hague Convention a "thieves' supper". German authorities were swift in expelling Quelch from the country for his remarks, an action which boosted British esteem in the eyes of their radical peers.<ref>Walter Kendall, The Revolutionary Movement in Britain, 1900–21: The Origins of British Communism. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1969. p. 50. Template:ISBN?</ref>
Participants
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The Brazilian delegation was led by Ruy Barbosa, whose contributions are seen today by some analysts as essential for the defense of the principle of legal equality of nations.<ref>Klein, Robert A. (1974), Sovereign Equality Among States: The History of an Idea, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, p. 61. Template:ISBN?</ref> The British delegation included Sir Edward Fry, Sir Ernest Satow, the 11th Lord Reay (Donald James Mackay) and Sir Henry Howard as delegates, and Eyre Crowe as a technical delegate.<ref>The Proceedings of the Hague Peace Conferences, Oxford University Press, 1920</ref> The Russian delegation was led by Friedrich Martens. The Uruguayan delegation was led by José Batlle y Ordóñez, a defender of the idea of compulsory arbitration.Template:Citation needed
With Louis Renault and Léon Bourgeois, Paul Henri d'Estournelles de Constant was a member of the French delegation for both the 1899 and 1907 delegations. He later won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1909 for his efforts. The U.S. representative, with the rank of ambassador, was former American Bar Association president U. M. Rose. The main representative of the Chinese Empire was Lu Zhengxiang, who would become Prime Minister of the Republic of China in 1912. Also in attendance on behalf of China was former U.S. Secretary of State John Watson Foster. China's main military representative was Colonel Ding Shiyuan(丁士源),<ref>Template:Cite webTing Shih-yuan(General S. Y. W. Ting), "Who's Who in China (3rd edition)"</ref> whose suggestion regarding the need for a more specific legal definition of "war" was rejected by most of the Western participants.<ref>Mitchell, Ryan Martínez. "China's participation in the second Hague conference and the concept of equal sovereignty in international law". Asian Journal of International Law 11, no. 2 (2021): 351–371.</ref>
Though not negotiated in The Hague, the Geneva Protocol to the Hague Conventions is considered an addition to the Conventions. Signed on 17 June 1925 and entering into force on 8 February 1928, its single article permanently bans the use of all forms of chemical and biological warfare in interstate armed conflicts.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> The protocol grew out of the increasing public outcry against chemical warfare following the use of mustard gas and similar agents in World War I, and fears that chemical and biological warfare could lead to horrific consequences in any future war. The protocol has since been augmented by the Biological Weapons Convention (1972) and the Chemical Weapons Convention (1993).
Legacy
Many of the rules laid down at the Hague Conventions were violated in World War I. The German invasion of neutral Luxembourg and Belgium in August 1914 in order to outflank France, for instance, was a violation of Convention (V) of 1907, which states that belligerents must not violate neutral territory and move troops across said territory.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref><ref>Robinson, James J., ABA Journal46(9), p. 978.</ref> Poison gas was introduced and used by all major belligerents throughout the war, in violation of the Declaration (IV, 2) of 1899 and Convention (IV) of 1907, which explicitly forbade the use of "poison or poisoned weapons".<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>Template:Page needed
Writing in 1918, the German international law scholar and neo-KantianpacifistWalther Schücking called the assemblies the "international union of Hague conferences". Schücking saw the Hague conferences as a nucleus of a future international federation that was to meet at regular intervals to administer justice and develop international law procedures for the peaceful settlement of disputes, asserting that "a definite political union of the states of the world has been created with the First and Second Conferences".<ref>Walther Schücking, The international union of the Hague conferences, Clarendon Press, 1918.</ref>Template:Page needed
After World War II, the judges of the military tribunal of the Trial of German Major War Criminals at Nuremberg Trials found that by 1939, the rules laid down in the 1907 Hague Convention IV – Laws and Customs of War on Land were recognized by all civilized nations and were regarded as declaratory of the laws and customs of war. Under this post-war decision, a country did not have to have ratified the 1907 Hague Convention on Land Warfare in order to be bound by them.<ref name="Nurenberg-crimes">Judgement: The Law Relating to War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity, available from the Avalon Project at the Yale Law School, Retrieved on 29 August 2014.</ref> (Germany was in any case a signatory since 1909.)
Although their contents have largely been superseded by other treaties,Template:Citation needed the Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907 continue to stand as symbols of the need for restrictions on war and the desirability of avoiding it altogether. Since 2000, Convention (I) of 1907 on the Pacific Settlement of International Disputes has been ratified by 20 additional states.<ref name = 1907Iratifications/>
Baker, Betsy. "Hague Peace Conferences (1899 and 1907)." The Max Planck Encyclopedia of Public International Law, 4.2 (2009): 689–698. online
Barcroft, Stephen. "The Hague Peace Conference of 1899". Irish Studies in International Affairs 1989, Vol. 3 Issue 1, pp 55–68. online
Best, Geoffrey. "Peace conferences and the century of total war: the 1899 Hague Conference and what came after." International Affairs 75.3 (1999): 619–634. online
Bettez, David J. "Unfulfilled Initiative: Disarmament Negotiations and the Hague Peace Conferences of 1899 and 1907". RUSI Journal: Royal United Services Institute for Defence Studies, (1988) 133#3 pp 57–62. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03071848808445312
Eyffinger, Arthur. "A highly critical moment: role and record of the 1907 Hague Peace Conference." Netherlands international law review 54.2 (2007): 197–228.
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