Abstract
This book traces the British role in the evolution of international law prior to 1914, utilizing naval arms control as a case study. I argue that the Foreign Office adopted a pragmatic approach towards international law, emphasizing what was possible within the existing system of law rather than attempting to create radically new and powerful international institutions. The work challenges standard perceptions of the Hague Peace Conferences of 1899 and 1907 which interpreted these gatherings as unrealistic efforts at general disarmament through world government, positing instead that legalized arms control provided a realistic means of limiting armaments.
This work explores how a great power employed treaties to complement maritime security strategies. A powerful world government was not advocated and was unnecessary for the management of naval arms control. While law could not guarantee state compliance, the framework of the international legal system provided a buffer, increasing predictability in interstate relations. This book begins with an account of how international law functioned in the nineteenth century, and how states employed international law in limiting armaments. With this framework, a legal analysis is provided for exploring the negotiations at the Hague Conferences of 1899 and 1907, and in the subsequent Anglo-German naval arms race.
What emerges is how international law functioned by setting expectations for future behaviour, while raising the political cost of violations. Naval arms control provided a unique opportunity for legal regulation, as the lengthy building time and easily verifiable construction enabled inspections by naval attachés, a traditional diplomatic practice. Existing practices of international law provided a workable method of managing arms competition, without the necessity for unworkable projects of world government. Thus failure to resolve the arms race before 1914 must be attributed to other causes besides the lack of legal precedents.
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Notes
- 1.
Arthur J Marder, The Anatomy of British Sea Power: A History of British Naval Policy in the Pre-Dreadnought Era, 1880–1905, 3rd Edition 1972 ed. (London: Frank Cass, 1940), 342.
- 2.
Merze Tate, The Disarmament Illusion: The Movement for a Limitation of Armaments to 1907, 2nd edn. 1971 ed. (New York: Russell and Russell, 1942), 347.
- 3.
Anatole France, The Red Lily (New York: Boni & Liveright, 1917), 75.
- 4.
David Stevenson, Armaments and the Coming of War: Europe 1904–1914 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), 105–11, 417.
- 5.
David G. Herrmann, The Arming of Europe and the Making of the First World War (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996).
- 6.
Jonathan A. Grant, Rulers, Guns, and Money: The Global Arms Trade in the Age of Imperialism (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2007), 6.
- 7.
Id., 133–34.
- 8.
Churchill to Grey, Oct. 24, 1913, Gooch and Temperley, eds., British Documents, Vol. IX, 721.
- 9.
E. L. Woodward, Great Britain and the German Navy, 2nd edn (London: Frank Cass and Co., 1964).
- 10.
Id., 5.
- 11.
Id., 134.
- 12.
Marder, The Anatomy of British Sea Power; Arthur J. Marder, From the Dreadnought to Scapa Flow, 3rd edn (London: Oxford University Press, 1972), Vol. 1, 1904–14: The Road to War.
- 13.
Wilhelm G. Grewe, The Epochs of International Law, trans. Michael Byers (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2000); Arthur Nussbaum, A Concise History of the Law of Nations (New York: Macmillan Co., 1947).
- 14.
Joseph Choate, The Two Hague Conferences (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1969), Frederick W. Holls, The Peace Conference at the Hague and Its Bearing on International Law and Policy (London: Macmillan and Co., 1900), James Brown Scott, The Hague Peace Conferences of 1899 and 1907: A Series of Lectures Delivered before the Johns Hopkins University in the Year 1908, 2 vols. (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins Press, 1909), Karl von Stengel, Weltstaat Und Friedensproblem (Berlin: Verlag Reichl, 1909). Andrew Dickson White, The First Hague Conference (Boston: World Peace Foundation, 1912). The accounts of Holls and Choate also tended toward self-congratulation, exaggerating their roles in crafting compromises.
- 15.
Alfred Thayer Mahan, Armaments and Arbitration: Or, The Place of Force in the International Relations of States (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1912).
- 16.
Scott, The Hague Peace Conferences of 1899 and 1907; James Brown Scott, ed., The Proceedings of the Hague Peace Conferences: Translation of the Original Texts: Conference of 1899 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1920); A. Pearce Higgins, The Hague Peace Conferences and Other International Conferences Concerning the Laws and Usages of War: Texts of Conventions with Commentaries (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1909).
- 17.
Stengel, Weltstaat Und Friedensproblem, 134–37. See also Karl von Stengel, Der Ewige Friede (Munich: Carl Haushalter, 1899).
- 18.
Walther Schücking, The International Union of the Hague Conferences, trans. Charles G. Fenwick (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1918); Hans Wehberg, Die Internationale Beschränkung Der Rüstungen (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1919). Works by non-lawyer Alfred H. Fried, a noted peace activist, should also be included in the discussion of the conferences. Alfred H. Fried, Die Zweite Haager Konferenz: Ihre Arbeiten, Ihre Ergebnisse, Und Ihre Bedeutung (Leipzig: B. Elischer Nachfolger, 1908).
- 19.
Wehberg, Die Internationale Beschränkung Der Rüstungen; Hans Wehberg, The Limitation of Armaments: A Collection of the Projects Proposed for the Solution of the Problem, Preceded by an Historical Introduction, trans. Edwin H. Zeydel (Washington: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 1921).
- 20.
Tate, The Disarmament Illusion.
- 21.
Id., 347.
- 22.
Calvin DeArmond Davis, The United States and the First Hague Peace Conference (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1962); Calvin DeArmond Davis, The United States and the Second Hague Peace Conference: American Diplomacy and International Organization 1899–1914 (Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press, 1975).
- 23.
Jost Dülffer, Regeln Gegen Den Krieg? Die Haager Friedenskonferenzen Von 1899 Und 1907 in Der Internationalen Politik (Berlin: Ullstein, 1981).
- 24.
Davis, The United States and the First Hague Peace Conference, 110–24; Davis, The United States and the Second Hague Peace Conference, 215–19.
- 25.
Davis, The United States and the Second Hague Peace Conference, vii–viii.
- 26.
Andre T. Sidorowicz, The British Government, the Hague Peace Conference of 1907, and the Armaments Question, in B. J. C. McKercher, ed., Arms Limitation and Disarmament: Restraints on War 1899–1939 (Westport, Conn: Praeger, 1992), 16; Keith Neilson, “The British Empire Floats on the British Navy”: British Naval Policy, Belligerent Rights, and Disarmament, 1902–1909, in Id., 21.
- 27.
Jon Tetsura Sumida, In Defence of Naval Supremacy: Finance, Technology and British Naval Policy, 1889–1914 (London: Routledge, 1989); Nicholas A. Lambert, Sir John Fisher’s Naval Revolution (Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 1999).
- 28.
The theories have developed, in turn, a contentious historiographical debate. See, for example, Matthew S. Seligmann, “The Renaissance of Pre-First World War Naval History,” Journal of Strategic Studies 36, no. 3 (2013): 454–479; Nicholas A. Lambert, “On Standards: A Reply to Christopher Bell,” War in History 19, no. 2 (2012): 217–240; Christopher M. Bell, “Sir John Fisher’s Naval Revolution Reconsidered: Winston Churchill at the Admiralty, 1911–14,” War in History 18, no. 3 (2011): 333–356.
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Keefer, S.A. (2016). Introduction. In: The Law of Nations and Britain’s Quest for Naval Security. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-39645-3_1
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