Hague Rules OK: The 1899 Peace and Disarmament Conference
Held during a period of intense great power rivalry, the Hague Conference sought to prevent conflict but ended up rewriting the laws of war instead.
May 1899 saw the hotels and boarding houses of The Hague filling up with an unaccustomed crowd of visitors. The Peace and Disarmament Conference was the biggest international event of the year. Unlike the World’s Fairs and international congresses of professions and causes with which the West had by then become familiar this was on the highest diplomatic level. Almost every state of any significance was sending delegates with the noble purpose, so newspaper-readers understood, of stopping the arms race and inaugurating the reign of peace.
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