Washington Conference

Washington Conference, officially the International Conference on Naval Limitation, meeting of representatives of Belgium, China, France, Great Britain, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Portugal, and the United States, called by the United States and convening in Washington, D.C., from November 12, 1921, to February 6, 1922. The conference was held to limit naval armaments generally and to promote better relations among nations with conflicting interests in the Pacific Ocean and the Far East. As a result of the discussions the following treaties were adopted:

A treaty signed by the five major naval powers limited the total tonnage of capital ships, that is, ships with more than 10,000 tons displacement, to a ratio of 5-5-3-1.7-1.7 for the United States, Great Britain, Japan, France, and Italy, in that order. It also stipulated that the status quo in respect to fortifications in the Pacific should be maintained. Another treaty between the same powers required submarines to abide by the same rules of warfare as surface ships and banned the use of poisonous gases in warfare.

The Four-Power Treaty between the United States, the Commonwealth of Nations, France, and Japan required the countries to respect one another's possessions in the Pacific.

The Nine-Power Treaty between all the participating nations guaranteed Chinese territorial integrity and the so-called Open Door Policy, by which trade with China was to be open to all nations. Another treaty between the same nine powers guaranteed the Chinese greater control of their customs tariffs, and a treaty between Japan and China pledged the Japanese to evacuate Shandong (Shantung) Province in China.

Although the Washington Conference treaties succeeded temporarily in stabilizing the Far Eastern situation, relations among the great powers began to deteriorate again in 1931, after the Japanese launched a war of aggression in China. In 1934 Japan announced that its Five-Power Treaty obligations would be terminated in December 1936, the earliest possible date under the terms of the treaty.