II.

First Conference

The first conference was called on the initiative of Tsar Nicholas II of Russia for the purpose of bringing together the principal nations of the world to discuss and resolve the problems of maintaining universal peace, reducing armaments, and ameliorating the conditions of warfare. Twenty-six countries accepted the invitation to the conference issued by the minister of foreign affairs of the Netherlands and, on May 18, 1899, 101 delegates, including jurists, diplomats, and high army and naval officers, held their first meeting at a 17th-century villa in The Hague, the Huis ten Bosch (The House in the Wood). The last meeting took place on July 29, 1899.

The delegates to the conference entered into three formal conventions, or treaties. The first and most important one set up permanent machinery for the optional arbitration of controversial issues between nations. This machinery took the form of the Permanent Court of Arbitration, popularly known as The Hague Court or Hague Tribunal. The second and third conventions revised some of the customs and laws of warfare to eliminate unnecessary suffering during a war on the part of all concerned, whether combatants, non-combatants, or neutrals. These two conventions were supplemented by three declarations, to stay in force for five years, forbidding the use of poison gas, expanding (or dumdum) bullets, and bombardment from the air by the use of balloons or by other means.

Despite the failure of the conference to limit armaments, or to provide for compulsory arbitration of international disputes—the great nations refused to adopt compulsory arbitration because it infringed on their national sovereignty—the conference was one of the most significant international conferences of modern times, because it was the first multilateral international conference on general issues since the Congress of Vienna in 1815 and pointed forwards to the later League of Nations, forerunner of the United Nations.