ABSTRACT

The Hague conferences of 1899, 1907 and the one not held in 1915 occupy an uncomfortable place in the history of war, peace, and diplomacy. Siloed in a range of sub-disciplines, historians often evaluate the conferences in terms of their relative ‘success’ or ‘failure’. Where diplomatic historians generally marginalise the political relevance of the conferences in explaining the march to global war in 1914, legal historians mobilise The Hague as a point of origin for the expansion of international humanitarian and human rights law and the law of war. Peace historians prefer to explain the relative weakness of pre-1914 transnational peace activism, whilst historians of global governance describe The Hague as a starting point for twentieth century multilateralism. Rarely do these histories speak to each other, which leaves their largely oppositional findings floating freely, untethered to either each other or the complex context in which The Hague’s conferences, conventions, and institutions evolved. In response, this analysis argues for the historical need to re-tether these Hague developments to the context of the time in which they first appeared, thus helping to shape a more nuanced understanding of their on-going political and legal relevance as well.

摘要

1899年，1907年的海牙会议和1915年未举行的海牙会议在战争，和平与外交的历史上占据了令人不安的位置。历史学家经常陷入各种子学科中，他们通常根据会议的相对“成功”或“失败”来评估会议。外交史学家通常在解释1914年全球战争的进程中把会议的政治意义边缘化，而法律史学家则动员海牙作为扩大国际人道主义法，人权法和战争法的起点。和平历史学家倾向于解释1914年前的跨国和平行动主义的相对弱点，而全球治理的历史学家则将海牙描述为20世纪多边主义的起点。这些历史很少互相交流，这使得他们在很大程度上是相互对立的发现可以自由浮动，彼此之间不受束缚，也不受海牙各次会议，公约和机构演变的复杂环境的束缚。作为回应，这种分析认为，历史需要将这些海牙事态发展重新束缚在它们首次出现的时代背景下，从而有助于对它们持续存在的政治和法律意义形成更细微的了解。