peace congresses: Early Peace Congresses

The first international peace congress was held in London in 1843. Proposals were made for a congress of nations and for international arbitration; propaganda against war was urged, and the control of the manufacture and sale of arms and munitions was advocated. The second congress, known as the Universal Peace Congress, met in Brussels in 1848 and was followed by a series of such meetings in Paris, 1849; Frankfurt, 1850; and London, 1851. International peace activity was interrupted, first by the Crimean War and then by the U.S. Civil War.

In 1867, Charles Lemonnier convened a peace congress in Geneva known as the International League of Peace and Liberty; after the Franco-Prussian War (1870–71) it reconvened (1873) in Brussels, and David Dudley Field's Proposals for an International Code formed the basis of discussion. In the Western Hemisphere the first Pan-American Conference met in 1889–90 (see Pan-Americanism). Meeting at the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893, the Universal Peace Congress, which had resumed in 1889, discussed plans for an International Court of Arbitration. In 1899 the court was established at The Hague by the first of the Hague Conferences. The Second Hague Conference (1907) was concerned, like the first, with arbitration and disarmament.

Sections in this article:

• Introduction
• Modern Peace Congresses
• The Period of the World Wars
• Early Peace Congresses
• Bibliography

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