Sir Ernest Satow and the 1907 Second Hague Peace Conference

Based on Satow's own account of the conference in his diaries, this article examines the role played by Sir Ernest Satow as the second plenipotentiary on the British delegation at the Second Hague Peace Conference in 1907. His previous experience at the post-Boxer conference at Peking in 1900-1901 stood Satow in good stead during the preparations for the conference as well as once the actual negotiations commenced. His main contribution to the proceedings at The Hague, however, was the preparatory work for the London Naval Conference of 1909. Satow's stance towards the negotiations of 1907 marks him out as a predecessor of twentieth-century internationalists.