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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 May 2017
This conference, — the latest of the Hague Conferences to which the United States was a party, — was proposed by the United States on September 1, 1909, and convoked by the Netherlands Government on December 1, 1911. It dealt in a judicial manner with the varied and conflicting interests, diplomatic, moral, humanitarian and economic, of those governments represented and with the known similar interests of those not represented. Several of the governments in making pledges for the obliteration of the opium evil did so in the face of an eventual large financial sacrifice, but this was done thoughtfully and generously.
The conference determined upon and on January 23rd last signed a convention for the suppression of the obnoxious features of their national and of the international opium, morphine and cocaine traffics, and for the regulation of that part of the production of and trade in the drugs which may be said to be legitimate. To China was confirmed much that she had contended for for a hundred years or more as to the vexatious export of Indian opium to her shores. This act, however, was but a broader recognition of what the British Government had, as between India and China, already yielded to China by virtue of the so-called Ten Year Agreement of 1907, and by the modification of that agreement signed at Peking on the 8th of May, 1911.
1 Vide, this Journal, October, 1909, p. 835.
2 Vide, infra, p. 878.
3 The so-called Opium Wax of 1839-41.
4 Vide, Journal, October, 1909, p. 649.
5 Vide, Journal, October, 1909, p. 670.
6 International commissions of inquiry recommended by the Hague Peace Conference, 1899, Articles 9-14.
7 Vide, Resolutions, Supplement to the Journal, 3:275 (July, 1909).
8 For proposal, vide, Supplement, p. 258.
9* Austria-Hungary, which nevertheless expressed a determination to watch the conference with sympathy.
10 Vide, Journal, October, 1909, p. 847.
11 For the important beginnings, vide, Edicts, etc., Journal, October, 1909, pp. 828-842.
12 For agreement, vide, Journal, October, 1909, p. 835.
13 For the full text of the regulations, vide, Supplement, p. 266.
14 Vide, Supplement, p. 273.
15 For a Chinese estimate of the suppression of opium since 1906, vide, table, Supplement, p. 276.
16 For full text of the agreement, vide, Supplement to this Journal for October, 1911, p. 238.
17 The negotiator-in-chief of the later agreement, on behalf of the British government, was Mr. Max Müller, at one time Counsellor of Embassy at Washington. Mr. Müller was a British representative at The Hague Conference.
18 Sir Chen Tung Liang Cheng, former Chinese Minister at Washington.
19 See Edict of the Receiver General of the Customs at Canton, Supplement, p. 264.
20 Vide, Supplement, July, 1909, p. 276.
21 Generally a Chinese.
22 Vide, supra, p. 879.
