The Wisdom of ‘Modest’ Beginnings: Lord Salisbury, Arbitration, International Law and British Naval Supremacy

Lord Salisbury, according to the historiography, was notoriously sceptical of international arbitration. Yet, at the end of the nineteenth century, Salisbury's last government entered into an arbitration agreement with Venezuela in relation to its border dispute with British Guiana and a general arbitration agreement with the US. It then took the lead in establishing a permament court of international arbitration at the fist Hague Peace Conference in 1899. This article explains why that change in Salisbury's outlook occurred, how Salisbury developed a distinctively Conservative approach to arbitration in international relations and how the British contribution to the development of an institutional international rule of law at the end of the nineteenth century was as much a Conservative moment as a liberal one.