Early Regulation of Chemical Weapons
Although the revulsion against chemical warfare is as ancient as the use of the weapons themselves, other than a 1675 Franco-German treaty banning poisoned bullets in battle, it was not until the last half of the 19th century that international diplomacy attempted to regulate the production and use of chemical weapons. The 1874 Brussels International Declaration concerning the Laws and Customs of War forbid the (a) “Employment of poison or poisoned weapons,” and (b) “The employment of arms, projectiles or material calculated to cause unnecessary suffering.” Though never ratified, this declaration and diplomatic discussion provided the groundwork for the 1899 First International Peace Conference in The Hague. During this conference, 27 countries signed an agreement prohibiting the “use of projectiles, the only object of which is the diffusion of asphyxiating or deleterious gases.” However this conference, along with the 1907 Second International Peace Conference in The Hague, had little effect on warfare in the first quarter of the 20th century. Despite the 1899 and 1907 Hague agreements, chemical warfare would take a prominent role in the First World War.