4 - The International Council for the Exploration of the Sea, 1900–1920

Summary

You should propose that the scientific investigations shall be accompanied by a practical exposé of the steps to be taken in order to bring the exercise of sea fishing more in accord with the natural conditions regulating the growth and increase of fish, and thus permanently increase the supply of fish in the markets of the countries adjoining the North Sea.

Instructions to the United Kingdom's delegate to the Stockholm conference 1899

Throughout the 1880s and the 1890s many conferences were held with the goal of promoting international cooperation between the nations of Europe. Some of these conferences were mundane but important for regulation of international trade and commerce, such as the ‘North Sea Convention’ of 1882, which defined ‘territorial waters’ and agreed upon a vessel identification and marking scheme. Others failed to reach agreement, but helped to define what would be needed, such as the National Sea Fisheries Protection Association's conferences on international cooperation in fishing during the 1890s (see chapter 3), and the 1892 Peace Congress in Berne.

Of the many conferences of this period, two held late in the century are of particular interest, each in its own realm. In 1897 Nicolas II, Tzar of Russia, proposed an arms limitation conference, a proposal that shocked the world and prompted a skeptical poem by Kipling, from which came the famous phrase ‘the bear that walks like a man.’