In Full Flower 299
Washington, for the establishment of three arbitration panels to resolve a
number of outstanding disputes. Th e principal one, for present purposes,
was to rule on the U.S. accusation that Britain had violated the law of neu-
trality during the American Civil War (1861– 65) by allowing Confederate
warships to be built in its ports. Th e interesting thing about the treaty was
that it explicitly stated the rules (which soon became known as the Wash-
ington Rules) that the arbitral panel was to apply in resolving the matter.
Signifi cantly, these rules placed stricter duties onto neutral states to police
their nationals than the prevailing law of neutrality did. Th e British-
American plan was to invite all states in the world to give their ac cep tance
to these rules, thereby converting them into general— and newly minted—
provisions of international law, by way of gradual, state- by- state accession.
Th ird and fi nally, the following month witnessed a dramatic demonstra-
tion of the enforcement of international law. Th is was undertaken by the
U.S. Navy, at the expense of the Far Eastern state of Korea. Th e action arose
out of an incident fi ve years earlier, in which an American merchant ship
had sailed up a river in Korea without permission. It ran aground, and its
crew were killed in the course of quarrels with the local Koreans. In June
1871, an American naval force arrived on the scene, and its commander de-
manded an apology from the Korean authorities for the deaths. When the
Korean government refused, American marines were sent ashore, where they
seized fi ve Korean forts and about twenty prisoners, with a loss of about two
hundred Korean lives (and twelve American ones). In the event, though,
hopes that the prisoners might be exchanged in return for a treaty with Ko-
rea opening up the “Hermit Kingdom” to world trade went unrealized.
International law, in short, was playing an increasing role in the day- to-
day activities of states in the nineteenth century. It could even be said that,
during this period, the world became unifi ed into a single global legal com-
munity to a greater extent than ever before. One important sign of this was
the spread of international law far beyond the confi nes of the Eu ro pe an
world and its outlying areas. It was also a time when international lawyers
began to or ga nize themselves into a self- conscious professional community.
Th e states of the world could be said to form a community, too— of sorts.
But it was not one that was characterized by the equality of its members. It
became all too apparent that the positivist dogma of equality of states was
subject to some important caveats. Equality was soon seen to be the preserve