OUTLINE OF CHAPTER X

EQUALITY

44. EQUALITY OF STATES EXTENDS ONLY TO LEGAL STATUS

45. INEQUALITIES AMONG STATES.

(a) Court precedence an old mark of inequality.

(b) Various inequalities in matters of ceremonial still exist.

(c) Inequalities in weight of influence in affairs.

(1) At the present time states classified on political grounds. (a) The Great Powers.

(b) Instances of the practice of the Great Powers.

(c) Policy liable to change with expediency.

(2) European alliances.

(3) Influence of the United States among American states.

CHAPTER X
EQUALITY

44. Equality of States Extends Only to Legal Status

THE equality of states was an early premise of international law.1 This equality, however wide may have been its meaning, as interpreted by some of the earlier writers, can now be held to extend only to legal status. A state from its very being as a sovereign unity must be legally equal to any other state. Only those states which are members of the international circle are regarded as possessed of this equality from the point of view of international law. So far as legal attributes as states extend, the states, members of the international circle, are equal, yet that their weight in the world of affairs may vary by virtue of other circumstances must be admitted. The legal status of states is the same; regardless of the form of state organization, whether monarchy or republic; regardless of origin, whether by division or union of former states or even if created in a region hitherto outside the jurisdiction of any state; regardless of area, population, wealth, influence, etc.; regardless of relations to other states provided sovereignty is not impaired; regardless of any change in the form of state organization, as from a republic to a monarchy or even of a temporary lapse in the exercise of sovereignty.

45. Inequalities among States

While all states, members of the family of states, are equal in international law so far as their legal attributes are concerned, they may be very unequal in other respects.

1 For full treatment, see Dickinson, "Equality of States."

(a) One of the oldest marks of inequality is that of court

Court precedence an old mark of inequality.

precedence, which for many years was a fertile source of difficulty, and was at last settled to the extent of ranking by title of diplomatic representative by the Congress of Vienna in 1815.1 (b) Inequalities in matters of ceremonial of various kinds have not disappeared. These may be based upon tradition, or on conventional grounds, and frequently give rise to difficulties if disregarded. These ceremonials may be (1) political, as between the sovereigns in their official personal capacity as emperors, kings, dukes, etc., (2) court and diplomatic, in interstate negotiations, (3) treaty, as in alternat or in the alphabetical signing of treaties, (4) maritime ceremonial, in salutes, etc.

Various inequalities in matters of ceremonial

still exist.

(c) There may be inequalities in weight of influence in affairs. (1) In Europe there has been distinctly recognized in political practice an inequality of the states, and they were classed as "the great powers," "the minor powers," and sometimes such states as those of the Balkan peninsula were referred to as "the little powers "third-rate states." These divisions were

Inequalities in weight of influence in affairs.

or

based merely upon political grounds, and states might pass from one division to another as their wealth, area, or influence increased or decreased.

upon

At the present time states classified on political

Before 1914 the Great Powers, generally mentioned officially the continent in the alphabetical order of their names in French, i.e. Allemagne, Angleterre, Autriche, etc., were Germany, Great Britain, Austria, France, Italy, and Russia. During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries Spain was numbered with the Great Powers. Sweden was so ranked in the seventeenth century. Italy was counted with the great powers

grounds; the Great Powers.

1 See Sec. 72 (b).

after 1870. The union of several powers upon certain lines of policy, since early in the nineteenth century, has been called "the concert of Europe," "the primacy of the Great Powers," etc. It was not the purpose of these Great Powers to establish new rules of international law; but as enunciated by the five powers, November 15, 1818, it was " their invariable resolution never to depart, either among themselves, or in their relations with other states, from the strictest observation of the principles of the Rights of Nations." Since the World War the Great Powers have been considered as the United States, the British Empire, France, Italy and Japan.

Instances of the practice of the Great Powers.

That the practice of the Great Powers has not been strictly in accord with the principles announced in 1818, a glance will show. The immediate action of Austria, Russia, and Prussia in the Congress of Troppau, 1820, carried the principle of interference in the internal affairs of states so far that Great Britain found itself compelled to dissent. This continuance of the policy of the Holy Alliance in putting down movements in favor of popular liberty, wherever arising, led to gross violations of international rights. Nor did Great Britain become a party to the acts of the Congress of Verona in 1822, which led to intervention to prevent changes in the internal organization of Spain in 1823. The struggles of the Greeks for independence at about this time were naturally regarded by those upholding the ideas of the Holy Alliance as dangerous to those states desiring to prevent revolutionary movements, but the narrow policy of the Alliance was gradually losing support. The opposition of Great Britain and the death of Alexander of Russia in 1825 hastened its speedy fall. Meantime the idea of a collective authority in the Great Powers had been maintained. This began to be exercised in behalf of the Greeks in 1826, and throughout the nineteenth century was repeatedly

11 Hertslet, 574.

exercised in the same behalf, sometimes unselfishly, often from motives of mixed character. During the first half of the nineteenth century the Great Powers continually kept a close surveillance over Grecian affairs, and enforced their judgments in regard to Greece by force (destruction of Turkish fleet at Navarino, 1827); by providing form of government and naming monarch (1829 and later); by fixing and changing boundaries (1829 and often); by pacific blockade (1827, 1850, 1886, 1897); by regulating financial affairs, and by other means of varying degree of force.1

The Eastern question particularly occupied the Concert, and the disposition of the territory once within the Turkish jurisdiction offered a fertile field for varying policy. The establishment of Belgium as a neutral state by the treaty to which Belgium was itself a party afforded another example of the influence of the Great Powers. Since 1839 Egypt has also been subject to frequent control by the Great Powers.

From 1885 the unappropriated portion of Africa was brought within the range of action of the Concert by the theory of the sphere of influence.

Policy liable
to change with
expediency.

The Concert of the Great Powers showed a policy that was liable to change with expediency. The two great treaties of the Concert were those of Paris, 1856, and Berlin, 1878. Of these Holland says: "The treaties of Paris and of Berlin thus resemble one another, in that both alike are a negation of the right of any one Power, and an assertion of the right of the Powers collectively, to regulate the solution of the Eastern question.' The fact that the action of the Great Powers has been regarded as binding and tacitly accepted in Europe in certain questions in the East, Egypt, Greece, and Belgium does not give the

1 For detailed summary, 1826-1881, see Holland, "European Concert in the Eastern Question," Ch, II.

* "European Concert in the Eastern Question," p. 221.