The Lake Mohonk Conferences on International Arbitration (1895–1916): Evoking and Mobilizing an “International Mind”

Abstract

Between 1895 and 1916, a Conference on International Arbitration met annually at Lake Mohonk, New York, seeking to implement arbitration as a substitute for war. This article considers the aims, effects, and limitations of these conferences, including the problematic assumptions underpinning their apparent progressivism. The belief that an enlightened public opinion would play a decisive role in advancing arbitration will be interrogated, as will the conviction that the Mohonk group provided a mouthpiece for an emergent “international mind.” The article shows how these conferences evoked a “global” public opinion that was simultaneously (and paradoxically) expansive, exclusionary, forcible, and manipulable. It reveals too how American conceptions of internationalism took shape, anticipating aspects of Wilsonianism.