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.’