Washington Naval Treaty

The 1922 multilateral agreement limited the size and number of major warships, imposed a ten-year battleship-building pause, and regulated naval bases and ship conversions.

Capital ship: A navy’s largest and most heavily armed warships, especially battleships and battlecruisers. The treaty’s principal limits applied to these ships.
Washington Naval Conference: An international conference held in Washington, D.C., from 1921 to 1922 to address naval arms and Pacific affairs. The treaty was its central naval-arms agreement.
London Naval Treaty: A 1930 agreement that extended naval arms limitations and regulated cruisers, destroyers, and submarines. It expanded arms control beyond the Washington Treaty’s principal ship limits.
Treaty of Versailles: The 1919 peace treaty that formally ended the state of war between Germany and the Allied Powers. Unlike Versailles, this agreement negotiated limits among major naval powers rather than imposing terms on a defeated state.
Naval treaty tonnage: A treaty-defined measure of the aggregate displacement permitted for a state’s warships. National limits were expressed as total tonnage for capital ships and aircraft carriers.
Anglo-Japanese Alliance: A 1902 alliance between Britain and Japan, renewed and revised before ending in 1923. Its uncertain future was among the Pacific issues addressed at the conference.
Second London Naval Treaty: A 1936 agreement among Britain, the United States, and France that set further limits on naval construction. It followed the weakening of the Washington system and attempted renewed limits.
Geneva Naval Conference: A 1927 conference that sought further naval arms limitations but ended without a treaty. Its failure contrasts with the Washington conference’s successful capital-ship agreement.
Battleship holiday: A period when states suspend construction of a specified class of battleships by agreement. The treaty halted most new capital-ship construction for ten years.
Anglo-American naval rivalry: Competition between Britain and the United States to maintain the world’s strongest navy. The treaty’s limits helped avert a costly postwar battleship race between them.

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