London Naval Treaty

London Naval Treaty
International Treaty for the Limitation and Reduction of Naval Armament
Members of the United States delegation en route to the conference, January 1930
TypeArms control
ContextWorld War I
Signed22 April 1930 (1930-04-22)
LocationLondon
Effective27 October 1930 (1930-10-27)
Expiration31 December 1936 (1936-12-31) (Except for Part IV)
Negotiators
Signatories
Parties
DepositaryLeague of Nations
LanguageEnglish

The London Naval Treaty, officially the Treaty for the Limitation and Reduction of Naval Armament, was an agreement between the United Kingdom, Japan, France, Italy, and the United States that was signed on 22 April 1930. Seeking to address issues not covered in the 1922 Washington Naval Treaty, which had created tonnage limits for each nation's surface warships, the new agreement regulated submarine warfare, further controlled cruisers and destroyers, and limited naval shipbuilding.

Ratifications were exchanged in London on 27 October 1930, and the treaty went into effect on the same day, but it was largely ineffective.[1]

The treaty was registered in League of Nations Treaty Series on 6 February 1931.[2]

  1. ^ John Maurer, and Christopher Bell, eds. At the crossroads between peace and war: the London Naval Conference in 1930 (Naval Institute Press, 2014).
  2. ^ League of Nations Treaty Series, vol. 112, pp. 66–96.