Tobias Asser (1838-1913) was the man who established The Hague as an international city of peace and justice. In the last quarter of the nineteenth century, there was a spectacular growth in international trade and communications as trains and ships began to transport people and goods over ever greater distances. But could a ship enter a foreign port without permission? And what rules applied to individual travellers? Every country had its own rules and it was Tobias Asser who realised that international agreements were necessary. In 1893, at a meeting in the Trèveszaal in The Hague, he set up the Hague Conference for International Private Law. This organisation still exists and develops conventions between the member states. These conventions (now more than a hundred) make life much easier for all of us who live or work abroad.
Tobias Asser represented the Netherlands at the Hague Peace Conferences in 1899 and 1907. At the first of these, he was a fervent advocate of the establishment of a Permanent Court of Arbitration. For all of this, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1911. No wonder that The Hague has a street named after him!
Tobias Asser was a Dutch lawyer. In 1862 he became a professor at the Athenaeum Illustre, the forerunner of the University of Amsterdam. In 1911 he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his role in launching the First International Peace Conference, held in The Hague in 1899. Asser is the only Dutchman ever to have received the award.In 1904 the Netherlands awarded him the honorary title of Minister of State. The T.M.C. Asser Institute in The Hague is called after him.