The Venezuela Arbitration Tribunal. In the late 19th century, Venezuela's claim to the Essequibo region of British Guiana was very much in dispute. Historical and cultural dissimilarities between Venezuela and the latter nation explained this to some extent, as British Guiana represented for Venezuela the unfair intrusion of a colonial power into the Caribbean region. In 1877, the Venezuelans unsuccessfully proposed to the British that both countries should take the existing border dispute to arbitration for a final settlement. During the same time, the Venezuelans also began to woo the support of the United States, which initially refused to become involved. In 1895, however, the Cleveland administration determined to goad Great Britain into accepting arbitration to settle the disputed boundary. In July, the U.S. Secretary of State, Richard Olney, presented to the British government a statement protesting against the enlargement of British Guiana at the expense of Venezuela, and suggesting that the British had violated the Monroe Doctrine. On December 7, Prime Minister Lord Salisbury replied, countering Olney's contentions and denying that the Monroe Doctrine was applicable to the border dispute. Cleveland was defiant and asked Congress to establish a commission to investigate the question. This amounted to an intention to make a decision without British participation and resulted in talk of war on both sides of the Atlantic. In January 1896, the U.S./Venezuelan Boundary Commission was established, headed by David J. Brewer, a Justice of the Supreme Court. Then fate stepped in to end this confrontation, the last major one between the future allies. The British were having serious problems in South Africa, problems that would soon lead to the Boer War. Just after the U.S. set up the Boundary Commission, the German Kaiser issued a strong statement supporting the Boers, and many saw this as a threat of war by Germany on Great Britain. Venezuela quickly became a sideshow as the British concluded it was much more important to win the support of the U.S. in case a European conflict should break out. It agreed to arbitrate the Venezuela matter.

Discussions were opened between Great Britain and Venezuela, with the encouragement of the United States, and they finally reached an agreement. By the Treaty of Washington signed on February 2, 1897, both parties concluded that the decision of an arbitration tribunal would be a "full, perfect, and final settlement" of the border dispute. The arbitration panel consisted of five members - two chosen by Venezuela (U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice Melville Fuller and Associate Justice David Brewer), two by Britain (Lord Justice and Privy Councilor Richard Henn Collins and Chief Justice, Lord Charles Russell), and a Russian, Frederic de Martens, selected jointly by the other four members. Britain was represented by a four-man counsel team: Attorney-General Sir Richard E. Webster, former Attorney-General Sir Robert T. Reid, G. R. Askwith and Sir S.A.T. Rowlatt.  Venezuela was also represented by four counsel: former President Benjamin Harrison, former Secretary of the U.S./Venezuelan Boundary Commission Severo Mallet-Prevost, former U.S. Secretary of War Benjamin T. Tracy, and James Russel Soley. Meeting in Paris from June to September 1899, the tribunal arrived at a decision and the matter was settled. The result was a compromise settlement that was perhaps more generous to Britain than expected.

A large 10 by 14 inch black and white photograph by portrait photographer and pioneer filmmaker Eugene Pirou of Paris, put to a 15 by 18 inch mat, showing 28 of the notables gathered for the Arbitration Tribunal, and signed by all. Included are each of the eight counsel that argued the case (Harrison, Mallet-Prevost, Tracy, Soley, Webster, Reid, Askwith, and Rowlatt), three of the judges (Fuller, Brewer and Collins), Sir Everard Im Thurn (British diplomat, later governor of Fiji), Sir John A.C. Tilley (British diplomat, later Ambassador to Tokyo), American cartographer and explorer Marcus Baker (who had worked for the U.S./Venezuela Commission - a mountain in Alaska is named after him), C. Alexander Harris (British author of “Sketch map of the territory in dispute between Venezuela and British Guiana,” later governor of Newfoundland), French diplomat and conference host Jean- Jules Jusserand (later ambassador to the U.S., where he helped secure the entry of the United States into World War I), and 12 others. Photographer Pirot was one of France’s first filmmakers, showing his premier movie at the Café de la Paix in April 1896. His documentary of the 1896 visit of Tsar Nicholas II to France may have been the first film of that kind.