Cultural Property in times of war and peace: Brazilian participation in the Second Hague Conference, Roerich Pact, and in the Hague Convention

ABSTRACT This article aims to demonstrate the importance attributed to the theme of cultural property during times of war, focusing on the period from the 1863 Lieber Code to the 1954 Hague Convention. It discusses the following topics: the Brazilian participation in the Second Hague Conference (1907), with the exchange of telegrams between Rui Barbosa and the “Baron of Rio Branco;” The Roerich Pact (1935), presented during the Seventh Pan-American Conference of 1933, held in Uruguay with the participation of important delegates from the American continent; the aforementioned 1954 Hague Convention-the first to deal exclusively with the subject of cultural property-in which Renato Soeiro, an architect and technician of Brazil’s Institute of National Historical and Artistic Heritage, was a representative of the Brazilian state.