Ernesto Teodoro Moneta and Louis Renault Win Nobel Peace Prize

The range of activities in which Moneta engaged for the propagation of world peace is impressive.

In 1890 he began to issue an annual almanac called L'Amico della pace. After his retirement as editor of Il Secolo, he continued to contribute to its columns from time to time and to republish many of his articles in pamphlets and periodicals. Ever aware of the value of propaganda for peace, he even printed one-page tracts and distributed them to rural schoolmasters. In 1898 he founded a fortnightly review, La Vita internazionale, which gained sufficient prestige to ensure publication on a regular basis for many years during a period when most such periodicals languished in Italy for lack of interest and financial support.

Ernesto Teodoro Moneta (September 20, 1833 – February 10, 1918) was an Italian journalist, nationalist, revolutionary soldier and later a pacifist and Nobel Peace Prize Laureate. He was a native of Milan.

As a 15-year old boy, Moneta already participated in the "Five Days of Milan" (1848 uprising against Austrian rule). Afterwards he attended the military academy in Ivrea. In 1859 he joined Garibaldi's Expedition of the Thousand, and also fought in the ranks of the Italian Army against the Austrians in 1866.

Subsequently, he became an international peace activist, despite his strong Italian nationalism.

Between 1867 and 1896 he was editor of the Milan Democratic paper Il Secolo, belonging to the Sonzogno publishing house of Edoardo Sonzogno.

In 1887 he founded The Lombard Association for Peace and Arbitration (Unione Lombarda per la Pace e l'Arbitrato), which called for disarmament and envisaged the creation of a League of Nations. He won (with Louis Renault) the Nobel Peace Prize in 1907.

In the last years of his life, however, Moneta's Italian Nationalism reasserted itself and got the better of his pacifism. He expressed public support for both the Italian Conquest of Libya in 1912 and Italy's entry into the First World War in 1915.

Louis Renault (May 21, 1843 – February 8, 1918) was a French jurist and educator, the cowinner in 1907 (with Ernesto Teodoro Moneta) of the Nobel Prize for Peace.

Renault was born at Autun. From 1868 to 1873 Renault was professor of Roman and commercial law at the University of Dijon. From 1873 until his death he was professor in the faculty of law at the University of Paris, where in 1881 he became professor of international law. In 1890 he was appointed jurisconsult of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, a post created for him in which he scrutinized French foreign policy in the light of international law. He served at numerous conferences in this capacity, notably at the two Hague Conventions (1899 and 1907) and the London Naval Conference of 1908-09.

Renault was prominent as an arbitrator, his more famous cases including the Japanese House Tax case of 1905, the Casa Blanca Case of 1909, the Sawarkar case of 1911, the Carthage case of 1913, and the Manouba case of 1913. Among his writings are articles and monographs on the specialized topics of international law. Together with his friend and colleague C. Lyon-Caen, he produced several works on commercial law, including a compendium in two volumes, a treatise in eight volumes, and a manual that ran to many editions.

In 1879 Renault published his Introduction to the Study of International Law and in 1917 First Violations of International Law by Germany, concerning the invasion of Belgium and of Luxembourg in breach of Germany's treaty obligations.