95

The protection of foreign interests arose from a specific practice in international law in the xixth century, which consisted of various activities by the agent of a state on behalf of foreigners abroad, at the request of the national state and with the consent of the local state. Thus, the protection of foreign interests involved a triangular relationship. Such protection stemmed from an older practice, by which a state used the services of a consul or another state in the absence of relations between the national state of the protected persons and the local state. But its specificity was linked to particular context: whenever a severance of diplomatic and consular relations occurred, it became indeed necessary for the national state to resort to the assistance of a protecting power, in time of war as well as in time of peace.