What does 'high contracting parties' mean in treaty language?

What does 'high contracting parties' mean?

The viewer's legal explanation treats the parties as sovereign states entering treaty obligations, regardless of their unequal naval strength.

An initial explanation relates the phrase to the leading naval powers and their greater involvement in negotiations. A viewer then supplies a legal distinction: states are ultimately sovereign within their own territories and equal in that international sense. 'Contracting' refers to the obligations they undertake toward one another, with treaty and contract sharing a word in some languages. This separates practical differences in naval size from the legal basis of the agreement.