
On 24 July 1923 the last Treaty ending hostilities in the Great War was signed at Lausanne in Switzerland. That Treaty closed a decade of violence. Jay Winter tells the story of what happened on that day. On the shores of Lake Geneva, diplomats, statesmen, and soldiers came from Ankara and Athens, from London, Paris, and Rome, and from other capital cities to affirm that war was over. The Treaty they signed fixed the boundaries of present-day Greece and Turkey, and marked a beginning of a new phase in their history.That was its major achievement, but it came at a high price. The Treaty contained within it a Compulsory Population Exchange agreement. By that measure, Greek-Orthodox citizens of Turkey, with the exception of those living in Constantinople, lost the right of citizenship and residence in that state. So did Muslim citizens of Greece, except for residents of Western Thrace. This exchange of nearly two million people, introduced to the peace conference by Nobel Prize winner and humanitarian Fridtjof Nansen, provided a solution to the immense refugee problem arising out of the Greek-Turkish war. At the same time, it introduced into international law a definition of citizenship defined not by language or history or ethnicity, but solely by religion. This set a precedent for ethnic cleansing followed time and again later in the century and beyond.The second price of peace was the burial of commitments to the Armenian people that they would have a homeland in the lands from which they had been expelled, tortured and murdered in the genocide of 1915.This book tells the story of the peace conference, and its outcome. It shows how peace came before justice, and how it set in motion forces leading to the global war that followed in 1939.
This work investigates how the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne served as the definitive conclusion to the Great War while simultaneously establishing dangerous precedents for international law and ethnic conflict. Jay Winter, a distinguished historian of the First World War, utilizes diplomatic records and historical analysis to argue that the peace achieved at Lausanne prioritized geopolitical stability over justice. He demonstrates how the treaty's reliance on compulsory population exchanges and the abandonment of Armenian territorial claims created a framework that influenced subsequent global conflicts.
What You Will Find
Scope Limits
Historians and scholars of the interwar period recognize this work as a critical examination of the moral compromises inherent in early 20th-century diplomacy. Readers frequently note the clarity with which Winter connects the specific events of 1923 to the broader geopolitical instability that characterized the remainder of the century.
Page Count:
251
Publication Date:
2022-01-01
Publisher:
OUP Oxford
ISBN-10:
0192698273
ISBN-13:
9780192698278
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