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.
Author(s): Jay Winter
Series: The Greater War
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Year: 2023
Language: English
Pages: 259
City: Oxford
Cover
The Day the Great War Ended, 24 July 1923
Copyright
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Contents
List of Abbreviations
List of Figures
List of Plates
Introduction: War and Peace, 1918–23
Decentered War
The Civilianization of War
The Treaty of Lausanne and Population Exchange
PART 1: THE INTERNATIONAL CONTEXT
1: The Road from Geneva
Nansen’s Road to Lausanne: Four Faces of Biopolitics, 1918–23
Fighting Epidemic Disease
Bringing Home POWs
Stateless People
Refugees and Resettlement
Endgame at Lausanne
Conclusion
PART 2: THE EASTERN STATES: Reconfiguring The Nation
2: The Road from Ankara
Turkey and the Wilsonian Moment at Lausanne
The Road to Lausanne
The Impasse
Lausanne and the Birth of the Turkish Republic
Conclusion
3: The Road from Athens
J’Accuse
The Political Economy of Catastrophe
Stalemate 1921
Paralysis and Collapse 1922
Lausanne
Resurrection
Population Exchange
Financial Aid
Conclusion
4: The Road from Yerevan
Assassination
Promises, 1915–20
The French Connection, 1919–21
The Mandate that Never Was
To Lausanne
Endgame
Conclusion
PART 3: THE WESTERN STATES: Reconfiguring Empire
5: The Road from London
From Versailles to Sèvres, 1919–20
The Destruction of the Sèvres Settlement, 1920–22
Getting to Lausanne
Curzon’s Moment at Lausanne
Territorial and Military Matters
Judicial Matters
Economic and Financial Matters
Endgame, a Pause, and Recriminations
6: The Road from Paris
From Sèvres to Lausanne
Withdrawal from Cilicia
From Sèvres to Ankara
Rapprochement
Lausanne
Conclusion
APPENDIX 1. Maurice, Bompard, Groupement des intérêts français dans l’Empire Ottoman, MAE, Fonds Bompard, 417PAAP/58.
7: The Road from Rome
Territet: From Vagrancy to Power
The Professionals
The Power Vacuum in the Eastern Mediterranean: The Landing at Antalya
Revising Sèvres
Regime Change
At Lausanne: Tipping the Diplomatic Balance
The Precarious Peace: The Killings at Kakavia and the Corfu Incident
A New Era in Italian Foreign Policy?
PART 4: CONCLUSION
Conclusion
The Fruits of Lausanne
1924, the End of a Decade of Violence
Bibliography
I. Archival sources
II. Primary printed sources
III. Secondary sources
Index
