European Socialists and the International Order, 1918–1925

Author(s):  
Talbot C. Imlay

This chapter examines the collective efforts of British, French, and German socialists to place a socialist stamp on the emerging post-war political order both within and between countries. The period covered runs from the end of the First World War to the mid-1920s, a moment that several recent scholars have identified as marking the end of the post-war period and the making of a ‘real peace’. In exploring the post-war practice of socialist internationalism, the chapter focuses on a series of interlocking issues: the peace treaties; national self-determination; reparations and economic reconstruction; and the League of Nations and post-war security. On issues such as reparations and Western European security, European socialists claimed with justice to have pointed the way forward to intergovernmental arrangements. But if socialists could rightly boast of their role as trailblazers, their deliberations also exposed the fragile nature of the much-vaunted ‘real peace’ achieved by mid-decade.

Author(s):  
Roger D. Markwick ◽  
Nicholas Doumanis

Europe was a continent of nation states by the mid-twentieth century. But it was not always thus. The patchwork quilt of nation states and the nationalism that coloured them in were forged by massive social and political shifts that had been gathering momentum since the late nineteenth century. Viewing nations and nationalism as constructs of modern, global capitalism, often legitimated by national mythologies old and new, this chapter surveys the forces at work: from above and below, from centre and periphery. The First World War raised nationalism to white heat, and as multi-ethnic empires faltered, myriad subaltern nationalisms erupted, demanding ‘self-determination’, the watchword of the post-war peace settlements. But the war also unleashed internationalist class challenges to belligerent nationalism, culminating in the 1917 Russian Revolution. Thereafter, European nationalism assumed its most truculent guise: fascism and military dictatorships warring against class in the name of ethnic, national, and biological purity.


2020 ◽  
Vol 14 ◽  
pp. 63-79
Author(s):  
Zoltán Hajdú

The First World War caused very deep and fundamental changes in Central and Eastern Europe. The biggest loser of the war was the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy. Kingdom of Hungary as one of its parts was dissolved in the framework of Trianon Peace Treaty. The new Hungary could retain only 28,6% of the former territory and 36,5% of its former population. After 1920 the League of Nations was planned a new collective European security system.


2020 ◽  
Vol 15 (4) ◽  
pp. 488-514
Author(s):  
Udith Dematagoda

This article explores Wyndham Lewis's experience of the First World War, and its influence on his varied artistic output. It interrogates how Lewis's initial ambivalence towards an emergent technological society shifted through direct encounters with mechanized warfare, and speculates on the effect of these upon his post-war writing and criticism. By contrasting Lewis's thought against that of his Italian Futurist contemporaries, I will demonstrate the centrality of their divergent conceptions of masculinity in accounting for this opposition – and how Lewis's critique of technological society prefigures contemporary opposition towards the post-humanist philosophy of Accelerationism.


Author(s):  
Igor Lyubchyk

The research issue peculiarities of wide Russian propaganda among the most Western ethnographic group – Lemkies is revealed in the article. The character and orientation of Russian and Soviet agitation through the social, religious and social movements aimed at supporting Russian identity in the region are traced. Tragic pages during the First World War were Thalrogian prisons for Lemkas, which actually swept Lemkivshchyna through Muscovophilian influences. Agitation for Russian Orthodoxy has provoked frequent cases of sharp conflicts between Lemkas. In general, attempts by moskvophile agitators to impose russian identity on the Orthodox rite were failed. Taking advantage of the complex socio-economic situation of Lemkos, Russian campaigners began to promote moving to the USSR. Another stage of Russian propaganda among Lemkos began with the onset of the Second World War. Throughout the territory of the Galician Lemkivshchyna, Soviet propaganda for resettlement to the USSR began rather quickly. During the dramatic events of the Second World War and the post-war period, despite the outbreaks of the liberation movement, among the Lemkoswere manifestations of political sympathies oriented toward the USSR. Keywords: borderlands, Lemkivshchyna, Lemky, Lemkivsky schism, Moskvophile, Orthodoxy, agitation, ethnopolitics


Author(s):  
Gregory A. Barton

After the death of Gabrielle Howard from cancer, Albert married her sister Louise. Louise had been pressured to leave Cambridge as a classics lecturer as a result of her pro-peace writings during the First World War. After working for Virginia Wolf, she then worked for the League of Nations in Geneva. Louise was herself an expert on labor and agriculture, and helped Albert write for a popular audience. Albert Howard toured plantations around the world advocating the Indore Method. After the publication of the Agricultural Testament (1943), Albert Howard focused on popularizing his work among gardeners and increasingly connected his composting methods to issues of human health.


Balcanica ◽  
2015 ◽  
pp. 107-133
Author(s):  
Dimitrije Djordjevic

This paper discusses the occupation of Serbia during the First World War by Austro-Hungarian forces. The first partial occupation was short-lived as the Serbian army repelled the aggressors after the Battle of Kolubara in late 1914, but the second one lasted from fall 1915 until the end of the Great War. The Austro-Hungarian occupation zone in Serbia covered the largest share of Serbia?s territory and it was organised in the shape of the Military Governorate on the pattern of Austro-Hungarian occupation of part of Poland. The invaders did not reach a clear decision as to what to do with Serbian territory in post-war period and that gave rise to considerable frictions between Austro-Hungarian and German interests in the Balkans, then between Austrian and Hungarian interests and, finally, between military and civilian authorities within Military Governorate. Throughout the occupation Serbia was exposed to ruthless economic exploitation and her population suffered much both from devastation and from large-scale repression (including deportations, internments and denationalisation) on the part of the occupation regime.


2021 ◽  
Vol 51 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 184-191
Author(s):  
Philip Ross Bullock ◽  
Sofia Permiakova ◽  
Gesa Stedman

This introduction offers a survey of some important critical approaches to the ways in which the First World War and its aftermath have been studied, conceptualized, represented and commemorated. In particular, it notes recent scholarly interest in issues of gender, as well as a focus on widening the geographical range of the conflict beyond a dominant European paradigm. A recurrent theme is the emergence of new types of modernity in the post-war era, and the ways in which literature and the arts do not merely reflect that modernity, but actively shape and constitute it.


Author(s):  
Guy Miron

IN THE WAKE of the First World War Poland and Hungary became independent states. Poland, which for some 130 years had been partitioned between its neighbouring empires—Russia, Austria, and Prussia—now gained independence, including in its territory some predominantly Ukrainian and Belarusian areas which had been part of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Hungary, which had enjoyed extensive autonomy since the Ausgleich (Austro-Hungarian Compromise) of 1867, was now severed from the defunct Habsburg empire and became independent, but its boundaries were dramatically reduced as a result of the Treaty of Trianon. The two states, whose independence was part of a new European order based on the principle of national self-determination, were supposed to function as democracies and respect the rights of their minorities. In the immediate aftermath of 'the war to end all wars', there was reason to hope that the recognition of the Jews as equal citizens would lead to a golden age of Jewish integration. In practice, the reality was different. Both Poland and Hungary were established as independent states amidst violent internal and external conflicts over their boundaries and the nature of their regimes. In both states, these struggles, which continued throughout the whole interwar period, increasingly led to the dominance of an exclusionary nationalism. Jews were the central, although not the only, minority targeted by this policy of exclusion. Of course, the anti-Jewish violence that occurred during the struggles for the independence of both Poland and Hungary and the anti-Jewish policies and legislation of the 1920s and especially the 1930s should not be regarded as foreshadowing the Nazi catastrophe—which was primarily the result of actions by an external force—however, there is no doubt that in both countries Jewish integration was seriously endangered during the interwar period....


2020 ◽  
pp. 29-60
Author(s):  
Billie Melman

Chapter 1 examines the new definitions of antiquity that emerged after the First World War and relates them to the new post-war imperial order and international system. It tracks the shift from a perception of ancient objects and monuments as the loot of victors, through their handling within the framework, which had first emerged in the nineteenth century, of laws of war, to their treatment as a part of policies of an imperial peace in the Middle East—in peace treaties and the new mandates system. The chapter follows the internationalization of the discourse on antiquity and the formation of a new “regime of antiquities”, a term referring to international and local mandatory legislation on archaeology and to practices of its monitoring. It offers a view “from above” of the new regime and its formulation by internationalist experts, within the League of Nations and its organizations for intellectual cooperation, such as the International Institute for Intellectual Cooperation (IIIC) and International Museums Office (OIM), and of internationalist apparatuses, as well as considering the implementation of the regime “on the ground” by the antiquities’ administrations in mandate A territories, formerly under Ottoman rule (Palestine and Transjordan, and Iraq), and the nominally independent Egypt. The chapter demonstrates how the internationalist pull and discourse seeped to colonial rhetoric but conflicted with notions of imperial sovereignty and the power of the mandatories to implement policies on the ground. At the same time, visions of regional cooperation amongst archaeologists and national rights to patrimony were adopted by local archaeologists and nationalists.


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