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.

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.

The Great War scarred both the people and the popular imagination of Europe. No previous war matched it in scale, brutality and futility. The course of events has been told many times, spurred by an endless desire to understand 'the war to end all wars'. However this impressive book moves beyond military narrative to offer a much fuller analysis of the conflict's impact: strategic, political, social and cultural. Starting with the context and origins of the war, including assassination, misunderstanding and differing national war-aims, it then covers the treacherous course of the conflict and its social consequences: #Mobilisation had a massive impact both on soldiers and female civilians, producing radical changes to people's way of life which stimulated political change #Science and technology created a new brand of industrialised warfare and were accelerated by the imperative of victory # The insecurity and strain of war created dissidence and mutiny, engendering revolution in Germany, Austria-Hungary and Russia. The war left a long-term legacy for victors and vanquished alike. It created new frontiers and changed the balance of power, influenced the arts, national memory and political thought. The reach of this account is global, showing how a conflict amongst European powers came to involve their colonial empires, and embrace Japan, China, the Ottoman Empire, Latin America and the United States. This is a bold and original book, offering a thematic study of a war that was famously, and quite rightly, labelled as 'the seminal event of the twentieth century'. Ian Beckett is Professor of History, Luton University, UK.

Cases concerning British colonization of Australia and theory of territorium nullius briefly discussed.

"A political, social, and military history"--Covers.