Pankhursts British Feminists Essay ⋆ History Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

Emmeline Pankhurst, née Goulden, was born in Manchester, England, on July 14, 1858, the daughter of successful and politically progressive parents. Her education, though, followed respectable Victorian lines, which included time in a Parisian finishing school. Upon her return to Manchester in 1878, she met Richard Pankhurst, a radical lawyer and advocate of women’s rights, whom she married in 1879. Her husband’s political ambitions were geared to extending the 1867 Reform Act to include women, and to this end he promoted the first Women’s Suffrage Bill and reform of the Married Women’s Property Bills of 1870 and 1882.

The Austrian and Hungarian treaties were similar and originally were to be presented simultaneously to the empire’s heirs, but that with Hungary was delayed until the Communist regime was replaced. Both states had to abjure the Habsburg monarchy and guarantee their independence. Austria had to renounce Anschluss (union) with Germany. Both were landlocked and severely shrunken but emerged ethnically homogeneous.

Austria’s territorial losses included Galicia to Poland; Bohemia and Moravia to Czechoslovakia; the Trentino, South Tyrol, and Istria to Italy; Bukovina to Romania; and Slovenia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Dalmatia, and coastal islands to Yugoslavia. The new Austria consisted of the vast capital of a defunct empire surrounded by uneconomic mountainous hinterlands. Psychological dislocation was also severe.

Hungary’s territorial truncation was also acute but left a more economically viable state, thanks to fertile plains. Slovakia and Ruthenia went to Czechoslovakia, Transylvania to Romania, Croatia-Slavonia to Yugoslavia, and most of the Banat to Romania and Yugoslavia. A third of Hungary’s prewar territory remained, and a third of the Magyars were outside its borders. Hungary never accepted the settlement but lacked the power to alter it.

Bulgaria And Turkey

Bulgaria was equally resentful, though its territorial losses were much smaller. However, hostile neighbors gained greatly, weakening it comparatively. Bulgaria hoped that ethnic factors would mean territorial gain, but the victors yielded nothing. Bulgaria lost to Greece its prized Aegean coastline (and thus direct access to the Mediterranean). Macedonia went to Greece and Yugoslavia, which also gained strategic border salients. Bulgaria emerged largely homogeneous but helplessly bitter.

Unlike other eastern treaties, that of Sèvres intruded in internal affairs. An international commission would control the straits from the Black Sea to the Aegean, which would be open to all ships of all nations in peace and war. The existing capitulatory regime of extraterritorial privileges for westerners was enlarged. Because territorial losses were vast, reparations would be minimal, but Europeans would exert financial control, especially of the Ottoman debt.

Some territorial losses merely ratified prewar situations, but in addition Turkey’s Arabian domains were surrendered, part therefore becoming the independent kingdom of Hijaz in minimal fulfillment of wartime promises to Arabs. Syria (including Lebanon) became a French mandate, and Mesopotamia (Iraq) and Palestine (including Transjordan) British mandates, the latter with a requirement that the Balfour Declaration (November 2, 1917) be applied to ensure “a national home” for Jewish people. Various Aegean islands went to Italy (whose hopes of Anatolian territory were dashed) and Greece. In Europe Greece gained eastern Thrace and in Anatolia effective control of Smyrna (Izmir). In clauses never fulfilled, Kurdistan was to become autonomous or independent and Armenia independent.

The Sèvres Treaty, which the captive Ottoman sultan never ratified, was a 19th-century imperial document. It was overtaken by the nationalist uprising of Mustapha Kemal Atatürk, who drove Greece from Anatolia, created a national assembly in Ankara and a republic, deposed the sultan, and nearly collided with British forces in the straits. The triumphant Turks rejected Sèvres. Thus, its purely Turkish portions were renegotiated at Lausanne between November 1922 and July 1923. Kemal’s deputy, Ismet Inönü, ably led the Turkish delegation with periodic Soviet and American support.

Under the Treaty of Lausanne (July 24, 1923), Turkey regained eastern Thrace, Smyrna, and some Aegean islands; a forced population exchange resolved minority problems. It retained much of Armenia and Kurdistan. Financial, extraterritorial, and most military restrictions were ended, as were reparations. Turkey gained the presidency of the straits commission and could close them to belligerents if it was at war. Aside from modification of the straits convention, this treaty lasted because it was negotiated and moderate and because Turkey accepted the end of empire.

Six lengthy treaties left much undone. Plebiscites and boundary commissions would set precise borders; the peace structure of Allied commissions, committees, and supreme councils would settle details. However, eastern borders with Russia hung fire, as did the fate of the Baltic states. The future of Fiume (Rijeka), a port disputed between Italy and Yugoslavia, was unresolved, as were reparations totals and allocations. The peacemakers did not bring stability to Europe nor address its balance of power, shattered by World War I.

American Rejection

Rejection of the treaties by the United States (and also China) acutely dislocated from the outset a peace structure designed by men born in the late 19th century who could not rise above their nationalistic, imperialistic, Eurocentric era. Still, Poles, Czechs, and a few Arabs gained independence; Middle Eastern mandates were designed to be brief, whereas others restricted imperialism a bit.

Europe’s ethnic minorities were cut in half, and a European-dominated international organization proved useful within limits. But, as before, great powers decided matters. Since two of them, Germany and Britain, persistently pursued revision of the Versailles Treaty, it crumbled, implying Germany’s eventual continental predominance and frightening its weaker neighbors. Thus, Wilson’s goal of a world “made safe for every peace-loving nation” remained unmet.

Bibliography:

Boemeke, Manfred F., Gerald D. Feldman, and Elisabeth Glaser, eds. The Treaty of Versailles: A Reassessment after 75 Years. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998;
Sharp, Alan. The Versailles Settlement: Peacemaking in Paris, 1919. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 1991.

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