British foreign policy and the Ruhr Occupation crisis 1922-1924.
This thesis provides a comprehensive examination of British policy during the Ruhr occupation crisis of 1922-1924. It addresses central questions raised in the historiography of the 1920s, shedding light both on Britain's policy and that of other powers, particularly France. Based on a thorough examination of the British archives, analysis also focuses on the process of policy-formation, revealing the significance for this of administrative and personal relationships and of domestic political constraints. The thesis begins with an analysis of Britain's role at the onset of the crisis. It evaluates the influence on Britain's policy both of the international situation and of internal factors after the collapse of the Lloyd George coalition. Britain's ambiguous position of benevolent neutrality from January to April 1923 is then analysed and its inadequacy demonstrated by revealing the contradictions involved when implementing it on the spot in the Rhineland and Ruhr. The thesis explores the search for alternatives during the summer of 1923, when policy-makers tentatively tried to encourage negotiations, but in fact simply compounded Britain's difficulties. Discussion then moves to events in the autumn of 1923. Once German passive resistance ceased the European situation became more fluid. Britain was at last able to pursue an effective policy. She distanced herself from events on the spot and played an important role both in establishing international enquiries to investigate reparations, and in ensuring that the experts' reports (particularly those of the Dawes Committee) were adopted at the London Conference in 1924. This thesis explores Britain's attitude to reparations and to broader questions of post-war European reconstruction and stability, revealing the dilemmas caused by Britain's underlying strategic and economic weakness after the war. It highlights the difficulties Britain encountered when dealing with her European neighbours and provides a valuable insight into the complexity of British foreign policy during this brief but crucial period.
Ménage à Trois: The Negotiations for an Anglo-French-Belgian Alliance in 1922
as the first World War drew to a close, a new question emerged: whether the wartime alliance against Germany would continue in any form. For a devastated France, bled white in men and money, eyeing her potentially far stronger eastern neighbour, there was no doubt that it must. Once the Versailles Treaty was completed on terms less than satisfactory to France, her policy was dominated by dependence upon a reluctant Britain against Germany. Similarly, Belgium, shattered by the failure of her special Great Power guarantee to prevent invasion in 1914, wished to rest for her security upon both Britain and France against Germany, partly to escape domination by either and partly to placate both Flemish and Walloon sensibilities.
Urban Identities and Catastrophe: Izmir and Salonica at the End of the Ottoman Empire*
Two huge fires dramatically influenced the urban development of Salonica and Izmir, in 1917 and in 1922, respectively. These catastrophes occurred after the Ottoman Empire fell, and Salonica and Izmir had shifted into new national contexts. The fires mainly destroyed the districts that were transformed during the late‐Ottoman period. These districts became the cosmopolitan façades of modern Izmir and Salonica. The post‐fires' tabula rasa provided an opportunity for Greek and Turkish politicians and European planners to change the urban identity of both cities. Moreover, the Lausanne Treaty of 1923 transformed their multicultural societies also. Reconstruction plans had been thought to de‐Ottomanize and remove the previous idea of the towns and their multiplicity, interpreting new cultural and nationalist feeling. Here, I emphasize how modernity was interpreted before and after the fires, and point out contradictions between ideological aspects of planning and how the first urban districts were built during the 1920s.