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Thesis Title: International Concepts and Practices of Borders: Experts, Ethnicity, and the Paris System in the Early Interwar Period

Supervisor: Prof. Heinz-Gerhard Haupt
Second Reader: Prof. A. Dirk Moses

My thesis focuses on changes of territorial borders and national identities in Europe between 1916 and 1923. It explores new ways to approach the problems of peace planning, the political architecture of post-war Europe, and the root causes for the breakdown of the international order in the late 1930s. The main thrust of the thesis is directed towards the multilayered tensions between the ubiquitous rhetoric of national self-determination, international decision-making, and local realities.

The first part of the dissertation traces American, French, and British peace planning with a specific emphasis on the academic specialists involved in their governments' work. These experts were thought to bridge ideological gaps and apply larger political visions to the varying and reluctant realities on the ground. The second and third parts carry this analysis further to the phases of debate and decision at the Paris Peace Conference and finally to the application of border changes in the early 1920s.
I juxtapose and link the level of international planning and decision-making with two case studies. The first deals with the French recovery of Alsace-Lorraine in 1918/19, while the second concerns the Greco-Turkish War between 1919 and 1922. In very different ways and contexts, both cases expose the troubles and unintended consequences emanating from the post-war order in Europe. Propelled by ideas with universal scope that lacked practical elaboration, the new international system tended to project its uncertainties onto local political realities. Contested border zones, ethnicised violence, and mass expulsions of civilians were the result in many European regions.

My thesis is an exploration of these dark sides but also of the chances of the political and ideological rearrangement of Europe after the First World War. After all, and in contrast to their colleagues in 1945, the peacemakers at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919 still tried to adjust borders to local populations and not vice-versa.