Defending the Rights of Others
The Great Powers, the Jews, and International Minority Protection, 1878–1938

This study of the period from 1878 to 1938 explores international minority protections.

Carole Fink (Author)

9780521838375, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 24 May 2004

450 pages, 13 b/w illus. 6 maps
23.4 x 15.6 x 2.5 cm, 0.81 kg

"Finke's is a truly extraordinary contribution." - Eugene C. Black, Brandeis University

When the Cold War ended between 1989 and 1991, statesmen and scholars reached back to the period after World War I when the victors devised minority treaties for the new and expanded states of Eastern Europe. This book is a study of the entire period between 1878 and 1938, when the great powers established a system of external supervision to reduce the threats in Europe's most volatile regions of irredentism, persecution and uncontrolled waves of westward migration. It is a study of the strengths and weaknesses of an early state of international human rights diplomacy as practised by rival and often uninformed Western political leaders, by ardent but divided Jewish advocates, and also by aggressive state minority champions, in the tumultuous age of nationalism and imperialism, bolshevism and fascism between Bismarck and Hitler.

List of maps
List of photographs
Preface
Abbreviations
A note on place and personal names
Part I. From Empires to New States: 1. Prologue: the Congress of Berlin
2. Bucharest, August 1913
3. The Great War
4. Lemberg
Part II. The Minority Treaties: 5. Paris
6. Pinsk
7. May
8. The 'Little Versailles'
Part III. A New Era of Minority Rights?: 9. Geneva
10. Berlin
11. Epilogue: the road to Munich
Conclusions
Bibliography
Index.

Subject Areas: Human rights [JPVH], International relations [JPS], 20th century history: c 1900 to c 2000 [HBLW], European history [HBJD]