American Influence in Greece, 1917-1929


Book Description

The diplomatic relations between Greece and the United States in the interwar period have received scant attention from historians, primarily because of the non-political and non-military role of the United States in that part of the world prior to the Second World War. The American presence in Greece after 1917, however, would be fundamental to the social and economic development of the Greek nation, while American influence would eventually permeate all levels of Greek society. Dr. Cassimatis offers the first, full-length account of this formative period in the history of Greek-American diplomacy. The issues separating the governments of the United States and Greece in the 1920s were simultaneously self-contained and international in scope. For Greece, they were self-contained because they involved solutions to domestic problems affecting the welfare--indeed, the survival--of the Greek nation. Internationally, they were interconnected because efforts to bring about their resolution contributed to an American entanglement in the Near-East policies of Great Britain, France and Italy. Thus, American loans, commercial aggrandizement, the inroads of American capital, philanthropy, and cultural relations were but components of a larger diplomatic setting in which the interests of the United States came into conflict with the interests of the Western European powers.




Historical Dictionary of U.S. Diplomacy from the Civil War to World War I


Book Description

The period encompassed by this volume—with the start of the Civil War and World War I as bookends—has gone by a number of colorful names: The Imperial Years, The New American Empire, America’s Rise to World Power, Imperial Democracy, The Awkward Years, or Prelude to World Power, for example. A different organizing theme would describe the period as one in which a transformation took place in American foreign relations. But whatever developments or events historians have emphasized, there is general agreement that the period was one in which something changed in the American approach to the world. This second edition of Historical Dictionary of U.S. Diplomacy from the Civil War to World War I contains a chronology, an introduction, appendixes, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has over 1,000 cross-referenced entries on important personalities, politics, economy, foreign relations, religion, and culture. This book is an excellent access point for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about diplomacy during this period.




Greece in the Twentieth Century


Book Description

This collective study examines the transformation (metamorphosis) that Greece has experienced over the course of the 20th century by exploring its gradual evolution into a consolidated democracy, an advanced economy in the Eurozone and a balanced partner in the EU and NATO promoting a stabilizing role in southeastern Europe. The book examines the variables contributing to the profiling of contemporary Greece, emphasizing the conceptual inertia bedevilling the studies of Greece in recent years by focusing on the elements that indicated the slow pace in the country's modernization. In conclusion, there is a need for Greece's constant commitment to functional adjustments regarding the country's economic, political and strategic priorities in order to promote effectively the role of regional stabilizer acting in concert with NATO and EU partners.




The Meddlers


Book Description

While the birth of global economic governance is conventionally dated to the end of World War II, Jamie Martin shows how its roots lie in World War I and its aftermath. The Meddlers explores the intense political struggles about sovereignty and self-governance provoked by the first attempts to govern global capitalism.




Population Exchange in Greek Macedonia


Book Description

Following the defeat of the Greek Army in 1922 by nationalist Turkish forces, the Convention of Lausanne in 1923 specified the first compulsory exchange of populations ratified by an international organization. The arrival in Greece of over 1.2 million refugees and their settlement proved to be a watershed with far-reaching consequences for the country. Dr Kontogiorgi examines the exchange of populations and the agricultural settlement in Greek Macedonia of hundreds of thousands of refugees from Asia Minor and the Pontus, Eastern Thrace, the Caucasus, and Bulgaria during the inter-war period. She examines Greek state policy and the role of the Refugee Settlement Commission which, under the auspices of the League of Nations, carried out the refugee resettlement project. Macedonia, a multilingual and ethnically diverse society, experienced a transformation so dramatic that it literally changed its character. Kontogiorgi charts that change and attempts to provide the means of understanding it. The consequences of the settlement of refugees for the ethnological composition of the population, and its political, social, demographic, and economic implications are treated in the light of new archival material. Reality is separated from myth in examining the factors involved in the process of integration of the newcomers and assimilation of the inhabitants - both refugees and indigenous - of the New Lands into the nation-state. Kontogiorgi examines the impact of the agrarian reforms and land distribution and makes an effort to convert the climate of the rural society of Macedonia during the inter-war period. The antagonisms between Slavophone and Vlach-speaking natives and refugee newcomers regarding the reallocation of former Muslim properties had significant ramifications for the political events in the region in the years to come. Other recurring themes in the book include the geographical distribution of the refugees, changing patterns of settlement and toponyms, the organisation of health services in the countryside, as well as the execution of irrigation and drainage works in marshlands. Kontogiorgi also throws light upon and analyses the puzzling mixture of achievement and failure which characterizes the history of the region during this transitional period. As the first successful refugee resettlement project of its kind, the 'refugee experiment' in Macedonia could provide a template for similar projects involving refugee movements in many parts of the world today.




The Pity of War


Book Description

From a bestselling historian, a daringly revisionist history of World War I The Pity of War makes a simple and provocative argument: the human atrocity known as the Great War was entirely England's fault. According to Niall Ferguson, England entered into war based on naive assumptions of German aims, thereby transforming a Continental conflict into a world war, which it then badly mishandled, necessitating American involvement. The war was not inevitable, Ferguson argues, but rather was the result of the mistaken decisions of individuals who would later claim to have been in the grip of huge impersonal forces. That the war was wicked, horrific, and inhuman is memorialized in part by the poetry of men like Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon, but also by cold statistics. Indeed, more British soldiers were killed in the first day of the Battle of the Somme than Americans in the Vietnam War. And yet, as Ferguson writes, while the war itself was a disastrous folly, the great majority of men who fought it did so with little reluctance and with some enthusiasm. For anyone wanting to understand why wars are fought, why men are willing to fight them and why the world is as it is today, there is no sharper or more stimulating guide than Niall Ferguson's The Pity of War.




Thank God They're on Our Side


Book Description

Despite its avowed commitment to liberalism and democracy internationally, the United States has frequently chosen to back repressive or authoritarian regimes in parts of the world. In this comprehensive examination of American support of right-wing dictatorships, David Schmitz challenges the contention that the democratic impulse has consistently motivated U.S. foreign policy. Compelled by a persistent concern for order and influenced by a paternalistic racism that characterized non-Western peoples as vulnerable to radical ideas, U.S. policymakers viewed authoritarian regimes as the only vehicles for maintaining political stability and encouraging economic growth in nations such as Nicaragua and Iran, Schmitz argues. Expediency overcame ideology, he says, and the United States gained useful--albeit brutal and corrupt--allies who supported American policies and provided a favorable atmosphere for U.S. trade. But such policy was not without its critics and did not remain static, Schmitz notes. Instead, its influence waxed and waned over the course of five decades, until the U.S. interventions in Vietnam marked its culmination.




The American YMCA and Russian Culture


Book Description

In The American YMCA and Russian Culture, Matthew Lee Miller explores the impact of the philanthropic activities of the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA) on Russians during the late imperial and early Soviet periods. The YMCA, the largest American service organization, initiated its intense engagement with Russians in 1900. During the First World War, the Association organized assistance for prisoners of war, and after the emigration of many Russians to central and western Europe, founded the YMCA Press and supported the St. Sergius Theological Academy in Paris. Miller demonstrates that the YMCA contributed to the preservation, expansion, and enrichment of Eastern Orthodox Christianity. It therefore played a major role in preserving an important part of pre-revolutionary Russian culture in Western Europe during the Soviet period until the repatriation of this culture following the collapse of the USSR. The research is based on the YMCA’s archival records, Moscow and Paris archives, and memoirs of both Russian and American participants. This is the first comprehensive discussion of an extraordinary period of interaction between American and Russian cultures. It also presents a rare example of fruitful interconfessional cooperation by Protestant and Orthodox Christians.




Navigating Turbulent Waters


Book Description

This work examines Greek political life and Eleftherios Venizelos from 1910 to 1936. To better understand the Greek political scene and Venizelos’ meteoric rise and ungraceful fall and to provide the necessary context, this book also considers politics on the island of Crete, Venizelos’ birthplace, from the early nineteenth to the early twentieth centuries. This work is not a biography of Eleftherios Venizelos. Instead, Venizelos is the instrument used to shed light into the unsettled waters of Greek politics.