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

Statesmen and scholars were inspired by a period after World War I (when the victors devised Minority Treaties for the new and expanded states of Eastern Europe) at the time that the Cold War ended between 1989-1991. This book is the first study of that 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 practiced by rival and often-uninformed Western political leaders, ardent but divided Jewish advocates, and aggressive state minority champions, in the tumultuous age of nationalism and imperialism, Bolshevism and fascism between Bismarck and Hitler.

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.

International minority protection, which began in the late nineteenth century, was aimed at bringing stability to Eastern Europe. This historical study of the sixty-year period between 1878 and 1938 examines the policies of the great powers, the fledgling Eastern European governments, and the League of Nations.

Carole Fink is the Professor of European History at the Ohio State University. She has written several books, including The Genoa Conference: European Diplomacy, 1921–22 (1984), which was awarded the George Louis Beer Prize of the American Historical Association, and Marc Bloch: A Life in History (Cambridge University Press, 1989), which has been translated into five languages.