thanks thanks you guys for their okay just give us one minute to get everybody thank you it's a typical coffee break yeah actually what what mark was saying i was thinking the same about your last book i mean when when you published it i was like okay now i need to figure out for what angle i'm going to take on that it's why that's the reason i do one thing and then i move on because i you just you just throw a challenge and then and i'm trying to respond it's a very coward thing you know no the book was great and thank you you're very very kind no no i really was honestly it's great and it gives the context the general context i really liked it yeah very very kind but i will do something different i'm done with my ternism if you see me publishing anything else on human ternism just come and keep my path never say never never say never true true but this is my intention at least my sincere genuine intention is to move on right okay welcome back so this is our session number three that runs from 345 to 515 entitled humanitarianism de-globalization and nationalism which are three terms that we don't see very often together and this is one of the reasons why i think this panel is going to be very interesting we have three distinguished panelists i'm going to introduce them immediately in order of appearance so we will start with Dimitris Camusis is a researcher at the Center for Asia Minor Studies in Athens he got his PhD at King's College London has been a scholar of the alexander on assist public benefit condition and coordinator of the research program greek soldiers war and trauma the asia minor campaign and the consequences of a painful experience funded by the research center for the humanities in greece this latest book is entitled greeks in turkey elite nationalism and minority politics in late ottoman and early republican istanbul which was published in 2021 then we have marco bruschani he is a associate professor at the department of political and social sciences at the university of florence he was postdoctoral fellow in many places school and bromales periore and pizza remark institutes resomble the center for advanced studies in rica etc his main research field is the political and intellectual history of itanian and european anti fascism and anti totalitarianism he published on justice liberda in 2017 and more recently has turned to the political and social history of fascism nationalism and conservatism and interwar european newspaper today's i think related to these new research interests of marco last but not least gabor and i think gabor is there in long time i saw him yeah who holds a phd from el te budapest is the director general at the institute of political history in budapest his research focuses on nationalism everyday ethnicity and politics of an entity more than eastern european history he is also the principal investigator of the erc consolidator project ne postrance which means negotiating post imperial transitions from real mobilization to nation state consolidation and they also think that perhaps our bits and pieces of this paper today are related to these interest surveys so we are going to start with the matrix the title of this paper is this problem is too big for Greece the nearest relief committee and the refugee crisis of 1922 the matrix the floor is yours thank you david for your kind introduction and for being our commentator today i would also like to thank the organizers the one advanced team georgian acopoulos and jo mayolo for this excellent event i wish also i was with you at my academic home i see faces familiar faces sir michael was there he was also in the committee of my phd but anyway under these unique hybrid online circumstances this is the best i could do for now um i would like to uh share before i start uh my screen uh with a power point one second right uh so um as david said uh the the title of my presentation is this problem is to be for Greece the nearest relief committee and the refugee crisis of 1922 now 1922 was a major turning point in modern greek history it was marked by the asian minor catastrophe of september 1922 a term used in greece to describe the defeat of the greek army in the greco-turkish war of 1919-1922 the burning of smirna and the atrocities committed against the non-muslim population of the city by the victorius kemales forces and the subsequent uprooting from the turkish coastline a near asian minor of approximately 1.3 million north of those Greeks who settled ultimately in greece uh this violent displacement was made official by the convention concerning the exchange of greek and turkish populations on the tweak of lozan both signed at the swiss city on 30 january and 24 july 1923 respectively under the same international agreements roughly 350 000 muslims mainly from macedonia and frays were forced to migrate to turkey now when these refugees arrived in greece the country was utterly unable to deal with insurmountable problems of feeding sheltering and providing medical assistance to this massive displaced population taking as a as a case study the nearest relief committee a non-governmental humanitarian organization founded in new york in 1915 my contribution will try to highlight the significant aspect of the interwar greek refugee crisis namely western humanitarian aid towards the destitute sick malnourished and in many cases unaccompanied and orphaned refugee children during the first years of their presence in greece in this context it will assess the humanitarian campaign carried out by the nr which had at its main purpose to identify officially uh the violent displacement of 1922 as an international humanitarian crisis transmit the pain of others and raise awareness in american society and collect funds supplies and medical assistance to address this issue building on the recently published work of david erodogno emphasis would be placed on the nr publications and the reports of his representative's increase with regards to the problems both of survival and social integration that these underage refugees from asia minor had to face now it should be pointed out from the outset that humanitarian organizations are highly selective regarding their aims and the direction of their activities not all wars national disasters famines displacements and diseases turn into international humanitarian causes on the contrary there is a process that can be roughly divided into three main phases during the first phase an event is identified as a humanitarian crisis during the second a strategy is put into place in order to address this crisis and during the third humanitarian organizations monitor and assess the results of their efforts adjusting them accordingly in all these three phases publications photographs and field reports of the personnel in seru i mean doctors nurses paramedics volunteers social workers educators bureaucrats and others play an essential part because they offer valuable information on a wide range of issues such as living conditions needs with regards to food medicines including population statistics relations with the state authorities and responses of the local society all of which form the basis of a humanitarian operation focusing on informing the international community and practically dealing with a humanitarian emergency the asia minor catastrophe of 1922 was no exception on the contrary it constitutes a representative example of an international response to one of the first major refugee crisis of the 20th century as soon as the asia minor front collapsed and the greek army started evacuating the region the nr and the american red cross personnel stationed in turkey in greece began to monitor and survey the refugee crisis in the near east the scale of the crisis resulted in the immediate endorsement of the effort for the relief and rehabilitation of the asia minor greeks by the major humanitarian organizations of the time the nr had already incorporated greece into its own going the shall not perish campaign which also covered armenia syria and persia modern day iran and had as it's called the collection of 30 million dollars for the needs of the refugees in the region in october 1922 the nr published a pamphlet with the title the cable story of the nearest relief on the job at smirna which was composed of extracts of cablegrams received from the organization staff from smirna konstantinople rovosto the salonik and other places in the area of distress according to the message of the general secretary of the nr charles victory the pamphlet was addressed and i quote to the many friends who are helping or who desire to help to relieve the indescribable suffering among the refugees cast adrift by the smirna disaster at the same time victory communicating dr. taco williams journalist educator and a member of the national board of trustees of the nr a series of cables describing the refugee situation in greece all of them stressed the inability of the greek state to deal effectively with this massive influx of people the main argument was that if the nr as well as other western humanitarian organizations did not step in immediately thousands of refugee children would die of hunger cold and diseases within a short period of time after their arrival in greece according to an estimate of the nr the numbers of the refugees in early october 1922 where as follows 150 000 in mitilini 50 000 in hyos and samos 10 000 in other eegean islands 75 000 in tesalomiki 30 000 in athens and pireus 125 000 in rovosto and 30 000 in the mastodonian coast our reger who set up the nr personnel services bureau in athens and pireus reported that the local officials and people had no realization of the seriousness of conditions which were certain to follow sanitary neglect at the places where the refugees had been concentrated he added and i quote that the refugee problem is growing more serious everywhere and it will be impossible for the greek government to handle it adequately without outside help the situation was equally critical in mitilini and the other greek islands lex william cludes who visited the islands observed that unless more funds and supplies were immediately put at the disposal of the relief committee thousands of refugees would perish before thanksgiving due to the worsening of the weather as he emphasized in a laconic manner flower flower flower blankets clothes urgently needed women and children comprised the most vulnerable group amongst the refugees in late november 1922 luther fowl a prominent member of the nr communicated to vikri etai britain report on the dire situation of the women and children refugees in athens and pireus according to the report the death rate of babies in pireus was 180 per day and three of the largest refugee camps were under quarantine for smallpox while the percentage of such winter illnesses as influenza and pneumonia among women and children in the camps exceeded 50 percent the words of dr. mabel eliot of the american women's hospital constituted a desperate plea and i quote the health situation in the big refugee centers is rapidly assuming the status of a catastrophe there is a more the most urgent need of one million blankets in greece today there is equally urgent need for warm clothing and for warm heat giving food not one woman or baby in a thousand has had milk for the past week half of them are getting less than a quarter of a pound of bread daily you must repeat again that this problem is too big for greece the whole world must help and not merely with those leadership is needed as much as money i believe near its relief must take up the problem of these refugee children what of thousands are orphans i cannot hope to survive the winter except through american aid abnormal everyday life shutter families difficulties with social integration scarcity of work lack of schooling and proper education but also some of the acute problems that the representatives of western humanitarian organizations witnessed and reported to their headquarters the accounts of the anr personnel from different cities of greece during this early period are indicative of the severity of these issues shalls victory wrote in february 9 23 i saw nearly a thousand boys recently arrived from point to see in asia and i was sleeping on the floors of the zappian exposition hall in athens i saw 400 girls safe from turkey suppression occupying the royal palace facing constitution square in the heart of athens i saw 67 girls all of them suffering from conjunctivitis tried into one room 20 by 20 fit in size a cold rain falling outside with no other place of a boat eating sleeping working or playing night or day in my vision i saw my own great rich america clothing purple and fine linen fairing substantially every day enjoying comforts luxuries wealth transcending the dreams of the ancients surpassing anything that the world has ever known and which no american can appreciate until he has walked through the refugee camps in the land of the stocking death again brainhead salmon in october 1923 on october first the total number of fatherless refugee children 14 years old or less was estimated at 200 000 of these 75 000 were also motherless these figures do not include orphans under the care of the nearest relief nor the fatherless children of grief itself only the refugees the number of orphans is increased is increasing daily owing to the death of mothers weakened by exposure and lack of proper nourishment and also the last one the greek refugees of salonica now june in june 24 in june 1924 number about 75 000 conditions were so demoralized at the time of my visit in february that because of the cold and suffering school activities were hardly to be thought of at Athens where the greek refugee camps are in better shape than elsewhere school buildings are being erected in the permanent camps in the temporary camps only the most rudimentary provisions were made the estimates i have from reliable workers on the ground are that 100 000 are in need of supplementary clothing food and educational facilities despite these adverse practical and social circumstances the n er as well as other american and british organizations rose to the challenge and carried almost single-handedly the load of humanitarian aid during the initial stage of the refugees arrival in greece thus paving the way for the subsequent official settlement rehabilitation and incorporation to local greek society and the national body of the country a difficult task implementing eventually by the refugee settlement commission under the auspices of the league of nations to be more specific the n er was responsible for the safe transport of 15 644 orphans from asia minor and istanbul to greece and replacement along 2327 orphan children discovered later in several refugee settlements into orphanages established by the organization in Athens the salon mickey porfu kefalonia syros thassos porin futraki edipsos halkida noropos until 1930 the n er in collaboration with the arc and the american women's hospital treated approximately 18 000 orphans in 39 hospitals established all over greece the children's hospital hosted at the n er orphanage for boys in the zapion building in athens which was also equipped with a dental and radiology clinic and a microbiology laboratory carried out a program of vaccinations and treated such diseases as tuberculosis and trachoma therefore from 1923 until 1925 the mortality rate in the n er orphans as well as the number of orphans with trachoma was significantly reduced the n er also provided these children with basic and professional education offered scholarships for studies in greek institutions or american schools such as the athens college or anatholia college in the salon mickey facilitated the reunification of refugee families and the adoption of children and distributed foods and close to thousands of refugees overall it can be safely argued that as far as the aspect of international history of humanitarianism is concerned the asian manna catastrophe and the interwar refugee crisis was not a unique phenomenon instead it should be examined within the wider framework of work of wars uh violent displacements and humanitarian emergencies as well as the response to these emergencies through the development of non-governmental organizations and the evolution of humanitarian strategies and aid delivery methods in this context the substantially relieved work carried out by the n er immediately after the uprooting of the asian manna Greeks in 1922 is an enduring historical reminder of addressing a massive refugee crisis similar to the one taking place in the same region a century later thank you thank you very much Dimitri thank you and we can move to the second as we are going to follow exactly the same format so we're going to to listen to Marco Bresciani the title of his presentation is de-globalization post-Habsburg pesta and de-globalization under fascist conditions Marco yes thank you very much Davide thank you for the kind introduction and first of all thank you to all the organizers for this wonderful event I'm really sorry not to be able in London I speak to you from a hotel room in room so I hope everything will work and you can listen to me so I will try to share my screen with a PowerPoint presentation here it is as Davide said this paper is a presentation of a research in progress aiming to connect the European history of fascism global history history of the continental empires with special regard to the absolute empire I don't know if the presentation is working it is okay it's a bit small but it's readable yeah I would like to maybe this is better okay so in order to connect them I focus on post-Habsburg one of the first settings of the rise of the fascist movement after the great war as agreed I will briefly sketch the main problems of the research and I will especially emphasize some additional references concerning the relationship of fascism to the eastern Mediterranean sea and Anatolia in particular references which will be integrated in the final version of the paper to understand this relationship we have to consider is a background that Italy had crucially contributed towards setting in motion the international dynamic that was to lead Europe into the long great war from October 1911 onwards as a matter of fact what is often described as the war of Libya contributed and constituted a severe blow to the Ottoman Empire paving the way for the Balkan wars and creating the preconditions for the crisis of July 1914 the conquest of roads and of the the Canis islands pushed the Italian imperial projects toward the Ottoman lands and after the fall of the Ottoman Empire fostered its geopolitical ambitions in the region at the same time the Italian military victory in 1918 offered a significant contribution in defeating and disintegrating the absolute empire opening up to what was perceived as a power vacuum in central Europe where Italy could conceive and play a new international role. One of the protagonists of the global 1922 that is the founder and leader of the fascist movement Benito Mussolini was aware of the European and global connections of the ongoing Oswald crisis and advocated a prominent role for Italy in this crisis itself. In an important speech at the Prieste in February 1921 Mussolini explained that the war had provoked a gigantic shift of global powers from London to New York and from the Atlantic to the Pacific as you can read. Accordingly we can argue that in his mind the post-1919 period was not a period of deglobalization but a period of new globalization with shifting drivers and centers implying the crisis of Europe and notably of central Europe. This narrative of European decline was understood as a way for legitimizing the new role of fascists in the global post-war period and context. According to Mussolini Italy was placed between west and east and its policy had to play a pivotal role in the east considered as Italy's quote a natural magnificent field of economic and intellectual expansion and of quote. Over the year 1922 Mussolini often spoke about the situation in the eastern Mediterranean Sea referring especially to the dangers as well as to the opportunities that turmoil in the former Ottoman lands implied. He especially looked at the transformations in Egypt as he was conceived that the decline of the English hegemony might open the road to a new Italian policy in the Mediterranean Sea and especially in the eastern Mediterranean Sea. In his most important essay on the issue published in September 1922 Mussolini appreciated the victory of Kemal Pasha and included among the most important results of his military action quote the breakdown of the great imperialism in the eastern Mediterranean Sea. At the same time Mussolini was in favor of a policy of peace and alliance with Kemal's new Turkey as it could work quote as a link of juncture between the European world and the Asian world and of quote. One month later in October 1922 just on the eve of the March on Rome Mussolini reiterated on his own newspaper El Popolo d'Italia Italian people that the Italian interest was to support Kemal and to contribute to demolish the British empire. In a speech to the Italian parliament in the following February devoted to the foreign affairs Mussolini now had of the government claimed that the foreign policy of fascism quote in that historical moment could not be but extremely cautious and at the same time strongly active as Mussolini himself intended to privilege the effort of political and economic reconstruction after the great war. These ideas particularly resonated in the Northern Adriatic where Mussolini delivered several important speeches between 1919 and 1922 but they were anything but exclusive to Mussolini himself and they broadly circulated in the environment of early fascism. Local nationalists and fascists from Trieste associated the conquest of the Adriatic area to the construction of a Mediterranean empire and in doing so led the foundations for the new imperial policy of fascist Italy. Some articles published in the local fascist newspaper Popolo di Trieste in June 1921 by Michele Rizzolo a prominent literary critique and fascist activist focused on the fascist attitudes, conceptions and strategies towards the Eastern Mediterranean Sea. Rizzolo was convinced that the definitive solution of the Adriatic question would depend on the future situation of Italy in the Mediterranean Eastern Mediterranean Sea which in turn would affect the overall political settlement in the Balkans. In his view the problem of the Eastern Mediterranean Sea ultimately coincided with the problem of Trieste which constituted quote the most important port connecting the main trade lines between Central Europe and the East and represented the natural course of the Italian commercial industrial expansion in the Danubian and Balkan hinterland as well as the immediate connection with Anatolia as a land of potential economic exploitation for Italy. On a complementary note the journalist and historian from Trieste Attilio Tamero argued that the question of Dalmatia far from being a mere problem of irredentism or nationality was quote a vast strategic problem extending from the Adriatic into the Mediterranean and on which the global political independence and freedom of Italy itself depended. The fascist discourse echoed the pre-war Italian nationalism imperialism which had aimed at establishing Italy's imperial power through the conquest of Trento and Trieste and the surrounding territories such as Istria and Danesia or even further I feel as far as Anatolia. However we have to consider that in a situation of international instability and the redrawing of state borders in post-absorbing Europe there was a growing likelihood that the territorial aspirations of Italian nationalism fascists would be achieved in the near future. On the other hand we have to keep in mind that the collapse of the absolute empire marked the end of the largest supermarket area in Europe in 1918 the disintegration of the absolute institutions did anything but continuing radicalizing in the post-war period the push to fragmentation and the globalization which was underway already in the wartime period. The port of Trieste is a hub of activities and connections between the Mediterranean Sea and Eastern Central Europe was particularly affected by the wartime slump and by the following annexation to the Italians in 1919. A partial recovery of the port activities of Trieste took place over the 1920s but the collapse of the absolute empire had undermined the unique commercial position of the upper reactive town. As you can see the volume of trade exchanges and the breadth of the global networks did not reach the same level as in 1913 at least for the first years of the post-war period. As a consequence the Italian-speaking local elites had to cope with a completely unexpected situation of economic decline and to strive for the reconstruction of the connections of the northern Adriatic town with the exiled to Interland, the Balkans and the eastern Mediterranean Sea. Accordingly the post-1918 local elites barbantly discussed as far as regarding the reconfiguration of the connections between the port of Trieste and Eastern Central and South Eastern Europe as well as the reconstruction of the economic and commercial activities in the 1920s. Notably Fulvia-Suvić another important local nationalist, then fascist established a direct link between the impending decline of the port of Trieste and the much needed search for a new role of the Adriatic port in the future order. Interestingly Suvić became a leading manager of the Francesco Parisi that is the first and oldest shipping company serving all the absolute central Europe and beyond. In the post-1918 period the management of the Parisi company quickly switched its loyalty for the absolute good Italian state and it tried to consolidate its ties with the commercial routes to Venice, Florence, Milan and Rome. At the same time it struggled to reactivate and mobilize new networks in the success of states and to resume its critical importance in the friendly connections with Central Europe. In this regard Suvić played a crucial role within this context and contributed to the projects of commercial and cultural re-globalization of Trieste as a way of establishing a new role of the fascist of fascist Italy in Central and Balkan Europe as well as in the Adriatic and Mediterranean Sea and beyond. Meanwhile the local elite from Trieste promoted new ties with the success of states in order to reconstruct a sort of economic unity in Central Europe and within it to accept the primacy of the Italian interest. For instance, Aminio Bruna was a friend to Suvić, an active member of the chamber of commerce of Trieste and part of an ancient business family who came from Feralbe and was especially busy with cotton and coffee global trade. Bruna played a major role both in the formation of the local public opinion about economic issues in post-1918 Trieste and in the reorganization of the fragmented post-war Central Europe and its connections. In this regard he published an important article among others on the local twisty newspaper in Pico in September 1922. Bruna was convinced that Trieste, thanks to its important function for the countries of its Interland, constituted as a series of independent states, might attain a special position in the Italian economy within the new international settlement established by the treaties of Saint-Germain and Trinone. To Bruna it was possible to enlarge the customs territory of Italy and its fear of action in any economic field by creating, quote, a customs union with the several small economies which emerged from the territories of the former monarchy in the aftermath of the peace treaties, end of quote. Bruna delivered the speech in November 1923 at the Congress of the Cycle of Economic Studies in Trieste with the major representatives of the national economic life. Bruna argued that the military success the Italians had obtained in 1918, quote, by crushing down the dynastic political system of the upskirts should be complemented by the economic victory which could decisively assert Italian influence on the Nanubian world, end of quote. With supporting the local and national asset of the fascist movement, Bruna was thus in favor of the establishment of Trieste as a free port and of the recovery of a free trade zone in Central Europe through the restoration of the gold standard system. To briefly conclude, now you can see a map of the late 20s of this project of reconnecting with border European global trade networks. So to briefly conclude, I would like to draw some more general remarks. The reflections and debates of the Triestean political and economic nationalists and fascist elites demonstrate how the disintegration of the Hungary and the subsequent fragmentation of the its imperial free trade zone shaped the need for a new combination of economic liberalism and political authoritarianism. Before mentioned, Risolo, Tamaro, Suvic and Bruna were in different ways aware of the structural limits of the nation state and of the need to reactivate regional and global trade networks across Italian interests in Central and Balkan Europe as well as in the Eastern Mediterranean Sea and in Anatolia and even beyond. They struggled to reconfigure the legacy of globalizing Habsburg Trieste and to negotiate to establish new forms of globalization under fascist conditions, including economic, political, cultural and ultimate military projects of imperial expansion. As I tried to demonstrate, the ideas of the nationalists and fascists from Trieste had a significant impact on Mussolini in his attempt of reconceptualizing and reorganizing the new global order in the 20s, intertwining economic liberalism, political authoritarianism, as well as economic, cultural and military forms of imperialism. Thank you very much. Thank you very much, Marco. And also thank you for keeping the time and we're going to move to Gabo. I think he's in the room. The title of his presentation is When Imperialists Join the Nationalists Against the West, Post-Imperial Business Networks and the Creation of National Economies in the Habsburg Post-Imperial Economic Space in the 1920s. Gabo, we can hardly hear you online at least. I didn't start. We are struggling with climate change, with me in the spotlight. Hopefully it will react. There's something automatic which directs the cameras. So, first of all, I would like to thank the organizers, especially making me this leap from a localist to a globalist, because as David mentioned, this work, which is also very much in progress, has grown out of the research I devoted to the southern Banat small region within the new Romania, where actually very important imperial businesses had local branches or factories. And I was interested in how these local branches of imperial capitalist networks or companies, conglomerates, survived and fared in inter-Romania, which was supposedly trying to take over control of these supposedly enemy property, and especially industry that was very important for the new Romanian state. And after taking it to a comparison with what happened in the post-autonomous space with the assets of one of the important actors within this business network, the Peshti-Hungary Conversion Bank, or Opialic, it was just called Peshti in Hungary. 1922 seemed to be or turned out to be a kind of interesting turning point. Early in the year, the so-called Orient Gruppe, which was set up by Eastern Hungarian banks in 1916, sailed to the last of its assets, held in the Ottoman state, the plans of the execution plans of the new port facilities in Istanbul. And this was the year when the Romanian National Bank rejected a reorganization idea of the branches of the Peshti-Hungary Conversion Bank in Transylvania that came under Romanian rule. And this was very important for the bank in a way of salvaging its assets and property. So seemingly, the result was the same kind of very serious situation. And still the consequences were very different in post-autonomous Turkey, the bank and its business partners decided to exit Turkey and liquidate their assets. But in Romania, after a retrenchment, a new bloom came and the bank and its partners were actually involved in new business corporations with Romanian capital, which led to the establishment of several significant and monopolistic positions on the new Romanian market. This part of the story is actually very well covered by a forthcoming group written by Matteo Vigo, who compares Azers-Lorraine and Transylvania in terms of this economic transition. And I rather will add to this picture that paints something about the broader regional south-eastern European issues, and less about the concrete process of salvaging capital. So my basic argument is that when we see this kind of resilience of post-Rangarian economic space in south-eastern Europe, at least economic space that is comparable to the export empire of Germany, even though it's rested on different foundations and had not that broad eastern, is that this kind of survival, if it happened, meant a new integration but also a reintegration of the economic space within which these traditional actors had their crucial position. And this was based on mutual benefits, one can even claim that there was interest in the moral economy of the high capital. In Romania, this survival of resistance rested on a more organic expansion into the Romanian economic space by the Ottoman what happened in the Ottoman Empire was more politics-driven and past year, but also to a certain extent much less developed for political considerations as actually for the assessment of the political situation of the Ottoman Empire and the first work by these or from the side of these capitalist elites. And in the realignment after 1918, at least in both cases exemplified although differently, local alliances against more power from western competition played a role and I will just try to give a few examples. So speaking of Romania, which was an exemplary case of gradual expansion, the most important moment for Pesci was 1904 when with three other banks, two other banks with the German bank and the Austrian bank, it transformed the family bank, the Marmotschek plant, Kolokia Blancbanka into a shared company from a private bank. The Blancbanka became one of the five largest relief banks before 1st of four and Pesci was its closest collaborator among its external partners. It was practically the one that had the most important influence on its business policies, but it also meant that the kind of mutual trust was developed between the Romanian owners and the foreign managers and the Pesci's representative on board. Although during the first world war there were tensions about the future and Pesci invested a lot of social capital into salvaging the Romanian owners of the bank because it had something to operate on the German, Austro-Hungarian, Bulgarian, Ottoman occupation and it was not so easy and Pesci moved all kinds of stones in Berlin and Vienna to achieve it. It again was a very significant and important for what happened after 2080. With the Romanian annexation of Eastern Hungary, a new complication emerged and nevertheless for Hungarian businessmen it was also a new opening and already in 1919 there were plans to somehow create a uniform economic block or space between Romania and Hungary, whatever its boundaries were to come. And within these new configurations many revolved around the participation of Blanbanca which was still actually owned by Pesci as well. So a kind of typical way of salvaging property was developed. Romanian capitalists or Romanian business groups bought the assets of the Austro-Hungarian owners through the establishment of new shareholder companies and for a long time they established also syndicate and shared the profits. Curiously with all kind of interesting business machinations the Austro-Hungarians could take most of the profit even though the proportion of the shares was equal between the Romanian and external partners in that case and these new companies actually would establish monopolies like on the steel machinery and railway carriage industries, these Southern-Banat factories played a very important role in the creation of a new monopolistic company, the Tita-Nedraka line in Romania. But it was true for the textile industry and for several others and Pesci could also salvage its branches with the cooperation of Blanbanca and a few other interested Romanian institutions. Regarding the Ottoman Empire although there were ideas before the First World War during the First and Second Balkans War that promoted some kind of expansion towards the Ottoman space and Pesci or at least chairman of the Pesci was one of the most prominent proponents of these ideas. The most significant moment was October 1916 when four banks, two from Hungary, two from Austria established a so-called Korean group, the goal of the main aim of which was actually to land 240 million to the Ottoman government out of which the Ottomans could buy import goods from those 300. Nevertheless if it was established they also started to look and not independently from the political pressure from the government exploring potential businesses with looking for the possible and rather instead of looking for the war and therefore they were very cautious with accepting proposals they tried to avoid all the court wire emerging both of the local incentives and political conflicts which in which they were thrown into or even blackmailed and they had to face this kind of Ottoman policy of which was exemplified by at least he's the one who surfaces very much in the documents, Kemal Bey who tried to invite these Austro-Hungarian companies into establishing Ottoman-Austro-Hungarian common business enterprises with majority share provided for the Ottomans and also the major profits provided for the Ottomans. The basic idea was to somehow help the emergence of a new Ottoman business elite at the cost of the foreigners and also facilitating transfer of no rule as well. And there were two cases when they were rather serious these were the exploratory drills in the Bosphorus for a bridge but then they decided it was impossible to build on the basis of these explorations and the Yelikapu that became the flagship project not surprisingly the Oriental Ban which had its rarely tracks nearby was also involved and the Oriental Ban was the company that actually built the plans of the Yelikapu so in a sense it remained within this group but nevertheless it soon became quite clear that it was impossible to for these companies to build and after 1918 it was quite clear for them that liquidation was inevitable even though they tried to salvage for a while. So again coming to some kind of open conclusions for debate and for further development along several lives that are possible it's very important to see and I think that here my case connects with neurozones that these imperial economic spaces were not just dissolved rather they were persistent and sometimes it does not necessarily the moving of people within the space but rather the capital goods and specialists so to say so managers and specialists who were who were very important for the business if it worked this space was possible to be relatively intact it also helped through a reconfiguration which is the more global aspect of this story I was not tackling here to save the relatively important and focal positions of Budapest and Vienna not necessarily the centers but at least the gateways to the region for testing and this is the most striking feature of it especially in the Romanian case these new configurations of partner monopolies were developed not just simply as a kind of alliance of two business groups who were actually cooperating for a long time very much before the First World War but at least justified towards politics which was very important for making the decisions as a way of creating new alliances against those western powers who dominate or who are perceived as seeking economic dominance in this region and as the Romanian government at least the Romanian government that came to power in 1922 had this very strange political colors of being the liberal and promoting and protectionist economic policy they were actually very receptive for this kind of argumentation and it's not a coincidence that the Blanc Banco was supposed to be the closest business company in Romania to the liberal political elite so this way we can even see how the network itself connected with politics and helped all of the members of this network which were still operative in the South-East and European economic space to preserve most of its assets in in a sense recreating it because it doesn't mean that there weren't changes within the network but it remained operative and defining economic realities of the area. Thank you very much Gabor thank you I will open the floor in a few minutes I would like to make a few comments maybe if we can stop sharing the screen so that I can see also the others fantastic and we have 30 34 35 minutes for a discussion so I don't want to sound too banal or trivial but listening to these three papers I had a novel in mind I thought about what I'm Pamuk my name is Red which is the story of a murder at the court of the sultan in the 15th century if I'm not wrong and if you if you replace the murder with and the inquiry on the assassins with 1922 well you will see that 1922 has very different faces and we go from exhaustion and catastrophe to and I will start with Gabor opportunity this is how we opened his talk he said 1922 is a year of opportunity and this granular analysis is extremely interesting to me because it shows not really the persistence of the old regime to quote a very well-known book but something else which is precisely continuities and if there is not a very strong ideological reasons why things have to be replaced there is a way of accommodate oneself or a line of business in this particular case the banks with their interests and there is no utter rejection of the past this is and I'm not at all surprised if Gabor uses the term reconfiguration in his talk which makes a lot of sense to me so this was this was my first reflection now if we continue backwards and we go back to Marco well if this is a reconfiguration in the case of Trieste this is an extremely radical one and this is about replacing an old empire with a new empire which is probably even more rapacious than than the previous one and this is the plan that the fascist have which is delusional for sure but place is an awful lot of importance on precisely Trieste and there is yet another word that Marco has not used but of course it is it is there and Gabor used which is gateway Trieste is this gateway it's not the center of the empire but is an extremely important note of this future fascist empire once again the fascist as I have always argued in my research lacked an awful lot of creativity they wanted simply to replace what Trieste had been with a new Trieste that would have played exactly the same role in exactly the same areas and even the idea of an Adriatic empire was not particularly new and as Marco pointed out it came from a nationalist tradition that was there long before the fascist came and Jay remembered the case of Corfu and of course Marco referred to Anatolia and in the geopolitical imaginary of the fascist race was always there as a land that should have been conquered by the fascists that's that's that that was the plan the delusional plan there is another word that come to my mind that we might reflect on which is allegiance and the story of the sewage of the runner of the tamaro and all the others that were mentioned in the paper is a story of the winners because there were other people in Trieste that were not particularly happy to see the canyons and the fascist winning over and fundamentally erasing the Austro-Hungarian past in in order to to create this a new axis of civilization that was in the quotes by Benito Mussolini and that will conclude with a few words on Dimitris and what is fascinating about the Near East Relief story is that the Greeks themselves are nowhere to be seen in the documents of the Near East Relief the refugees are statues they are objects they are certainly not their fate in their hands because the Near East Relief in a very civilizational way is going to give them a future and the quote by Paul Monroe which is a very controversial figure that would deserve to be studied way more is precisely that and it's something that he said which struck me because I think exactly like he does humanitarianism extremely selective and if children are picked up by the Near East Relief it might be for humanitarian reasons but it might also be for other political reasons that of course I never mentioned in the documents that one can find in several archives so I will conclude throwing at you two more words sovereignty which was not very often used in your three papers and was quite surprised and hostages and this probably refer more to Dimitris paper I will stop here and I will ask the three panelists to very briefly react to my provocations and and then we will open up the floor thank you Dimitris shall we start with you or Gabor one of the two remind I can Dimitris oh god uh yes well uh I start with uh with the more specific comments that you made on on my paper the Greeks are nowhere to be seen this is true and I think this is also something you've highlighted in your work but I think this is also where I would like to turn this research I would like to see the response from the Greek sources so in a sense see how the recipients of that aid responded both to the to the aid the actual aid like the medication close and so on that reached Greece but also to the policies of the NER which I'm positive that it would be different in terms of criteria I mean if the criteria of the NER are civilizational as you correctly mentioned well in the case of the Greek state and of the Greek refugees is an issue of survival in the case of the Greek state of political survival and in the case of the Greek refugee survival uh period um with regards to uh with regards to your point about children this is this is very true when when we see their the approach from from the NER point of view there if they have this kind of civilizational uh background that the west is going to uh disseminate the light of civilization in in the east and so on uh therefore children yes are um let's say are a population that is easier to mold in that kind of of of idea but at the same time I feel that the the responses and the reports of the people who work in the field show something beyond that I think yes there might be a civilizational background if we see in a very critical uh from a very critical aspect let's say but at the same time I think that they are actually moved by what they witness uh in Greece during this first month or this first couple of years of the presence of the refugees and I think this is also something that needs to be highlighted I mean the the actual wording of of these reports which in a sense will bring a kind of balance I feel with with your work in terms of the criteria and the and the politics behind uh the the NER um the the issue of sovereignty and hostages yes I mean Greece as I mentioned in the paper and I think this is also something you've you've worked on um was unable to do anything at the time I mean Greece is is helpless and this is why also which to connect the big with the financial leg of of that effort uh and the reconfiguration we should not forget that uh later on the refugee settlement commission uh and to establish the refugee settlement commission Greece receives two loans with the very difficult terms and to a certain extent these loans uh compared to the financial crisis of the 1930s result of the to the bankruptcy of Greece so therefore yes there is an issue there a political issue of sovereignty and lack of and also an issue of of financial dependence um so last last point you mentioned the word reconfiguration I think that uh there is a there are there is a there are two sides of a configuration after 1922-1923 in Greece there is a reconfiguration of the state because it it receives 1.3 million people to a population of five million so we understand that there is a massive influx of people that need to be incorporated into the Greek society so that that is a major reconfiguration in all aspects social economic political and so on but also it's the reconfiguration that you are looking in your book also how the west now gets a prominent role uh it comes to play a prominent role through its institutions whether it's non-governmental through the NER that say the children fund and so on or the League of Nations through the refugee settlement commission so I think there is also a sense of of of a great reconfiguration along these lines in Greece in the 20s and the and the 30s this is my my brief response thank you I will address another one that you received on the Q&A but I would like to turn the floor to Marco and to table first Marco yes thank you very much David these were really challenging comments in some sense I will think over them in the in the next steps of the of the research yes sure I think I mean only one and I think you are completely right I think that there is a kind of radical reconfiguration of the order built around Prieste its economic function and the meaning of the political annexation what I'm trying to do is to you know to rethink of the imperial projects of the fascist movement and the regime through the you know the the influence of the absolute legacies so to try to to to connect the imperial achievements of the 30s early 40s to this longer background on the one hand on the other end I try to connect these imperial projects with the local culture of the both political and economic elites and in this regard I think that sure they they on the one hand they felt as winners on the on the war but on the other hand they felt as losers of the of the war and these mixed feelings I think played a critical role in the early post-war period because differently from other regions they really felt affected by the negative backlash of the annexation so there is a kind of interesting debates and discussion between the local elites and the new national authorities for instance in as far as regards the resettlement of the railway connections the politics of tariffs and customs the relationship in general with the success of states and in this regard I think that the local elites felt you know divided between feelings of victory and feelings of defeat in a sense and here I come to the the problem of serenity because I think that I didn't mention the term but I mean I'm also working on issues related to the term and I think that the you know the the establishment the reconnection the refrigeration of the area in economic terms had also something to do with the definition of serenity the in national authorities look at the problem of interest just in terms of political serenity so they wanted just to fix the new borders and guarantee the new territorial acquisitions on the other end of the local elite think so in terms of economic serenity and this pushed them encouraged them to retrieve and reconnect with the other regions of the empire yes last but not least I think that this replacement of empires has a lot to do with this new you know the new reflection of the absolute studies related to the impossibility of really separating nationalism and imperialism and in this sense I think the fascists were heirs of a longer tradition and at some time operated a very different context so this made their plans maybe delusional but very dangerous for a long time thank you thank you Marco Gabor thank you very much I'm going to stop picking up sovereignty because I think they can like some of the other times as well and once the one thing what I'm tempted to say but I don't have so far proof is that this kind of reassession of sovereignty that this capitalist experience after 1916 when they were pushing towards some kind of expansion all right as they go with the penetration of the empire proved to be a very important experience for them to deal with the reassession of sovereignty by the media among different circumstances but sometimes facing the same demands and the same same framework in the sense so we just in a sense a kind of preparation of what happened with them and they could have nevertheless their solution was mostly that kind of local integration they started to do it in the Ottoman Empire they hired people who were living and operating in Constantinople for decades some one of them was even among the leaders of the debt league so he definitely had some kind of intimate knowledge of development finances they started to cooperate with the great national command which was actually chaired by the Austrian-Citizen Viktor Reier so they tried to build the same connections but they didn't have the time and they also found that they are somehow dragged into dubious what actually dragged into very dubious business and he was by the local elite as well local but there is also an interesting continuity regarding the sovereignty of the empire that they saw that it's quite different from the document that they saw that this is just a temporary issue that there is a temporary movement and they can somehow build something because by the end of the war everything will return to how it was in 1914 the British and the French will return and they'll have quite significant influence on the Ottoman Empire and this is something that again contributed to why the debt league really restrained the regarding jumping on full kind of ideas and in a sense they were right but I don't think they did also the collapse of their own empire yes one can even think at least metaphorically of kind of hostage situations with dealing with the sovereign that they at least in Romania quite well managed and also an interesting feature of looking at this story through the lens of sovereignty how much the end of the story or this kind of restart of the story around 1922-1923 at least in Romania in the Central Europe was based on seeing the external limitations of the sovereign empire so internationalist solution for the economic problems the intervention of the legal nation which was also at least as Nathan Marcus are regarding the Austrian reconstruction was a means and means for the national elites to reassert this sovereignty because they could engage in an interesting game with the access from the legal nation who pretended to be actually the directing the process while they had much less leverage than they communicated it the outside world so this is this would be again an interesting story to be so ready thank you Gabor I've got two questions and one hand I will start with Lukas continue with Lina and then with Panagiotis so Lukas has a question for Dimitris and I'm going to read it where their distinctions made by the humanitarian organizations between the refugees according to their geographical origins and or language spoken ethnicity and by this he means where they providing the same aid to all refugees or where they for instance giving the priority to Spermios or Pontics or the Armenians right well yes and no with the case of the Armenians we know that the NER had a special interest in them they had already been involved from very early this is also basically this is the that was why the initiative of the NER of the establishment when you are was made in 1915 therefore they were the ones who took care of of the Armenian refugees we know for example Dorothea Saturn who was while they would be at the last year of she was in Constantinople she was attending the Armenian internal refugees outside Constantinople and then we know for a fact that she came to Greece and she again got involved with the Armenian refugees so in the case of the Armenians I think it's it's pretty straightforward now from this point on it really depended on on where the the NER was active and by that I mean that the NER as and also with the American Red Cross but especially the NER had a major role in all of in all of the country so therefore if we're talking about for example Athens and Piraeus then we're talking about the refugees who came with the first wave the violent wave of 1922 in the summer of 1922 so therefore we're talking about refugees from from the western coast of Asia Minor so Smyrni, Urla and the Bilaget of Aydin and so on if we're talking about the refugees who came from Eastern Thracian again we're talking about different populations so in a certain point to a certain extent I would say that it really depended on the entrance points of the refugees and the time they arrived it's a different story talking about the refugees coming in the summer of 1922 and it's a different story talking about the the populations who were exchanged in 1923 but also we should we should keep in mind that as it happened with with the refugee settlements you had mixed populations so you would have people from from Kapatosia but also you have people from the Pontus you have people from from Eonia and so on so therefore if if I take apart from the Armenians I would say that all cases are applicable. Okay Lina, thank you Dimitris. I would like to ask Marco if he he considers that there is something useful if we if we compare the case of Trieste and the case of the annexation of the Saloniki after the Balkan wars which was cut out from its hinterland and which was also a very important port in the Mediterranean and the conflicts that were created amongst Greeks and other populations and with the Serbs and the Bulgarians around the Saloniki do you think it would be a useful comparison? Thank you. Thank you very much Lina. I mean I can take this suggestion I mean I know just a few things about the the case of the Saloniki but I think that Trieste case can be usefully compared to other cases for instance I mean I recently written an article soon it will be published concerning comparison between Trieste and Gdansk after the First World War in terms of reconfiguration of relationships between port towns and imperial post imperial interlands especially on the economic ground but not only so I think that this comparison could be usefully applied to different cases and maybe maybe I think a comparison between another I mean with different Mediterranean ports and ports having trade connections between them could be really really interesting and I will try to I mean use this suggestion for the research. Thank you very much. Okay I've seen Gondas hand but before getting to her I would like to read the question of Fanagiotis Karagounis and I say hello to him because I think I know him he would like to ask another question to to you Dimitris and the question is about the relations between the Aeneir the nearest relief and other local Greek committees that organized and or distributed relief to refugees which are often represented I think he means in the literature and perhaps even in the historiography as useless or corrupted by some foreign humanitarians and he has a second question did you observe Dimitris and he disputes among the various ethnic groups the Armenians the Russians the Ottoman Greeks etc that were labeled as a homogeneous set of refugees and live together in Greece under the supervision of the nearest relief workers thank you right wow that's a good question okay so the first part the first part yes this is this is something very common that you see not only in the Aeneir reports but also in the reports of the Save the Children Fund from the Save the Children Fund that the locals are characterized as useless corrupted or they don't know what they're doing or they have no understanding of of the seriousness of the situation I would say that this is this is this is rather unfair and I think I come back to Rodogno's work now to David's work now that when he says that there was this kind of superiority approach from from these Western humanitarian organizations and I think this is why it's essential to in a sense bring to the surface the Greek side of that story and the Greek response yes people were unprepared and authorities and public services were unprepared to deal with this situation but we should also keep in mind that the people who implemented these policies eventually were locals yes of course the the the people coordinating with people from the Western humanitarian organizations but the people who implemented were locals and not only locals but they were also people from the Asia Minor group refugees for example I I had I had the opportunity to speak with a with a grandson of a person who was from Asia Minor and he told me that for seven years he worked for the NER and he due to the fact that he spoke Turkish was able to communicate with refugees the fact that was very difficult to do for the NER personnel so therefore I think that yes you find that you find that trend in in in the reports but at the same time I think that this is an unfair representation of of the local committees and and and the local workers who collaborated with with these humanitarian organizations now the second question um well again I have to to to to refer to David there's work about what he said that the the Western organizations perceived the refugees as a monolithic entity and and and and in a sense we should we should we should understand that the experience of the trauma of 1922 and and the that whole experience was different for it for each individual and for each group it's a different experience for the people who came in 1922 it's a different experience for the people who came in 1923 it was it was conditioned by the local origins the language and so on so therefore uh yes there are there were frictions there were frictions between the refugees as there were frictions between the refugees and the native Greeks but these were as far as I've seen from from the from the reports of of the Western Humanitarian organizations these were not reported what you see is that this group for the for the uh NER or the ARC or the SCF is uh is one group they do not really differentiate what they focus on is basically that they ratchet and they they live on the streets and so on but they do not go and also they have they mention the relations with the native population but not within they don't refer to frictions within uh the group of refugees as they see it just before turning the floor to gondola if I may add on this particular point that the nearest relief will have and I go back to Giorgos uh point on the myth of homogeneity of the nation the nearest relief had an extremely violent uh policy when it comes to Armenian in Greeks because they want to want they wanted to Hellenize these people they wanted the Armenians to to become perfect Greeks giving up their religion giving up the uh their language their culture to become perfect Greeks otherwise the only solution was for them to go to Soviet Armenia where they were notoriously were not very much inclined to uh to go and I had another parallel that came to my mind uh connecting just what you said Dimitris to something that Marco said just like the fascists would have never been ready to admit any connection or legacy intellectual political ideological with the uh Habsburg empire uh Western humanitarians would have never ever been ready to admit the role of local Greeks or the legacy or the Ottomans and their relief networks which were extremely sophisticated or even the role of local Armenian committees were so much better organized that the nearest relief and I turn my gaze to Laura in Lebanon in Syria and elsewhere so there is there is a story of concealing depth of gratitude that so many different actors very different actors and from the fascist to the nearest relief might have had with uh with with the past but in this 90 20 global 90 22 at moment uh this is the perfect moment to you know either to pretend or to try and do whatever they could to erase um and they do it sometimes successfully and sometimes not so successfully sorry for the digression gondaf too quick footnotes of course the Armenian issue is very complicated but but there's another historical factor in the making of the nearest relief and that is that there are very much there's very much an American missionary strand there and the American missionaries have been active in the eastern Mediterranean have tried Greece where they weren't too successful but they were very successful among the Armenians in fact they were probably most successful turning converting uh orthodox Armenians into evangelicals to what extent then is that the driving force for favoring army I mean the Armenians were left uh that not all they're they're not just Christians they are they are a group large numbers of them have massively converted to an evangelical type of Christianity that the missionary is promoted and then one other point about the Armenian sleeping for the soviet union and in 1946 or 1947 and I'm a little fuzzy on the date 17 000 left out of the port of Thessaloniki that's not exactly a reluctant exodus I would say that is a rather startling number so maybe we can comment on that too although I'm a little on the latter date I uh I can't immediately refer to to the most credible sources any comments on that Beatrice no you go first I think you are completely right kind of that that's exactly what it is I I beat so many of the nearest relief workers were abcfm missionaries and that's a fact they were you know the arm and the brain of the nearest relief and they spoke local languages and uh there are so many references in the archives of the abcfm of the contempt with which these missionaries slash nearest relief uh humanitarian workers look down at orthodox but even the clergy or orthodox Christians in general so they have a they had a very clear preference which is spelled out in so many words in very documents for the Armenians including and of course any attempt to convert orthodox to protestantism in its various forms was a disaster and these they know very well so there is this this is a reality and as to the second one I don't know much but I don't know if you're interested want to add a few words for the second one no but I think I know the hypothesis and I think I will I will try to uh combine what what what Wanda said with what you said WB4 is about concealing I think that the Armenians yes were like it was a kind of strange case in in in Greece and and they were treated as such like for decades nowadays and especially with like the past couple of days that I've been watching these documentaries about you know 1922 and the refugees and so on you see a descendants of Armenians who settled in Greece who actually speak openly about these Armenian community in Athens and about you know neighborhoods that were built around this kind of network of Armenian community network but for for a for a I would say a serious period of time this was not a really well known case with regards to the narrative of the refugees who came from Asia Minor which I think speaks volumes about what what you said David about Hellenization and also about what Wanda said about you know Armenian populations who were still in Greece even in the 1940s but I think it's a very interesting case to you know it's one of these cases that we do not really we have not studied in with regards to the narrative relating to the the refugees from Asia Minor of 1922. I'm on the lookout for the work of Merich Erol who yes he's doing that you're right you're absolutely right and I quickly want to add that even conversions to Evangelical Christianity and the Armenians didn't really survive the exodus for the US by the time they all congregate in Fresno or Los Angeles a whole lot of their walk back on their long orthodox routes so so conversion can be doesn't necessarily go very deep is what I'm saying. Right I've received marching orders from from our leader Maximo it's time to wrap up and to thank you all and to pass it over to Violetta and the colleagues Michel and Folger and so let me thank thank you all of you participants panelists for your wonderful questions and I turn it over I pass the button to Violetta thank you thank you see you later. Thank you very much for passing it to me thank you to all who presented in this panel it was a really interesting one and we're moving to the fourth session entitled Smyrna with two presentations and the first one is by Michel Toussaint who's going to talk about Smyrna 1922 and Michel is a professor of history at the University of Nevada Las Vegas she received her PhD from the University of California Berkeley she's a British historian by training and her teaching and scholarship engage the relationship between geopolitics culture and human rights she has published a number of monographs the British Empire and the Armenian genocide humanitarianism and imperial politics from Gladstone to Churchill very interestingly and appropriately Smyrna's ashes humanitarianism genocide and the birth of the Middle East and women making news gender and journalism in modern Britain currently she's working on a monograph and I suspect that much of what she's going to tell us today comes from that work and the title is The Last Treaty the Middle Eastern Front and the end of the First World War and currently she's also the Vice President and President-elect of the North American Conference on British Studies so Professor Michel Toussaint with Smyrna 1922 thank you Violetta can you hear me yes terrific well first I want to thank the organizers and thank you all for being here what is at the end of your day in the beginning of mine I will share my screen and then read a sort of shortened version of the presentation that I posted as a paper so let's see if this works so can you see this yes okay thank you Violetta okay let me start so as we know today we have two papers on Smyrna and others have mentioned that already today we know that Smyrna is open for reinterpretation and I'd like to offer I'd like to insert my my work into that dialogue about what Smyrna 1922 really means the fire clearly has a lot to say about the global in 1922 and I really have you appreciate the opportunity to be able to rethink the fire through that lens I'll use my time to focus on why I think Smyrna matters to understanding the end of World War one also show some photographs taken like this one here taken by a British sailor sailor present at Smyrna in 1922 and they were shared with me by his grandson and I'll share a little bit of my own archival material I really appreciated Demetrius's photographs so clear mine are a little more grainy but I thought they might offer some useful illustrations of what I'm going to talk about as Violetta said I am a British historian by training and I first encountered this story of Smyrna in the archives when I was writing Smyrna's ashes and in my initial reading the fire marked an endpoint for the history of British engagement with the Ottoman Empire that dated from the mid 19th century and in this narrative a little bit counter to what we've just been talking about with the evangelicals and the Americans what I found was that the British were very keen to connect to create a sort of kinship with Orthodox Christians they were supposed to be sort of connected with an Anglicanism and that we can see in Gladstone and so Smyrna for me was a sort of endpoint of that sort of long relationship that was created between British sensibilities and Orthodox Christians in the Ottoman Empire so I'm revisiting the fire for this new book project that Violetta mentioned called The Last Treaty the end of World War One in the Middle East but I'd like to use a slightly different lens I really wanted to use Smyrna to help explain the final chapter of the Allied War with the Ottoman Empire without the story of Smyrna I argue we can't understand how the Great War ended so let me show you an image one of these set of images of Smyrna the Smyrna fire from the British battleship by day and by night and I particularly like that that last image on your far corner of Smyrna burning at night give you a sense of how long and how intensively this fire burned so what are the stakes of reading Smyrna as an endpoint of the war the conceit of my book project if there is one is to reimagine World War One looking backward from Luzon rather than Versailles what does the war look like if we consider that one of the endpoints I think it sharpens our focus on the war between the Allies and the Ottoman Empire in some important ways from the perspective of the Treaty of Luzon in which the burning of Smyrna I'll argue played a pivotal role the war unsurprisingly looks different than if we end with the signing of peace at Versailles but there are also important similarities war on what I'm calling the Middle Eastern Front mirrored what happened on the Western Front trench warfare the blurring of lines between battle and home front and the deployment of 19th century modes of diplomatic and military practice meant that World War One in the Middle East or close resemblance to the war in Western Europe at the same time the eventual extensive and successful deployment of Calvary versus trench warfare the genocide against the Armenians and a highly contested occupation by the Allies in the Ottoman Empire meant that the Middle Eastern Front had its own logic and deserves interrogation as a distinct and separate theater approaching World War One in this way extends the chronology of the war in order to better understand its global complexities like so many in this room and at this conference have done the work and this work builds on that on that premise and argue that World War One does have multiple rather than a single end point when it ended simply the fact is dependent on where you were Smyrna mattered as one of these end points and I'd like to discuss how it mattered in three ways the military the diplomatic and of course for refugees it altered the military course of the war that continued despite the signing of the armistice between the Allies and the Ottoman Empire in 1918 because of the sheer drama of what of what happened in Smyrna in September 1922 it also shaped the diplomatic resolution of the war that ultimately produced the last treaty of World War One the treaty opens on and finally I'd argue that this this incident the burning of Smyrna lay bare the new reality that civilians now play a central war a central role in both war and peacemaking let me show you another slide these are images from the dock bordering the harbor in the aftermath of the fire showing the presence of you can see if you look closely of Allied and Ottoman military let me start with military considerations Smyrna marked the end of major military confrontations between the Allies and the Ottoman Empire that had continued unabated after the signing of the armistice in 1918 military conflicts included the Greek invasion of Smyrna and the subsequent recon conquests by the stop at Kamal's army as well as the Allied offenses in Solicia and southern Anatolia and the Allies that the Allies failed to reconstitute after two years of French occupation the maneuverings of Britain's so-called hush-hush army with the mission to check Russian ambitions and to win support of minority populations living in eastern Anatolia also took shape in this period this 1918 to 1922 period the powerful position of Kamal's nationalists on the heels of their victory over Greek forces meant that the Allies occupied a much weaker position than they had at the time of the armistice so though they're fighting they're occupying this weaker position as we know in some the Allies after 1918 continued to fight but did so from a much weaker position than before the signing of the armistice in October Smyrna's destruction ended the years of military maneuvering that characterized the post-armistice period the Allies stopped fighting after nationals from the city to the ground they realized that the 1918 armistice and the 1920 treaty treaty signed at Sabra with the Ottoman Empire could not and would not hold Smyrna large over the decision to abandon these earlier agreements the armistice in the Treaty of Sabra over the seven months of negotiations that was on where these agreements were revised in the immediate aftermath of the fire the entire Sabra agreement came under Smyrna and here I think the timing is important that it happened so closely to the opening of the Luzon Conference this included of course the minority treaty section the ending of the Allied occupation of Constantinople and freedom of the streets on the eve of the opening of the Luzon Conference one newspaper headline summed up the stakes and the Allied position Constantinople must not be allowed to be a second Smyrna it declared the burning of Smyrna also mattered to the diplomatic process Smyrna happened as a result of the inability to end the war on the Middle Eastern Front after 1918 the 1919 Greek invasion had emboldened Turkish nationalists who blocked the implementation first with the terms of the armistice and later the Treaty of Sabra the total devastation of the city and subsequent evacuation of the region indicated that the price of enforcing the peace negotiated first at Madras in October 1918 and then at Sabra in August 1920 I want to see these two connected obviously would be continuing the war that the Allies no longer wanted to fight September 1922 marked the lowest point in nearly four years of clumsy military and diplomatic maneuvering that failed to bring peace so I think Smyrna in this way symbolizes a less than heroic endpoint at least from the Allied perspective which is the perspective that this project takes to the diplomatic maneuverings of the war so Luzon happened in the immediate wake of the fire and its negotiations were indelibly marked by the near total destruction of the city anxiety apathy and confusion drove diplomacy at Luzon when the conference started in November 1922 Britain France and Italy resisted dedicating manpower to helping the Greeks continue to fight Kamala's forces after Madras and Sabra's leaving the Allies in a vulnerable spot war weariness contributed to the dilatory way in which the treaty negotiations proceeded Luzon was really two conferences the first physically presided over by Lord Kersen of course I have to show you a picture of Lord Kersen lasted from November 1922 until January 23 and it failed to resolve key issues resolving revolving around sovereignty and refugees Lord Kersen famously stormed out of the conference in January after issuing an ultimatum to Turkey to sign the treaty or risk ending the possibility of a settlement he consented to give negotiators one week beyond his original arbitrary deadline when threats failed to move the process forward Kersen called a cab and left with his delegation for London on the Orient Express the conference would not resume until later that spring and this time without Kersen British Prime Minister Lloyd George pictured here did not question Kersen on this point high commissioner Constantinople Sir Horace Rumble and his consular staff were charged with restarting negotiations when it finally came to signing the treaty at the end of 1923 Kersen did not bother even coming to Luzon the press depicted the treaty negotiations as a woman of no importance not there yet and and it was pictured in the daily in the daily express soon after the signing of the tree I'm sorry my image of my my woman of no importance is not not on my slide unfortunately but it was published in the daily express soon after the signing of the treaty and and what it pictures is it pictures a woman with a caged bird and the title is peace just arrived from Luzon one British diplomat called it a strange and little notice conclusion to the world's most largest and most destructive border date on peace in this cartoon in the daily express was depicted as a crying caged dub with a single olive branch held by a perplexed woman of no importance and this is how the treaty of Luzon was received back in Britain in 1923 so these are some perspectives of the destruction again of the city at the at the endpoint of after the fire so it leads me to my final point which is that Smyrna reveals the price of continued violence for civilians caught in the no man's land between war and peace and many of the papers conference are dealing with this and I think it's just a powerful reminder of how much this inability to resolve the war affected these these crises particularly for refugees the largest refugee crisis to date as we know continued in the wake of this of this fire and I think that we do need to understand civilians as a new kind of weapon of war and peacemaking this is a close-up image of what one American journalist called Smyrna's wall of humanity that's his caption there and here you can see the dock and you can see the people waiting somewhat hopelessly on this dock it's a powerful image of of what happened in the wake of course of the fire to people who had already been under pressure so the spectrum sectarian violence led to allied secret negotiations and hung over the attempts to negotiate peace from the beginning the allies decided that Greece is an orthodox christian nation should be should take over the christian dominated west coast of Anatolia on May 11th 1919 the allies secret dispatch from Paris outlining plans for the protection of Smyrna's christian inhabitants with quote and this is from Lord Balfour with a view to avoiding disasters and massacres of christians and its environs was allowed for the Greek occupation and this plan was actually put into action within 48 hours and I don't think we understand how the diplomacy here was was was constructed and it's important that we know that neither the Italian delegation nor the Turkish delegation were informed of the invasion plans and so these secret negotiations and diplomatic maneuverings I think really matter when we are trying to understand Smyrna what Smyrna represents. Lloyd George's support of the invasion had its had its core the belief that leaving the administration of christian minorities to Greeks would best serve the British national interests and here I have some images again these were taken these were taken by a British sailor who was was then called on there's a whole dramatic episode of why it becomes a rescue effort and and what the allies are actually up to there but I had I'm hoping to be able to play this this is a this is actually from a film that was taken of refugees from Smyrna by you can see the US the US sailors there and I thought it was a pretty dramatic representation of what's at stake here the diplomatic and military maneuvering made a bad refugee crisis worst for refugees at Smyrna like the ones I've just showed you shown to you it led to the attempt to impose nominal forms of nationhood on populations still living under the rules of a shape-shifting imperial order the so-called unmixing of populations an idea will be embraced by Lord Perzin at Lausanne proved an unworkable solution to the years of genocidal and inter-ethnic violence that plagued the wartime modern empire the attempt to make minority populations disappear through expulsion orders and internationally sanctioned population exchanges proved an enduring legacy of Smyrna was on with sanction these forms of removal and displacement such a move I argue would not have been imaginable in the same way before the fire I think what happened at Smyrna requires reassessing the Middle Eastern front and rethinking the chronology of the war itself the Treaty of Versailles ended the war for some for others the signing of the final piece of the Ottoman Empire in 1923 marked the war's official end and I would put these people in that category acknowledging the importance of the burning of Smyrna to this story reveals the military diplomatic and human complex flexities of the war such an approach has an important ramifications for the European historiography on the war which is where my work intersects or is is concerned with rather than leave the study of the post war post 1918 period to Ottoman specialists alone historians of Europe need to claim this as part of the wartime chronology the implication of this extended timeline matters beyond considerations of world war one itself Luzon paved the way for a modern internationalism that rejected empire in favor of the principles of national sovereignty this shift transformed the treatment of subject populations and regional politics as one historian has argued the violent reality of Luzon precedent had far reaching implications for thinking about population transfers in the Middle East well beyond 1948 it mattered also for domestic politics in Britain Lloyd George's so-called Greek disaster which is what they called the the the 1919 order really made him a voice in the wilderness of the liberal party and in fact it left the liberal party in permanent disarray making Lloyd George the last liberal prime minister and I don't think we can discount Smyrna in that episode I think it was a positive factor ignoring the Middle Eastern front means telling a less complete story of the war I think it's past time for European historians to take the events of 1922 and the consequences of tragedies like the burning of Smyrna seriously as a final chapter of the war and a harbinger of new post war realities thanks thank you very much Michelle that was really fascinating and we'll move on now to Dr. Volker Prott who is currently a senior lecturer in modern history at Aston University and he worked in the past in Germany you know Australia and he studied in Italy so a very moving about academic as we expect he has published a very interesting monograph his first monograph and the politics of self-determination remaking territories and national identities in Europe 1917 to 23 by Oxford University Press and he subsequently also published on a number of papers German history nation nations and nationalism and the historical journal the title of his paper is destroying the Paris order the fire of Smyrna as a global turning point the floor is yours many many thanks Violetta can everyone hear me just to check the okay that's fantastic yeah it's very good to be here I'd like to thank the organizers for for having me I should start with an apology that I wasn't able and won't be able to attend many sessions in this conference and I really have quite a stupid excuse which is that I'm actually on vacation in Spain so I'm spending most of the days on the beach you know far away from from ethnic violence hopefully and and all the the troubles of the present and and academia so please excuse me if I'm not really able or not let's say in the mental state to to to join many more sessions but nevertheless I wanted to use that opportunity to join you at least for this for this session because I think it's it is a very interesting and very important topic the topic of 1922 in particular the global 22 this is really what appealed to me let me just try to share my screen and see if this works so all right so can you can you see my screen is that working yes but if you can make focus on yeah that's perfect it's that it's that good all right okay perfect so I'm actually picking up a number of themes and issues that Michelle was talking about in a really interesting excellent paper that we just heard so I have a short historical background section that I think I might actually skip because she she did a much better job than than I could do for me the I came across Smyrna as part like Michelle studying the the first world war the end of the first world war more from an international perspective I was interested in the Greek-Turkish conflict the Greek-Turkish population exchange that followed the burning of Smyrna and the defeat of the Greek forces and I was really fascinating by fascinated by this old question who started the fire and it's obviously a question that's almost as old as the fire itself and as you know there are you know different camps some are blaming the Greeks and Armenians for having burned their own city others are blaming the the Turkish troops the Turkish forces irregulars and I probably won't find the ultimate answer to that question in this paper but I wanted to readdress this question because I think it takes us at the heart of the meaning of Smyrna not just in terms of the end of the first world war but to some extent also the beginning of the end of the interwar period or let's say the Paris peace system that followed the first world war so how does Smyrna sit in this global situation of 1922 and as Michelle said obviously the situation in 1922 is very different or the world in 1922 is very different from the world in 1919 and I think what we can say is that this Paris system what Eric White has called the Paris system so the peace order that followed the first world war that is durably transformed by the Smyrna fire and this is something that Eris Menela and others have studied as well is that the the principle of national self-determination that what the Wilson and the allies proclaimed as the main idea or you know the guiding principle of the peace conference that leads to a lot of frustration for you know for a variety of reasons and in some areas not in all areas but in some areas it leads to nationalist mobilization and violent revisionism and that's the the situation we have in the Greek-Turkish conflict the point I want to make about this global 1922 is that we do have if you like for well maybe that's taking a bit too far but I think for you know to some extent for the first time in history we have an international system based on ideas principles and on the premise of making international relations more democratic and this is an idea so this idea of national self-determination of arbitration that's if you like that that spans at least the whole of Europe and you know the the near colonial sphere to some extent but it really leads to very different outcomes depending on the region whether you're in Poland whether you're in Romania or in Germany or in Greece or Turkey so it really depends on the local circumstances and the fire of Smyrna and that's my main argument here is the first major if you like turning point when this Paris peace order fails and is actually revised by aggressive nationalism and that is a mechanism so that you have frustrated people with the new order and they feel cheated they feel shortchanged they want their own self-determination and they can't get it in peaceful ways or at least it appears to them and then they you know try to mobilize their own force and they use ethnic violence to create national cohesion but also to assert their nationhood and that is the fire of Smyrna is the first time I would say that this really works that this really happens and we can then of course see it happen towards the end of the 1920s in the early 1930s when you know Italian fascists and the Nazis and later Japan in a similar way you know using arguments of self-determination dismantle this Paris peace order and Smyrna also and I think Michel hinted at that at the end of her presentation it it creates this blueprint for not just nationalist mobilization and ethnic violence but you know on a larger scale this forced removal of populations as a way of resolving if you like or stabilizing the international system and that is the dark side of self-determination if you like however I would also say that the Smyrna fire and the conflict even between Greece and Turkey following the First World War was in no way inevitable in fact there were many different outcomes possible the Greek landing at Smyrna in May 1919 was to some extent the outcome of quite arbitrary circumstances at the Paris peace conference and a very skilled negotiation by the Greek delegation and several other factors and even the fire itself was not inevitable and the fire then had strong repercussions you know leading to the Luzon agreement leading creating this blueprint so my point is here that we do need to look at the Smyrna fire both on a micro level as historians using primary sources and then using this to place the Smyrna fire in a more global context now the historical background I'll be really brief so there have been talks between Greece and the Ottoman leaders the unturks about a population exchange you know into 1914 so just before the First World War started so these ideas do not come if you're like out of nowhere now as you know also been violent precedents in the Balkan wars and small scale population exchanges and then the Paris peace conference as I just mentioned the Greeks are able to secure a Greek zone around the town of Smyrna and get the Allied green light to send their fleet there in May 1919 and that automatically not maybe automatically but directly triggers Turkish nationalist mobilization as a response and that's really the beginning of the conflict yeah that's what I just mentioned and then the war it's not just a regular war and I think we shall also mention that you know it's it's it's affecting and incorporating civilians and in all sorts of ways the Greeks then lose Allied support are defeated in August 1922 and then we have the fire of Smyrna breaking out a few days after the Turkish troops arrive at the town of Smyrna now one of the one of the reasons why the Greeks are unable to secure their zone simply the geography but also the the demographic factor so now of course there is a strong Greek minority along the coastline of Asia Minor but there isn't really a clear border so you can see here the Greek claims of 1916 are really quite extensive they are then much more modest if you like at the Paris peace conference then the you know the Allies have their own ideas or you know well this is the this is the front line you can see here 1920-21 the Americans are the most hesitant they actually advise against any such Greek zone and then you can see the shaded zone here around Smyrna this is eventually the the area that's awarded more or less awarded to Greece in the Treaty of Severus so it's the geography that's really difficult and it in a way pulls the Greeks the Greek army into the hinterland in the attempt to pacify well if you want to use that word to pacify the the region and that you know in the process they are over stretching they lose British support and then they collapse now probably won't have the time to go through all these different points it looks really scary and complex but the the basic idea is quite simple so the point here is that we have this macro international idea of national self-determination and it plays out very differently according to different regional contexts if you like and in the case of Turkey or well the the late Ottoman Empire the you know Asia Minor we have a situation where you have mixed populations where you have an absence of really strong state authorities you have you know a long tradition of brigands or ethnic conflict if you like but also colonial western colonial meddling in this area so so there are a number of these factors that then lead to a situation where ethnic violence becomes the way that both sides use to mobilize nationalist support and in a way sorting out self-determination on the ground um and again of course we we we know this from other conflicts like in Bosnia in the 1990s if you think of the massacre of Srebrenn it's all these you know very often you've you've got these local dynamics of violence that you can't necessarily explain only by looking at the macro level but you need to look at the local level and here is where my my analysis of the Smyrna fire comes and in my argument here is that we do have the two stage outbreak so we can't really say who started the fire what we can say is that there were multiple fires starting at different points probably resulting from fighting between Armenian irregulars and and Turkish troops and then that's the first stage and as the as the fire start there is a moment when the at least the archival evidence that I have seen overwhelmingly points um points to the Turkish side of having deliberately spread this fire to the Greek Armenian at European parts of the city and you can see that here if you look at this is actually taken um from the British national archives a map drawn at the time indicate in the area that the fire destroyed and you can see that at at least according to this map quite neatly destroyed only the Greek the Armenian and the European part so again the argument is that you have this two stage right and two stage outbreak if you like with the fire the outbreak and then the spreading and the fire then becomes a means of cleansing quite literally this new Turkish nation state from its minorities and it's it's being used as a violent way which makes sense if you like which is facilitated by the broader framework of national self-determination where you know the the premium is put on homogenous nationally homogenous states so let me conclude how do we move then back from micro to macro and why is the smirna fire important so I would say there are two aspects here one is the smirna fire is ally peacemaking gone wrong so you've got this idea of self-determination that should the idea is to make international politics international relations more democratic to empower the people to choose their own nation in a way and it and it goes horribly wrong in not just in the Greek Turkish context but as you know in many other European regions as well but it's not just that but it you know because it escalates to this full-blown three-year war ending with you know the transfer of I think over 1.5 million people across the Aegean Sea because of that it becomes itself a driver for transformation of the international order in one way it establishes ethnic violence and forced population transfer so it establishes these ideas as acceptable means to revise and stabilize the international order and at the same time create this blueprint that I mentioned at the beginning of the presentation where you know both in times of ideas but also in very practical terms not just for the aggressive revisionist forces but as you can see at the end of the second work were also for the Allied side a way of resolving territorial conflicts of making sure to stabilize national borders by Michelle mentioned this infamous quote from Lord Curzon by unmixing populations and I would say that this marks if you like the if not the end of the first world war it's almost the beginning of the end of the peace that follow the first world war thank you very much thank you very much Volker these were two very interesting complementary presentations and as Mirna is so central in the Greek collective cultural memory with in history as well and it's very interesting to see it being central also at the global level and Michelle's paper I think has a very strong argument about looking offering a different periodization of the first world war and putting Smirna at the end of that war and so she urges and she convinces us I think that this is the time when the world war should be when the end of the world war one should be seen by the European historians of course for Greek historians at least that is the case indeed this is quite it's a question for Michelle and probably it comes from my own background of looking at the second world war and one of the things Michelle said is that the Smirna fire means really represents the end of Britain's ambitions to extend its influence in that region and I was wondering whether she has anything to say about church's ambition to occupy some of the Greek islands in 1943 well Greek yeah Greek islands Samos Leros and no one agreed with him but that was his little extra plan which of course failed and so we didn't see the continuation I would love to hear any comments on that and I very much liked Volcker's argument about the fire and how it started and well why it happened in the first place and it bypasses the really one-sided perspectives that we're used to and I think it will be picked up in many future works and it's this combination of micro and micro approaches that really seems very very fruitful and it shows how a fluid situation that could have end up in many different ways ends up in the concept of ethnic unmixing at the end again this is both presenters talk to us about the global ramifications of what happened in Smirna in the sense that you know this solution of the unmixing of population was implemented in the future in a way it allowed governments to implement it in the future and I would like to hear a couple of cases if you can present them where you know the unmixing of populations actually while it's happening probably by diplomats do they refer back to 1922 and Smirna do they make the explicit connection I think I'll leave it to that if you can respond and then we can take further questions would Michelle like to start sure excuse me thank you for that no I don't think it's the end of British ambitions are in and around Greece I think it I think it shifts in this sort of way I mean the British encourage the invasion they do I mean in many ways that are that echo today in how how the West encourages certain kinds of military actions by not getting their hands dirty while not getting their hands dirty so I don't think it's the end by any point by any point I think if in some ways it it creates a different kind of set of connections that that are remade in the post in the post war period what my break is is with the 19th century that Gladstone in liberalism is what is breaking in 22 that idea of those kinds of kinship connections I think we finally get the sort of death of that liberal ideal of vision in 22 not the military incursions I think it is remade in that moment so so absolutely I think there's a new way of thinking about Greece and thinking about Ottoman Christians I think and as the Orthodox Christians in particular there becomes a new one kind of way of thinking of that in the 20s and 30s as the refugee crisis gets worse so I think that's important someone in the chat had said asked about is it time at the end of Lloyd George I think absolutely we could have to think about we focus so much on that military disaster in the late September early October but I don't think we've understood the effects of what Smyrna represented in the breaking of that coalition of the disputes between person and Lloyd George and and I think that if we think about Smyrna as an endpoint not the endpoint of World War I want to be clear but as an endpoint we often we can actually then think about the diplomatic humanitarian together and I think that's really important to understand this war through those two I think complementary lenses and if we understand Smyrna and we've read it against military actions like Chanak I think we get a more complex view of what's going on at the end of this war and and why you could use a phrase like the unmixing of populations at a peace conference as as a guiding force right it's not simply you get this land you get this land but who gets the people like who's responsible for the people and I think that we have sort of missed that when we talk often about the end of the war and particularly in the Middle East we're doing much better job when we talk about the end of the war in Western Europe but for some reason we're reluctant to think about that connection between the civilian and the humanitarian and the military that comes together at the peace conferences so I think you're absolutely right I don't know about explicit connections people don't refer back to Smyrna I think in a lot of ways after 48 I think in a lot of ways Smyrna becomes this forgotten a chapter this forgotten story because it is such a tragedy except for of course in nationalist story-ographers like to breathe and I think that rediscovering and rethinking Smyrna and resituating I'm like both Smyrna and I are doing I think offers a wider lens and I think it's worth rethinking the war much as long as Western as historians of Western Europe at the end of the war have done in those same in the long those same veins I think it'll be really productive so thank you for those questions. Thank you very much for the answers Volker. I'm sorry I didn't catch your should I answer the same question so did you have a separate one there was just a short break in my connection I think. Okay I'm basically I think for you the question was whether the unmixing of populations that came with Smyrna is it mentioned in the future in specific case studies have you come across it being mentioned explicitly making the connection to it? I know that it has been mentioned and that it was used in in in in subsequent cases but as I haven't worked on you know the later 1920s and 1930s maybe some other people would be better placed I mean I know it played an important role later on in you know the 1940s and that you know this idea of moving populations rather than borders which for me really is the main difference between the first world war the settlements after the first world war and the settlements after the second world war I know that it that it is picked up as kind of a positive idea also in the sense of international law but I couldn't really you know kind of pinpoint and and I think yeah someone mentioned Matthew Frank's book yeah so I think I reference a couple of a couple of books in in in my paper that mention the you know that that as a blueprint but it I mean it would be really interesting actually as a research project to trace the impact of the Luzan agreement on international law on international politics and forced migration more generally and maybe some people have already done this and I'm not aware of it but yeah I mean it certainly played an important role yeah thank you very much and as you say Antonio Ferrara mentioned yes it is mentioned explicitly in a number of cases and the floor is open to um questions any questions so Michael you can guess that then yeah I'm doing the wrong I'm just with great interest to the two presentations not least because I have a book coming out in the next week about the the subject in fact it's a very old book I wrote it 50 years ago and but the publisher is doing a reprint and so it's a sort of tricked down memory leg and I learnt a lot from the two presentations because if I could just make one or two observations arising from first of all about Lloyd George and British side then I think we need to remember that from pretty early in this story Lloyd George's position and his coalition government were considerably weakened as compared with the time of the First World War so when the decision was made in May 1919 to authorize the Greeks to occupy Smyrna and its hinterland it already should have seemed to those who were following events that this was a dangerous decision and indeed it did seem so not least to the military advisors of Lloyd George and the American delegation and the French also so it wasn't that there weren't warnings because the world but they were ignored and if you look at the actual decision to let the Greeks loose on Asia Minor and Smyrna it was taken in the most amateurish and almost frivolous way by three men President Wilson, Colonel Sir Lloyd George taking advantage of the absence of the Italian Orlando who walked out of the Paris Peace Conference in a half because of the fume question and it was taken by the three remaining members of the Council of Four without I would say two consideration so in a way when you look at Smyrna as we have been and what happened in 1922 you need to look further back to see why it happened and to ask the question whether anything else could have been done you may even need to look back even further because it all started in 1915 with the offer of territorial compensation in Asia Minor by Sir Edward Gregg to Venezuela as Prime Minister at that time so that's just one not exactly brand of observation may I pick up on that or exactly should we move it a bit forward and at that time we're just stopping there was the offer of or rather discussion on Constantinople that Venezuela was kind of rejected right so at least on the Greek side there's an active discussion about you know why the Constantinople would make more sense yeah he is a loach to have said I'm the only Greek who could say no to Constantinople exactly as he did say yes he did he did and then we move on to the you know the kind of separate arguments for the population measurements et cetera may I just explore another way and thank you for both presentations excellent papers and I learned a lot I'm interested in questions and solutions national questions the way people frame solutions so as I'm sharing for you know so what's interesting to me and just to expand on some of the points made in the Greek space we have the end of I said you know overall we have the end of the eastern question we had a formal solution that comes into kind of bring an end to that and then there's a question in Britain I suppose we have an end what might I even of a certain sign of Victorian liberalism and liberty that takes us to the principle of fashionality but that also takes you back to Wilson because there's a lot of work basically I was reading a book about this that essentially we still bought some determination is according to this so we are in Victorian land territory so a turning point for Britain could be that another element I just want to throw in I don't have that specific I have wasn't a big question for for good but another element the principle of nationality takes me to you know yeah separate and mixed populations as a new instrument to protect them and this is what I would say if I correctly make heaven that it is a success story it becomes a success story in certain at least liberal circles liberal circles in Britain and elsewhere the population exchange what comes after the sun because it is seen as something that or as well as an if you may measure that nonetheless produces order and stability and I would argue that this is potentially the kind of objects of dynamics that we find in the 19th century before the war and even during the war when people think or observe the thing about Macedonia greed there are ideas that circulate in the local level micro level on how to resolve tension by disambigating populations essentially by moving populations there are ideas in the read about setting up banks in Asia Minor where they can spend this can actually you know go and they would have their you know carry that their welfare and so this is just a kind of a side of the document one other point and then the question for the math thing the other point and interesting transparency here is and I think there's a bit of work on that on how Zionists are looking into Macedonia and their settlement refugees there as an experience or an experiment in central Colombia is something that will potentially be of use in what happens in Palestine so I think that's another interesting dimension one can think of when we talk about this dynamics and the final question was specific question to focus if you I know you know it's a working progress so you probably may not have yet time to look into this I'm wondering if you have thoughts on depictions about you know Smyrna or you know from memory you know from Western Germans or others after the fire you know if that fits into the microscope you know how people write or those journalists of region about Smyrna the virus that makes sense so thanks so could the two presenters respond if they managed to hear the question because I could not very well I'll just see go ahead Volker you had a specific question I'll chime in later go ahead yeah I didn't I didn't get it I got maybe 50% of it but if someone could and you hear me now okay yeah more or less yeah oh okay so my question is if you come across when you're working with depictions of Smyrna after the fire you know kind of people writing about Smyrna that makes sense you know how do they yeah okay fine that was okay well I'll just say that I agree that the Victorians are a long time dying so they cast a very long shadow over the war and liberal ideals and I mean liberal with the capital L in the in that sense that you really do have to look I agree with the first question you do have to look backwards to understand to make any sense of this policy in 1919 which continues through to 23 you really have to understand what's going on with the eastern question under Gladstone in the in the 19th century so so yes I I appreciate that point and I think you're absolutely right I'd like to raise two points first is there is a great deal of discussion of Smyrna immediately it's Mustafa Kamal's economic conference and is here right away you don't have to wait very long and his conference is there just by the way to say that it's not just a British show it's a French and Italian show as well and what he wants to do is to say that he's not going to be a Bolshevik he's going to run a capitalist economy open to business on the part of British French and Italian banks especially French banks who are deeply embedded in the in the utilities and electricity and and transportation industries so there's there's an immediate discussion about Yizmir about Smyrna and which is fundamental and at the moment when Lozan breaks down what happens Mustafa Yizmet goes back to get the grand national status approval and he gives to Mustafa Kamal a later editor a present which is the wedding ring for his immediate marriage and it happens in Yizmir they're they're all talking about this is the end of the imperial moment in Anatolia so I think Yizmir is actually the beginning of something right away which is the construction of the position of the new republic of Turkey not even a better republic is coming without a caliph that's coming to where they put more Turkey positions itself between the western patras ours and Russia and so the Yizmir I think he is and when you put it in the way you did Professor Yizmir makes perfect sense as you would as a British historian but I think there are other games going on in which Yizmir Smyrna are very very clearly assembled right away that the war is over and to a degree the old imperial order cannot be cannot be revived and I think in some ways there's a there's a missing link excuse me can I interrupt you so that our speaker can give an answer and there are other questions and people who are waiting for those Michelle would you like to give an answer well if I understood what you were saying that seeing Smyrna or Yizmir as a beginning point I think that's brilliant of course yeah of course it is an end point because when you but what's so shocking is how much the imperial story that that you're talking about ending in 23 is so so animating throughout the war that these that this war of empires the Ottoman empire is not the sort of the sick man of Europe in this war they are a belligerent who sees that they are going to reconstruct a new kind of empire and they're all fighting all these empires the British and the French Empire are fighting over this territory and so this idea that you're reconstructing a a new secular Turkish state I think in some ways is a bit of window dressing because what's happening during the war is an attempt to reimagine an Ottoman empire in an age where empire itself has become rethought and you have to re jigger it you have the mandate system which kind of looks like empire but I think if we look at the Kamalists and what they're doing they aren't simply we can't take them at face value they're not simply reconstructing a a a a secular capitalist society that's not Bolshevik they are still inheritors of an of an imperial order that the British and the French are very much playing they're playing the very same game is my point so yes I think we can see it as a beginning point but we also have to see it within the context of a war between empires and that Kamal is speaking a language that is also very much an imperial language that the British and the French are appropriating they're all they're they're trying to reconstruct this new imperial order which ostensibly looks like nation building but still draws for its very cool at its very core this imperial idea that then becomes manifest in the mandate system and and I would even say the vestiges of the Ottoman empire are seen in Kamalist Republic as well but that goes beyond my my study but yeah that's absolutely right thank you thank you very so much Michelle next question is by Vesel and then we have a question by sorry by Panagiotis Karagounis and then by Zeynep go ahead thank you thank you for this wonderful panel which is very insightful and also the whole organization really honored to be here I don't know whether this will be a question exactly but I just wanted to bring in a couple of things to compliment that are compliment points that are made from the Turkish or Ottoman side and in itself you know this Ottoman slash Turkish needs a monograph with song you know regarding this ideological shift from 1919 to 1922 you know of course the shorthand reference to the let's say the guys in Ankara and their armies are the Turkish nationalists were were they or how many of them were to what degree what sort of Turkey they envisaged and the the the panelists of course had looked to this but I think it's really really fascinating to read the the parliamentary debates actually in Ankara and you know which sometimes roll around this identity and you know what is to come so I put this aside I mean that's something to discuss maybe later on and I agree with Professor Winter and Professor Tucson you know regarding this let's say war and we know that war you know makes nations for better or worse but also you know creates ideologies or shifts ideologies alters so I think that's something we see in Anatolia in many levels by the way so so that's one quick note and another note is I guess I wholeheartedly agree with you know the new chronology that we need to understand the first world war you know in Turkey it's the safar bellik the demobilization is 10 year war it never ended actually I mean and this is something we hear from all our elders of course it's not maybe something and I'm sure you have similar things the case for the Greeks you know who've been many of their soldiers have been under arms since the Balkan wars right I mean when when we you know when when the August 1922 comes so just one quick thing about the you know end of the war and the Ottoman responses and it's really fruitful to see actually check the internal communiques within the Ottoman state apparatus just after the signing of the mudros armistice the very nature of it it's a quick thing I mean it happens quickly Ralph Way who signs a newly appointed minister of navy of the Ottoman government signs it comes back gives a press conference in Istanbul just saying that we won't be seeing any allied troops in Istanbul just a day after the signing of maybe two saying you know this will be the best deal we could get also you know I sort of trust the British they are decent they are honorable enemies and well things work differently well this is one level but then you know you look at the communiques between the army commanders on the field Mustafa Kemal Ali San Sabiz who are holding the Iraqi and Syrian thought around this time they all allude to the this dreadful article seven right which says basically allies can occupy anywhere they see fit essentially and we sort of see well then the demobilization starts but then you know it really didn't start because again the actions of these officers I think my point here is that yes I mean the war really doesn't end in October and not immediately and I think we should also look what is happening before like 1922 and the diplomatic contacts and all the memorandas submitted by both Ankara and Istanbul governments actually which are not the same again during this time and maybe so the mudros I mentioned yeah and one last thing about you know this shift to empire to republic just to build on or you know compliment what professor Winters said about you know what's what's the significance of you know burning of Semirna and you know what is new to come awesome gündüz who was the chief of staff of the western front in the Turkish war of national liberation well independence whatever you name it Greek Turkish war he he remembers in his memoirs he recounts in his memoirs talking to a someone who is of his similar rank equal rank without giving any name saying oh now you know we retook ismir semirna now we can you know free the sultan free rebuild the Ottoman empire and awesome John gündüz just says like that's gone like Mustafa Kemal will not give that like we took ismir you're saying yourself so I hope this wasn't a long-winded comment thank you very much again and thank you more about these topics tomorrow thank you very much and I think we'll also like to go through Panayioti's question and then maybe our two presenters can give it an answer and thanks for the two interesting papers and he likes a doctor approach from macro to micro and vice versa regarding the micro level have both speakers seen any references to disruptions on micro geographers and everyday lives I mean the fire disrupted the special organization and everyday life of many people that lived in different mahala but in close proximity did they trace any emotions expressed even mediated by common people due to the fire of smirna what kind of perceptions of this natural disaster were emerged within the common people of smirna I pass on to Volker and michelle whereas I I didn't particularly study this aspect but I suppose it must have been really traumatic that that you know it's it's just I suppose what you what you would expect that this is a great tragedy for the people who lose family members and friends and lose their home essentially so but I wouldn't I wouldn't be able to comment on the on the geographical aspect thank you one of the things that's important to remember about smirna is that smirna felt protected the minorities there hadn't been touched during the Armenian genocide and during that I mean okay there maybe I'm overstating it but they certainly were not subjected to the deportations and to the kinds of pressures that other minorities were and there was a sense that some of the folks in smirna felt like they had kind of that that maybe this was going to be okay and the true tragedy of smirna I think in a lot of ways is that it is one of the most dramatic destructions of a multi-ethnic multi religious empire in this dramatic form because it had been happening in pockets during the genocide and during deportations from different areas but smirna itself was was was seen to have sort of escaped all of that it was a cosmopolitan it was a port city I mean it had a great trade it was really going to be the center of sort of renewal and so I think the tragedy of smirna also needs to be taken from that sort of what how how because refugees were coming into smirna for protection because it was seen as a safe place I shouldn't say refugees but but communities that could leave people who could leave mostly of a wealthier middle merchant class could leave and I really love this question because one of the things we can do and I think we should do is to listen to the refugee voices and map the I've been trying to map those voices literally map them on using smart GIS technologies and what is so amazing is to see how people respond to these strategies by moving to the next town and hoping they can go home and moving and the way refugee movement is really shaped by this hope that one day this war will be over they're not trying to leave the Ottoman Empire on their own accord but rather they're waiting for people to waiting for this to all calm down and just like the pogroms of the 19th century they're going to be able to go home and the true tragedy of smirna is it really says this is not your home anymore and I think for refugees who are forced to leave and who are watching and waiting the burning of smirna is that sort of you can't and when the expulsion order comes in 1930 for Christian minorities but they can't be in Ottoman Turk and can't be in Turkey anymore that's truly like the mark of what what smirna represented so I think it's really important we hear their stories because it does show us what that experience was like particularly for a community that had remained relatively untouched during the war the early part of the war thank you very much I think we have two more questions and I'd like to take them both and I would like everybody to be really concise say and then Laura Robson um actually mine also gonna be I'll try to be very brief I also have a four-year-old at home so it's very difficult to you know contribute um uh following is a very sad point actually um I'll also take a little bit from the Turkish Ottoman perspective actually there were previous examples of using fire as a way of removing um undesired populations 1916 Ankara fire was one of those and then especially impetus that was used very effectively from 1916 onwards um and I think here also the I mean I know that you know the the both papers they approach it from a different angle but the persona of um Nurettin Sakalli Nurettin Pasha who was seen as the person who I carried out this the last mission from the you know part of the independence movement actually was quite an interesting person who also who had just carried out a massacre against Pontic Greeks and the Kurds and and he was kind of an representing more pro-Ottoman and pro-Islamist clique within the within the in national movement but he was also um in a way um person that could do pretty radical stuff so in that respect I think thinking of these old you know arson you know this whole fire seminar fire is a very central event obviously is very important but I I think it's also can be helpful to put it it's within the precedence and how that had been actually quite effectively used at micro level and then eventually perhaps proved most fruitful in the case of Simirna so um thank you thank you very much Laura please can we have her question yeah um I so I have lots of thoughts about I'll keep it to one um which is but I think I would push back a little bit against this understanding of the end of the Paris order in Smyrna because actually I mean Smyrna is not even close to being the first example of ethnic expulsions in the interest of state building you know we have it through the Balkans the expulsion of Muslims from places like Serbia and Bulgaria in the 19th century which are also kind of you know undertaken under the umbrella of imperial politics and I would