A century ago, on 24 July 1923, the Lausanne Peace Treaty was signed on the banks of Lake Geneva between the Turkish delegates and representatives of the Allied Powers. With this treaty and its accompanying conventions, the Greater War came to an end, about 1,5 million Greeks and Turks were forcefully displaced and the borders of the Near and Middle East were largely drawn. In his lecture, Dr Ozan Ozavci is going to consider Lausanne from a longue durée perspective, embedding it into a broader and new history of the Eastern Question, which is known as one of the most dangerous, complicated and enduring issues of international politics in history. He will draw attention to continuities in Euro-Ottoman/Turkish relations from the late eighteenth century to 1923, and then up to present day, and ask if the Lausanne moment truly marked the end of the Eastern Question.
The talk will draw from his last book Dangerous Gifts: Imperialism, Security, and Civil Wars in the Levant, 1798-1864 (Oxford University Press, 2021) and his forthcoming co-edited volume They All Made Peace - What is Peace? The 1923 Lausanne Treaty and the New Imperial Order (Gingko, 2023).
Participants of the session are asked to read the introduction and chapter 7 (An Unusual Quest for Revenge: Civilization, Commerce, and Reform) of Ozan Ozavci’s Dangerous Gifts. The book is available in open access (link below).
The event is co-organized with the Interwar Histories Working Group.