David Lloyd George

Wit the growing tendency to regard General Douglas Haig's generalship and its efficiency as an ineffective and cruel one, the aim was to analyse and summarise historian AJP Taylor's view that he presents in his work "The First World War". He believes that the blame lies with all the military generals and political leaders involved as well and therefore relieves Haig of much of that blame throughout the book.

By the early summer of 1921, the Irish difficulties, which had disrupted and embarrassed the British Empire for many years, reached a head.  Although Lloyd George had consistently favored Home Rule for Ireland, he had never advocated Home Rule at the expense of the British Empire.  His policy of making the Conservatives party to his Irish policies was the eventual key to his success, but it was also the cause of his seeming lack of direction on the issue.

In the first decade of the twentieth century, a rising generation of British colonial administrators profoundly altered British usage of American history in imperial debates. In the process, they influenced both South African history and wider British imperial thought. Prior usage of the Revolution and Early Republic in such debates focused on the United States as a cautionary tale, warning against future ‘lost colonies’. Aided by the publication of F.S. Oliver’s Alexander Hamilton (1906), administrators in South Africa used Hamilton and George Washington, the Federalist Papers, and the drafting of the Constitution as an Anglo-exceptionalist model of modern self-government. In doing so they applied the lessons of the Early Republic to South Africa, thereby contributing to the formation of the Union of 1910. They then brought their reconception of the United States, and their belief in the need for ‘imperial federation’, back to the metropole. There they fostered growing diplomatic ties with the U.S. while recasting British political history in-light-of the example of American federation. This process of inter-imperial exchange culminated shortly after the signing of the Treaty of Versailles when they publicly presented the Boer Generals Botha and Smuts as Washington and Hamilton reborn in the Round Table journal.

Μια εξιστόρηση για τη βιομηχανία των στρατιωτικών εξοπλισμών (εμπόριο όπλων), τον Α΄ Παγκόσμιο Πόλεμο, τη Μικρασιατική εκστρατεία και τον διεθνή ανταγωνισμό για τον έλεγχο των πετρελαϊκών κοιτασμάτων μέσα από τη διερεύνηση της δράσης ενός κοσμοπολίτη έλληνα˙ του Βασίλη Ζαχάρωφ. Αυτά είναι κυρίως τα θέματα στα οποία εστιάζει η προκείμενη έρευνα.

Η παρούσα μελέτη αποτέλεσε διπλωματική εργασία η οποία εκπονήθηκε από τον συγγραφέα στα πλαίσια του Προγράμματος Μεταπτυχιακών Σπουδών «Πολιτική Επιστήμη και Ιστορία» του Παντείου Πανεπιστημίου Κοινωνικών και Πολιτικών Επιστημών. 
Επιβλέπων καθηγητής της εργασίας ήταν ο κύριος Προκόπης Παπαστράτης, ενώ τη σύνθεση της εξεταστικής επιτροπής συμπλήρωσαν οι καθηγητές κ.κ. Στέφανος Παπαγεωργίου και Θανάσης Καλαφάτης.

Σημειώνεται ότι γνώμες και απόψεις που περιλαμβάνονται στο κείμενο δεν εκπροσωπούν απαραίτητα και αυτές του ερευνητή.

Μια διερεύνηση γύρω από την Ειρηνευτική Διάσκεψη των Παρισίων που ακολούθησε το τέλος του Α΄ Παγκοσμίου Πολέμου.

Η παρούσα μελέτη πραγματοποιήθηκε στα πλαίσια του προπτυχιακού προγράμματος σπουδών «Πολιτική Επιστήμη και Ιστορία» του Παντείου Πανεπιστημίου Πολιτικών και Κοινωνικών Επιστημών.

"...la contestación de Lloyd George a la carta de lord Lansdowne y a los partidarios de un pacto de paz, ha sido un nuevo grito de guerra. El primer ministro pide más hombres, nuevos ejércitos, más barcos, más perseverancia, todos los elementos indispensables para seguir luchando. Si las insinuaciones de los pacifistas indicaban desfallecimiento, he aquí el antídoto: se exigen del país nuevos sacrificios para reconfortarle"

The decline of the governing Liberal Party from a 400-seat position of electoral dominance in 1906 to a 40-seat political also-ran, eighteen years later, has emerged as a topic rich in historical controversy. Published throughout several decades, copious historical literature has presented a variety of plausible conflicting interpretations many of which have been based upon sound empirical evidence. Geoffrey Searle’s work  is positioned as a guide through various historical texts that address the issue as he examines and critiques the main disintegration theories presented and puts forward his own explanation as a conclusion. Within this review of his work, Searle’s methodological techniques are appraised - in particular: his selection and handling of sources, the validity of his decisions for inclusion or omission, the cogency of his concluding argument and the strength of his historiography.

Most of the problems in the Middle East today can be traced to World War One and the settlement imposed by the victors, in particular, the British and French empires in the secret Sykes-Picot treaty. Britain also made an alliance with the Hashemite family from Saudi Arabia rather than their fundamentalist Wahhabi rivals, the House of Saud that created the country of Saudi Arabia after the war. The British goal was not merely to defeat the Ottomans (who were allied with Germany and Austria-Hungary), but to protect the oil resources in the Persian Gulf and the Suez Canal, which was the transportation link to their prized colony of India. Britain also wanted to check the designs of France in Palestine and Syria that date back to the Crusades. After the World War One, the British rewarded their Hashemite allies by creating the countries Transjordan and Syria, and then Iraq when King Abdullah was deposed in Syria.

These artificially created countries did conform to the principles of self-determination and open-treaties, openly-made championed by President Woodrow Wilson in his Fourteen Points and at the Peace Conference in Versailles. With British troops and its Arab allies on the ground and the United States having entering the war late and not yet being the world power it was to become, President Wilson had limited influence to affect the outcome, and even less after the United States Senate refused to ratify the Treaty of Versailles or to join the League of Nations. Thus, the British created countries, such as Iraq that combined two Arab sects (Shiite and Sunni) and one non-Arab group (the Kurds); and Lebanon that combined Maronite Christian, Druze, and Shiite Arabs; put in power Hashemite rulers from Arabia (Feisal in Transjordan and Abdullah in Iraq) over populations that were Arab, but not Arabian (that is, from the Arabian Peninsula); and (as we shall see in the next chapter) partitioned Palestine in an effort to create a “Jewish homeland” in a land that was holy to three religions (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam) and internationalized the city of Jerusalem, also holy to these three religions. It is in terms of empire and ethnicity, not the fallacious concept of the War on Terror, that we need to understand these issues.

British strategy during the Asquith coalition 1915-16 is usually described as being a battle between ideological `voluntarists’ and `compulsionists’, with the latter prevailing as Lloyd George came to power. In fact the view held by the leading voluntarist, the chancellor of the exchequer, McKenna, was not predicated on theory but on efficiency. Moreover, such were the consequences of his warnings being ignored, Britain found itself by 1917 in a position he had predicted, being forced into employing the policies he had advocated. The difference was that by then it was not out of choice.

This paper examines the place of conscription in British political history, the liberal tradition of hostility toward forcing people to undertake military service, something often denounced by Liberals as 'Continental Despotism', the hallmark of despotic regimes in Napoleonic France or Bismarckian Germany. The paper traces the softening of this hostility as Liberal Imperialists came to dominate over Gladstonians and Radicals in  the Asquith government.

Durante las conversaciones en Versalles para cerrar el ciclo de la Gran Guerra Europea la delegación francesa impone su posición de hacer recaer todo el costo de la guerra sobre Alemania, buscando evitar que se volviera a levantar, y generando un deseo de revancha entre los germanos.

The Imperial Conference was the only forum that allowed the Dominion Prime Ministers of Australia, Canada, South Africa, and New Zealand to question the British government on matters of Imperial foreign and defense policy. Great Britain was solely responsible for formulating the foreign and defense policy for its entire empire. It should be noted that Britain's relations with its Dominions in the post-1919 period changed due to the important contribution of the latter to the empire in the 1914-18 war. The Dominions wanted to be involved in the formulation of Imperial foreign and defense policy and consulted on matters which affected their vital interests.

‘Squiff’, ‘Lliar George’, and ‘The McKennae’: the unpersuasive politics of personality in the Asquith Coalition, 1915-16’, in Julie Gottlieb and Richard Toye (eds.), Making Reputations: Power, Persuasion and the Individual in Modern British Politics (London, I. B. Tauris, 2005), pp. 29-42.

That purpose built agglomeration of crises, the Asquith Coalition, 1915 1916, was wracked by two in particular.  The first concerned the adoption of military conscription; the second resulted from short term intrigue but reflected wider dissatisfaction with the conduct of the war.  The crisis of December 1915 was successfully negotiated, with only the loss of one Cabinet minister and immeasurable goodwill.  The crisis of December 1916 was of a much shorter duration and destroyed the Government.  December 1915 concerned a matter of principle subsumed by circumstance into expediency; December 1916 combined an incompatibility of personnel with a signal divergence of political orientation.  A participant neglected by history was central to each.  By remaining in the Cabinet in December 1915, Reginald McKenna enabled the Government to continue in an unreconstructed form for a further year; by emboldening the Prime Minister’s resistance to change in December 1916, he ensured the destruction of the ministry, the accession of Lloyd George, and the gelding of the Liberal Party.  Both crises have been examined exhaustively, though never comparatively, and never with the Asquith McKenna correspondence.

Oren Kessler reveals the secret 1937 testimony given by David Lloyd George to the Palestine Royal Commission. Lloyd George had been prime minister during the 1917 Balfour Declaration, and had remained an unswerving Zionist ever since. He was one of nearly 60 witnesses whom the panel heard in private, and whose testimonies have been kept secret for eight decades. His appears here for the first time; it depicts a boisterous, at times embittered septuagenarian defending the Balfour Declaration on grounds of wartime strategy, and the need to appeal to worldwide Jewry, ‘a dangerous people to quarrel with,’ and ‘a very subtle race.’ Lloyd George was at once ‘Judeophobe and philo-Semite, militarist and appeaser, Zionist champion and Hitler enthusiast’ argues Kessler, author of Fire Before Dawn: The First Palestinian Revolt and the Struggle for the Holy Land, forthcoming from Rowman & Littlefield.

Sumario: 1. Pidiendo tropas – 2. Una sublevación – 3. El atentado contra Von Eicchorn – 4. El Vorwaerts – 5. Los obreros de la Krupp – 6. La situación de Ucrania – 7. La iglesia ucraniana – 8. El asesinato de Eichhorn – 9. Los alemanes en Rusia – 10. El discurso de Lloyd George – 11. Ludendorff y Hindenburg explican la retirada – 12.  El discurso de Lloyd George – 13. Los últimos momentos del zar – 14. De la muerte del zar – 15. La intervención en Murmansk  - 16. Discurso de Lloyd George – 17. Discurso de Mr. Balfour – 18. Impresión  en Alemania – 19.La prensa alemana – 20. Las mujeres en Múnich – 21. El gabinete imperial de guerra – 22. Alarmistas y pacifistas – 23. La situación en Rusia – 24. La situación en Alemania – 25. La retirada alemana – 26. La marina después de la guerra – 27. La actividad de la mujer – 28. La causa de Alemania – 29. Reconocimiento rechazado – 30. Los oficiales prisioneros

SUMARIO: 1. LA TRAGEDIA DE KALUSZ – 2. LA GRAVEDAD DEL MOMENTO ACTUAL – 3. EL MENSAJE DE WILSON – 4. ORLANDO EN PARIS – 5. PROTECCIÓN DE PRISIONEROS I – 6. CÓMO SE INICIÓ LA PAZ – 7. LA CONQUISTA DE JERUSALÉN – 8. EL DISCURSO DE LLOYD GEORGE – 9.LA CUESTIÓN DEL TONELAJE – 10. PATRIOTISMO Y BOLOISMO – 11.  PROTECCIÓN DE PRISIONEROS II – 12. LA PAZ CON RUSIA – 13. DIVAGACIONES SOBRE LOS HEROES Y EL HEROISMO – 14. UCRANIA

This thesis considers how attitudes shaped British, French, and American policy regarding the rebirth of Poland. From the outbreak of war in 1914 to the plebiscite in Upper Silesia in 1921, Allied and American policy-makers first considered whether Poland should be an independent state and then where its borders should be. As they did this, they developed

MARCH 1922

SUMMARY: 1. [GERMAN] WAR CRIMINALS – 2. [RUSSIAN] WORKERS’ REVOLT – 3. PROTECTORATE NOW TERMINATED – 4. MODERN YOUNG WOMEN – 5. PROBLEMS OF THE PACIFIC – 6. SCHACKLETON’S BURIAL– 7. FUTURE OF EGYPT – 8. THE INTERNATIONAL CORPORATION – 9. BRITISH PARLIAMENT – 10. JAPAN AND SHANTUNG – 11. AMERICA’S NAVY – 12. MEMORY OF SHACKLETON – 13. THE GOLD STANDARD – 14. U.S AND COLOMBIA – 15. WOMEN MEDICAL STUDENTS – 16. THE COALITION SPLIT – 17. IRELAND’S TROUBLE – 18. TWENTY – FOUR PEERESSES TO SEAT – 19. [BRITISH] POLITICAL CRISIS – 20. RUSSIANS DEPOSIT MONEY IN DENMARK – 21. AN EMPIRE’S CRISIS – 22. CAN THE EGYPTIANS GOVERN THEMSELVES? – 23. ITALIAN VERSUS CROATS – 24. JAPAN AS BOGEY – 25. [FRENCH] TRADE WITH RUSSIA – 26. GENOA CONFERENCE – 27. THE CRIMES OF PASSION – 28. GERMAN AIRCRAFT – 29. CONSERVATIVES’ SUPPORT – 30. BRITISH TO HELP PALESTINE – 31. SECOND CONFERENCE AIM OF LLOYD GEORGE – 32. CONCENTRATION PF BOLSHEVIK FORCES – 33. INDIAN UNREST – 34. DEMONSTRATION OF VEILED WOMEN – 35. MONTEGU’S MISTAKE – 36. INDIAN CONGRESS URGES PEOPLE TO BE PEACEFUL – 37. AMERICA TO STAND FIRM TO COLLECT RHINE DEBT – 38. GERMAN REPARATIONS – 39. CONSERVATIVES AND UNIONISTS – 40. INDIA AND THE NEAR EAST – 41. MR MONTAGU’S EXPLAINATION – 42. GENOA CONFERENCE – 43. THE PACIFIC TREATY – 44. BRITISH WAVE OF CRIME – 45. LLOYD GEORGE IS EXPECTED TO RESIGN AFTER PASSAGE OF THE IRISH TREATY – 46. JAPANESE DIPLOMACY – 47. PACIFIC TREATY DEBATE – 48. THE INDIAN TELEGRAM – 49. FRENCH ATTACK ON BRITAIN – 50. GANDHI’S ARREST INFLAMES EAST AFRICAN INDIANS – 51. CAN’T AGREE ON POLITICS, DIVORCE HELD JUSTIFIED – 52. LORD CURZON REPLIES – 53. RESTORING ORDER ON BELFAST – 54. THE UNIONIST PARTY – 55. TROOPS FIRE UPON EAST AFRICAN MOB – 56. INDIAN RIOT AREA QUIET – 57. U.S SHOULD INSIST ARMY BILL BE PAID, SENATORS DECLARE – 58. BALFOUR ADMITS AMERICA’S CLAIM – 59. FRENCH REGRET DEBT EPISODE – 60. PACIFIC TREATY – 61. PREPARATIONS FOR WAR – 62. RUSSIA’S ARMY – 63. BRITAIN AND AMERICA – 64. THE ‘WEE FREE’ POLICY – 65. GERMAN HATE  66. GANDHI’S SENTENCE – 67. TYPHUS RAMPANT IN RUSSIA – 68. GENOA CONFERENCE – 69. U.S REPARATIONS – 70. HORATIO BOTTOMLEY – 71. BRITISH ARMY GOVERNMENT PROPOSALS – 72. THE ALLIED BILL – 73. GERMAN REPARATIONS – 74. CHARLES HAS HIGH FEVER – 75. BAKER ASSAILS CONGRESS ON ARMY ECONOMIC PLAN – 76. REPARATION DEMANDS – 77. AMERICA’S CLAIM – 78. THE GENOA CONFERENCE -79. RUSSIA FEARS SPRING WILL BRING PESTILENCE – 80. LEAGUE UNLIKELY TO AID AT GENOA – 81. SOVIET TO INSIST ON MORATORIUM FOR 20 YEARS – 82. PROHIBITIONISTS DEMAND CANADA ABSOLUTELY DRY – 83. LENIN IS BACK – 84. THE NAVAL TREATY – 85. THE POPE AND WOMEN – 86. THE REPARATION DEMANDS – 87. U.S NAVY IN THE PACIFIC – 88. BRITAIN AND GENOA – 89. GENOA CONFERENCE – 90. GERMAN REPARATIONS – 91. FATE OF ARMENIANS

The UK January 1910 general election was fought against a background unique in British history. A constitutional crisis had been caused by the House of Lords' rejection of the Budget, with the threat of the creation of many new Liberal peers to ensure its passage if it should be rejected a second time in the event of a Liberal victory at the polls. In addition, the Government was fighting to retain its position after the landslide victory of 1906. The size of the 1906 Liberal victory meant that a swing to the Unionist opposition was almost inevitable in 1910, meaning that any gains by the Liberals would be likely to be the result of local factors. Darlington in the North of England's County Durham was one of the seats which the Unionist had held in 1906 (albeit against a Labour Party candidate with Liberal support) but it is unlikely they could have foreseen their candidate's defeat. At first sight the Unionist candidate had all the advantages on his side. He was a member of the Pease family which had given the town its MPs since 1885. The family had supplied many MPs for surrounding constituencies, and had been involved in the development of much of the North East's industry, starting with the Stockton & Darlington Railway in 1825. The Pease family was based in Darlington and many in the town were either directly employed by them or owed their jobs to the industries the family had brought to the town. This is the background I. T. T Lincoln found when he arrived in Darlington as the Prospective Liberal Candidate. A most unlikely candidate who within nine months was the town's MP. Lincoln was a Hungarian Jew, still a national of that country when adopted as the candidate, with a past including such diverse occupations as journalism, religious preaching and evangelizing, and social researcher, and he was still only 30 years old. This dissertation provides an explanation of how Lincoln could defeat a sitting MP who seemed to have all the advantages on his side, including belonging to a party which made sweeping gains at that election. Chapter 1 summarizes Lincoln's life. Chapter 2 deals with the Pease family and its influence on Darlington's economic, social and political life. Chapter 3 deals with the election campaign, the result, and reactions to it. The concluding chapter tries to explain Lincoln's surprising victory.

Der Centenaire/Centennial/Centenary zum Endes des Ersten Weltkriegs (2018-2019) wird evaluiert. Friedensforschung zur 100jährigen Weltkriegsgeschichte. Bis heute sind Bücher und Medien geprägt von einer Geschichtsschreibung, in der wichtige Fakten und Geschehnisse ausgegrenzt sind. In der internationalen Kommission Aufa100 soll diese Geschichte aufgearbeitet und deren postkoloniale Folgen betrachtet werden. Weiterhin werden von ihr Impulse & Ansätze für die jeweiligen Erinnerungskulturen und mögliche Alternativen erarbeitet.

La chiave di volta su cui poggiava l’Impero britannico tra Otto e primo Novecento fu, dal punto di vista militare, l’egemonia navale della Royal Navy. Proprio grazie a una tale superiorità, Londra aveva la possibilità di controllare le vie di comunicazione con i propri territori oltremare sia in tempo di pace che di guerra. Di conseguenza, ciò costituiva un interesse vitale tanto per la Gran Bretagna quanto per l’intero sistema imperiale. Vista in quest’ottica, l’egemonia britannica acquisiva un profilo prettamente difensivo. Fu però la dimensione offensiva che ottenne maggiore rilevanza con lo scoppio della Grande Guerra, in particolare con la proclamazione del blocco navale ai danni della Germania e degli altri Imperi centrali.
Il blocco non coinvolgeva solo i Paesi belligeranti. Al di là dell’Atlantico, il ‘grande’ neutrale, gli Stati Uniti, protestò con vigore nei confronti di Londra. A dire di Washington, il blocco penalizzava non solo gli Imperi centrali ma anche coloro che, intenzionati a rimanere estranei al conflitto, vedevano le proprie economie colpite dall’impossibilità di commerciare con ‘tradizionali’ partner coinvolti nella guerra. La scelta della Gran Bretagna di mantenere in vigore il blocco nonostante le vibranti proteste americane non fu certo semplice tra il 1914 e il 1916. D’altro canto, gli Stati Uniti rappresentavano sia un cruciale fornitore di munizioni sia la principale fonte finanziaria per i britannici.
Nel 1917, l’ingresso in guerra di Washington, nonostante una solida cooperazione con Londra, ripropose quegli attriti di origine competitiva propri del passaggio di consegne tra un Paese, in questo caso gli Stati Uniti, in rapida ascesa sulla scena internazionale e un altro, la Gran Bretagna col suo Impero, in declino, quanto meno relativo. Il blocco navale aveva inoltre innescato un meccanismo competitivo tra la Royal Navy e la Marina americana, con la prima che si era eretta indiscutibilmente al di sopra della seconda a dispetto delle prescrizioni di Alfred Mahan, che solo pochi anni prima aveva proclamato la necessità di rendere la US Navy il principale simbolo della potenza statunitense sulla scena globale.
Per l’Impero britannico la sfida diplomatica maggiore giunse indubbiamente con la proclamazione dei Quattordici Punti di Wilson nel gennaio 1918. In particolare, fu il secondo principio, quello che affermava che la “libertà di navigazione per mare, fuori delle acque territoriali, così in pace come in guerra” dovesse essere “assoluta” a destare le maggiori preoccupazioni a Londra. La diatriba sull’interpretazione di tale principio fu motivo di costante dibattito nei rapporti tra Stati Uniti e Impero britannico per tutto il 1918 e oltre, tanto che nemmeno la Conferenza di pace riuscì a risolvere la questione.

British foreign policy examined Hungary’s role with respect to its effect on the European powerbalance: it judged Hungary favourably as long as it was part of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, but, as Hungarian separatist ambitions grew stronger, the country was treated as a threat. The paper looks at how the members of the British delegation at the Paris Peace Conference saw differently the way through which the maintenance of the above mentioned power balance could have been reached. Moreover, it is also scrutinised how various interest groups could exercise considerable impact on the outcome of the negotiations. On the one hand, Arthur Balfour, head of the British Foreign Office, thought that a long-term peace was possible only by strengthening the new, winner nation states, whose tasks were to hinder further German expansion towards the Balkans, and Bolshevism towards Europe. On the other hand, David Lloyd George, head of the British Cabinet, was on the opinion that only the extens...

This article outlines the creation of the first Armenian republic in May 1918 which survived for two years. The Armenians wanted self-determination within secure defined borders allowing them to chart their own independent future. The great powers made certain promises during the first world war to assist the Armenians to achieve their dream. However these promises were empty rhetoric as the great powers left Armenia to fend for itself against hostile neighbors in Kemalist Turkey and Bolshevik Russia in 1920. U.S President Woodrow Wilson sought an American mandate for Armenia which would have provided some protection for this small nation. However an obstructionist U.S Senate wasn't interested in becoming involved in Near Eastern affairs and pursued an isolationist foreign policy during the inter-war years. The newly established League of Nations lacked the resources to assist Armenia in her hour of crisis.

Esta sentencia la prenuncia Mr. Lloyd George en la Cámara de los Comunes con tono enfático, terminante, y la ajusta con repetidos martillazos del puño sobro el pupitre. Está debatiendo la Cámara diversas palpitantes cuestiones antes de la breve vacación: la huelga de mineros; las dificultades con que tropieza la industria y la vida nacional ante la falta de carbón; el modo de remediar la aflictiva situación de cerca de cinco millones de obreros sin trabajo; la situación de Irlanda. Por fin, separándose del candente horno de la política interior, las preguntas van directamente a la cuestión internacional y entonces el presidente del Consejo, con el asentimiento unánime de la Cámara, pronuncia unas palabras que son la manifestación más clara y más vigorosa que haya podido hacer un político aliado al tratar del barullo internacional, y a continuación dice estas palabras que glosamos, sencillas y verdaderas.

The UK January 1910 general election was fought against a background unique in British history. A constitutional crisis had been caused by the House of Lords' rejection of the Budget, with the threat of the creation of many new Liberal peers to ensure its passage if it should be rejected a second time in the event of a Liberal victory at the polls. In addition, the Government was fighting to retain its position after the landslide victory of 1906. The size of the 1906 Liberal victory meant that a swing to the Unionist opposition was almost inevitable in 1910, meaning that any gains by the Liberals would be likely to be the result of local factors. Darlington in the North of England's County Durham was one of the seats which the Unionist had held in 1906 (albeit against a Labour Party candidate with Liberal support) but it is unlikely they could have foreseen their candidate's defeat. At first sight the Unionist candidate had all the advantages on his side. He was a member of the Pease family which had given the town its MPs since 1885. The family had supplied many MPs for surrounding constituencies, and had been involved in the development of much of the North East's industry, starting with the Stockton & Darlington Railway in 1825. The Pease family was based in Darlington and many in the town were either directly employed by them or owed their jobs to the industries the family had brought to the town. This is the background I. T. T Lincoln found when he arrived in Darlington as the Prospective Liberal Candidate. A most unlikely candidate who within nine months was the town's MP. Lincoln was a Hungarian Jew, still a national of that country when adopted as the candidate, with a past including such diverse occupations as journalism, religious preaching and evangelizing, and social researcher, and he was still only 30 years old. This dissertation provides an explanation of how Lincoln could defeat a sitting MP who seemed to have all the advantages on his side, including belonging to a party which made sweeping gains at that election. Chapter 1 summarizes Lincoln's life. Chapter 2 deals with the Pease family and its influence on Darlington's economic, social and political life. Chapter 3 deals with the election campaign, the result, and reactions to it. The concluding chapter tries to explain Lincoln's surprising victory.

One of the most important questions at the 1919 Paris Peace Conference was what to do about the newly re‐created state of Poland. The Paris peacemakers realised the importance of the settlement, thanks in part to dire warnings about Poland's future, and the leaders spent much time discussing the territorial settlement. Yet discussions of this important question regularly strayed from debates about policy to incorporate understandings of Polish national character. In particular, the leaders of the so‐called Big Three, Britain, France, and the United States, connected expert opinion and the broader political landscape to stereotyped understandings of national character, among other factors. With reference to scholarship on stereotyping, this article analyses how developing attitudes on Polish national character became integrated into the complex settlement of Poland's borders. The peacemakers' decisions, which were a compromise between different points of view, reflected interconnected understandings of the Polish settlement.