British Approaches to the Territorial Settlement in Europe after the First World War

Recent developments have given fresh impetus to scholarly debates on such key concepts in international relations as sovereignty, territoriality, borders, and regional orders. In this context, it is particularly interesting to examine how these concepts were reinterpreted and instrumentalized during the post-First World War peace settlement, when questions of spatial organization, regional ordering, and the creation of new mechanisms of international governance became a par-ticular focus of attention for the victorious great powers, especially Great Britain. This article identifies the distinctive features of the British approach to the shaping of European borders after the First World War and examines how this approach was linked to British politicians’ views on ensuring stability and security across the continent as a whole. The first section analyses the British establishment’s attitudes towards the principles of nationality and self-determination, economic viability, strategic and geographical considerations, and plebiscites as a means of justifying and legitimizing new borders. It demonstrates that, although British politicians repeatedly invoked the principle of nationality in their rhetoric when discussing territorial issues, in practice they interpreted it selectively, according to the circumstances of each case. The second section examines British positions on Alsace-Lorraine, the PolishGerman frontier, Danzig, Upper Silesia, Eastern Galicia, the Saar, the borders of Czechoslovakia, Schleswig, and the Rhineland. The author concludes that the British approach was characterized by pragmatism and flexibility: borders were assessed primarily in terms of their capacity to maintain the balance of power and promote regional stability. Britain sought to strengthen the buffer states of Central and Eastern Europe and integrate them into a system of collective security, but was unwilling to underwrite that order. The absence of robust regional pillars, in turn, undermined the viability of the post-war settlement. Consequently, borders were understood from the outset as contingent on shifting power relations, competing national claims, and the effectiveness of international institutions. Plebiscites, international administration, and provisional territorial arrangements were frequently employed as instruments of compromise and as means of deferring conflicts that could not otherwise be resolved.