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

This study of the period from 1878 to 1938 explores international minority protections.

"Carole Fink's Defending the Rights of Others is a masterpiece of exhaustive research, engaging narrative, and lucid analysis that revives and reinterprets the long neglected but critically important subject of the campaign by the European powers to afford protection to religious and ethnic minorities within the new states in Eastern Europe that were carved out of the Ottoman, Habsburg, Romanov, and Hohenzollern Empires...this work sets a new standard of scholarship in the field of international history." William R. Keylor, Professor of History and International Relations and Director of the International History Institute, Boston University"Based on an extraordinary sweep of archives and published materials, this is an original and badly needed survey of a topic rarely explored or even touched on in the history of the 19th and 20th centuries but that is becoming a central issue in the international politics of our time: the role of the world community in the protection of minorities in sovereign states." Gerhard L. Weinberg, Emeritus Professor of History, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill"Professor Fink's latest work makes a major contribution to our historical understanding of the growing need to defend human rights on a transnational scale. This volume is the product not only of her pioneering archival research, but also of the unsurpassed maturity of judgment in this field that she has developed over many years of scholarly concern with its riches and complexities." Michael Biddiss, Professor of Modern European History, University of Reading"...contributes substantially to our understanding of the practice of official and non-official diplomacy at the Paris Peace Conference and the drafting and implementation of the minority treaties, but also reminds us that internationally sanctioned minority protection emerged in the context of expansionist nationalism. This book will be of particular interest for scholars of diplomatic and modern Jewish history, but is an important read for anyone concerned with theorizing the link between ethnic violence and state formation."

- H-German, Aimee Genell, Department of History, the Graduate Center, City University of New York"This richly detailed and important book displays impressive scholarship. It deserves a wide readership and should be mandatory reading in advanced courses on Europe, human rights, and diplomacy in the twentieth century."
Holocaust and Genocide Studies

International minority protection, which began in the late nineteenth century, was aimed at bringing stability to Eastern Europe. This historical study of the sixty-year period between 1878 and 1938 examines the policies of the great powers, which devised these arrangements; of Jewish leaders who sought to defend their endangered people; of the fledgling governments, which fiercely resisted outside interference; of the League of Nations, which developed a unique system for minority protection; and of Germany, which between 1919 and 1933 went from a minorities champion to a persecutor and aggressor.

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

List of maps; List of photographs; Preface; Abbreviations; A note on place and personal names; Part I. From Empires to New States: 1. Prologue: the Congress of Berlin; 2. Bucharest, August 1913; 3. The Great War; 4. Lemberg; Part II. The Minority Treaties: 5. Paris; 6. Pinsk; 7. May; 8. The 'Little Versailles'; Part III. A New Era of Minority Rights?: 9. Geneva; 10. Berlin; 11. Epilogue: the road to Munich; Conclusions; Bibliography; Index.