Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- List of abbreviations
- A note on the footnotes and bibliography
- Introduction
- Prologue
- 1 The wider challenges
- 2 Wilson, Lloyd George and the quest for a ‘peace to end all wars’
- 3 The ill-founded peace of 1919
- 4 The escalation of Europe's post-Versailles crisis, 1920–1923
- Part I The Anglo-American stabilisation of Europe, 1923–1924
- Part II Europe's nascent Pax Anglo-Americana, 1924–1925
- 11 The dawning of a Progressive Pax Americana in Europe?
- 12 Towards the Locarno pact
- 13 Regression?
- 14 Beyond irreconcilable differences?
- 15 The path to Locarno – and its transatlantic dimension
- 16 The second ‘real’ peace settlement after World War I
- Part III The unfinished transatlantic peace order: the system of London and Locarno, 1926–1929
- Epilogue
- Conclusion
- Map: Post-World War I Europe after the peace settlement of Versailles
- Bibliography
- Index
12 - Towards the Locarno pact
Britain's quest for a new European concert, 1924–1925
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 July 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- List of abbreviations
- A note on the footnotes and bibliography
- Introduction
- Prologue
- 1 The wider challenges
- 2 Wilson, Lloyd George and the quest for a ‘peace to end all wars’
- 3 The ill-founded peace of 1919
- 4 The escalation of Europe's post-Versailles crisis, 1920–1923
- Part I The Anglo-American stabilisation of Europe, 1923–1924
- Part II Europe's nascent Pax Anglo-Americana, 1924–1925
- 11 The dawning of a Progressive Pax Americana in Europe?
- 12 Towards the Locarno pact
- 13 Regression?
- 14 Beyond irreconcilable differences?
- 15 The path to Locarno – and its transatlantic dimension
- 16 The second ‘real’ peace settlement after World War I
- Part III The unfinished transatlantic peace order: the system of London and Locarno, 1926–1929
- Epilogue
- Conclusion
- Map: Post-World War I Europe after the peace settlement of Versailles
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
From an Anglo-American perspective, the making of the Locarno accords can be analysed as a process comprising four distinct stages after the – limited – foundations of the Dawes system had been laid: (1) ‘gestation’ – the failure of the Geneva Protocol's universalist, League-based approach to security and the search for alternative models (September 1924 – mid-January 1925); (2) ‘germination’ – the recasting of British security policy towards the pursuit of a pact as nucleus of a new European concert, not least under the impact of Stresemann's ‘security initiative’ and America's endorsement of this approach (late January – March 1925); (3) ‘crisis and perseverance’ – Britain's promotion of newly integrative negotiations over the Rhine pact with France and Germany, spurred by American pressure (culminating between June and August 1925); and finally (4) ‘resolution’ – the finalisation of the security accords and actual emergence of the new European concert at the Locarno conference (October 1925).
The limits of the Geneva Protocol and the pre-Locarno constellation
After the London conference, the Coolidge administration re-affirmed its anti-Wilsonian creed, and the Hughes doctrine, in the domain of ‘classic’ security politics. In the autumn of 1924, Hughes reverted to what he regarded as a proven and advantageous policy of strategic non-entanglement outside the American hemisphere. Both he and his designated successor Kellogg thought that they could foster European security most effectively, and without provoking Congressional opposition, if they guarded their ‘neutrality’. Both thus excluded a partisan involvement in the League or European politics.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Unfinished Peace after World War IAmerica, Britain and the Stabilisation of Europe, 1919–1932, pp. 201 - 219Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2006