Battleground of High Politics
A Comparative Study of British & French Policies
Towards Poland & the Baltic States 1917-1939

By Marie-Jacqueline Powell
November 2003
Book Guild
ISBN: 1-85776-757-8
6 3/4" x 9 1/2"
$38.50 Hardcover

OUT OF PRINT

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This book is an important addition to the literature available in English on the Politics of Poland and the Baltic States. The result of many years research, the author's wide ranging study of British and French involvement in this corner of Europe in the years 1917-39 begins with an overview of the development of the region in the last millennium, including the growth and decline of the Commonwealth of Poland-Lithuania, and the subsequent partitioning of Poland among its more powerful neighbors - Germany, Austria and Russia. Finding themselves suddenly free of imperial domination at the end of World War One, Poland, Lithuania and the new nations of Latvia and Estonia were able to develop as modern nation states in the 1920s and 1930s, before the Nazi and Soviet invasions swept away those freedoms, plunging the Continent into war.

The author's detailed analysis examines the foreign of the British and French governments in this period towards Poland and the Baltic States, and finds them to have been shaped not so much by an active desire to help these new democracies, but by an overwhelming need to avoid war with Germany, whilst also countering German influence in the region. With the immanent entry of these countries into the European Union, this book is a timely reminder of the significance of even the smallest nation in a continent so politically and historically complex.

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