ON THIS DAY · 15 MAY 1919

Greek landing at Smyrna

15 May 1919 — Greek troops land at Smyrna under Allied warships to claim western Anatolia. The partition of the Ottoman Empire helps ignite the Turkish War of Independence. Within months, the peacemakers discover that drawing a map is one thing; establishing their settlement on the ground is another.

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Map: Greek landing at Smyrna, 15 May 1919 — 15 MAY 1919 · THE GREAT WAR, 1871–1923

These maps are reconstructed from published sources · Cliopatria v 0.2.1 · Natural Earth physical geography · US Army: American Forces in Germany · Treaty of Versailles: Rhineland occupation

Source details

Cliopatria contributors / Seshat Global History Databank. Source polygons retained with original identities; geographic selections and corrections by Maps of History.. CC BY 4.0
Made with Natural Earth; geographic reference and physical land only. No modern political boundary is used as a historical boundary.. Public domain
US Army Medical Department history; Moselle Valley from Luxembourg to Rhine, Trier and Koblenz. Boundary derived from treaty river and bridgehead provisions rather than an absent annual control polygon.. US government historical geographic evidence
Versailles articles 428–432; Rhineland occupation and bridgeheads.. Historical treaty facts; original geographic reconstruction

Annual source features can describe claims, legal territory or military control. Occupied extensions are separated from the prewar Central Power homelands, while the original source names and shapes remain available.

The displayed state is iss 19. Geographic reference dates and reconstruction methods are recorded for each feature.

reconstruction: 1919.1 · reconstruction: 1919–1923 · reconstruction: 1920–1921 · reconstruction: 1920–1923 · reconstruction: 1920–1935 · vector: 1815–1937 · vector: 1848–1935 · vector: 1864–1921 · vector: 1905–1921 · vector: 1908–1935 · vector: 1912–1919 · vector: 1912–1921 · vector: 1912–1955 · vector: 1916–1919 · vector: 1917–1919 · vector: 1917–1921 · vector: 1918–1919 · vector: 1918–1926 · vector: 1918–1938 · vector: 1919–1919 · vector: 1919–1921 · vector: 1919–1923 · vector: 1919–1937

Layer records and reconstruction methods

The moment in context

The peacemakers faced a problem of population as well as power. From Finland to Yugoslavia, states were created or restored, including Poland. Self-determination promised peoples a say in their government, and these new states answered national claims that imperial rule had suppressed. But communities in central and eastern Europe lived intermingled. A boundary that brought one people into its national state could put another under a government it did not consider its own. Roughly twenty-five to thirty million Europeans became minorities in someone else’s nation-state.

From Treaty of Versailles, chapter 14 of The Great War, 1871–1923 (FEB 1919).

The place: Greek landing at Smyrna — map and full story →

Teach this in 5 minutes

Why it happened — Three peacemakers, three incompatible peaces. Each principal peacemaker had a different idea of what the war should secure. Clemenceau wanted France protected against a neighbor with twenty…
The turn — The Hall of Mirrors, 28 June 1919. The Hall of Mirrors gives the signing its setting: two German delegates put their names to the treaty under the victors’ eyes in the room where…
What it changed — What 1919 genuinely built. The order failed within twenty years, but it also built institutions and supplied language that outlasted it. The flawed League of Nations was the…

Then ask the room: “The Treaty of Versailles caused the Second World War.” Prosecute and defend that sentence. The argued answer is on the chapter page →

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The Great War, 1871–1923

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