The Lausanne Project – Podcasts and Blogposts to Understand the Legacy of a Forgotten Peace

It’s “the longest-lasting of the post-First World War peace settlements” (Alan Sharp): the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne. Five years ago, Ozan Ozavci (Utrecht University) and Jonathan Conlin (Southampton University) were struck by the contrast between the raft of scholarly projects then in preparation for the centenary of the Paris peace conference of 1919 and the dearth of scholarly attention paid to Lausanne. Although diplomatic historians had long recognized Lausanne as exceptional, it continued to figure as an outlier or semi-detached epilogue in accounts focused on the 1919-1920 treaties. The idea of the Lausanne Project had hatched.

Launching the Lausanne Project

Having initially planned to co-edit a volume about a peace treaty largely forgotten by the world beyond Greece and Turkey, the project soon grew in scope. Since its launch a year ago in April, the Lausanne Project’s website has hosted visitors from 168 countries.

The TLP blog and podcast have explored the wide range of topics discussed around the negotiating table during the peace conference of 1922-1923: the controversial Greco-Turkish (Muslim) population exchange, which unfortunately continues to inspire policy thinking, as well as questions of borders, finance, religion, trade, and energy.

The project also explores in a special dossier the history and causes of authoritarianism in the Middle East. Its contributors have ranged from early career researchers to distinguished scholars whose insights have shaped the discipline.

Exhibitions

As word of the Project spread curators began contacting Ozavci and Conlin, inviting them to contribute to plans for centenary exhibitions. 2023 will see an exhibition at the Musée Historique Lausanne, while at the In Flanders Fields Museum (Ypres, Belgium) an exhibition entitled For Civilisation: the Great War in the Middle East is already on, and will run until next October.

You can find out more about the Lausanne Project, its goals for 2022-3 and how it aims to foster the recognition and rewards culture promoted by Utrecht University in the convenors’ new blogpost.