From: Matt Schumann  
      List Editor: Jim Niessen  
      Editor's Subject: Re: Wilson and Redrawing the Map of Europe 
      Author's Subject: Re: Wilson and Redrawing the Map of Europe 
      Date Written: Tue, 10 Apr 2001 10:42:58 -0600 
      Date Posted: Tue, 10 Apr 2001 11:40:29 -0400 

>  President Wilson believed that one can redraw the map of Europe in a way
> that only 3% of Europe's population would actually live under foreign
rule.
>
> where and in what context did Wilson make this observation?

I must admit being baffled by this one, given areas such as
Alsace-Lorraine, Belgium, Bosnia, the Vojvodina, Kosovo, West Prussia,
Holstein, Istria, the Sudetenland, and Northern Ireland, where the
population was very well mixed.  Given some of Wilson's suggestions toward
the end of World War I, I would not be surprised if he intended to solve
these border/ethnicity issues by plebiscite - the only problems then being
what one would do with those Bavarians and others who wished to secede
from "Prussian" Germany, the Basques and Catalans who even today want to
secede from Spain and France, the Ireland question, the Scots, Welsh,
Gascons, and many other ethnic/political groups within the borders of the
remaining "Great Powers" who were discontented with their governments
after the Great War.  Perhaps I miss my guess, but the above groups and
areas seem to encompass a lot more than 3% of Europe's 1918 population,
who would be living under foreign rule.

The only other thing I can think of, would be Wilson treating Turkey and
Russia as "Asiatic" powers, and thinking of European Turkey, Belarus and
other of the western Russo-Soviet regions as "Europeans under foreign,
i.e.  non-european rule."  This would seem to me a rather far-fetched
interpretation, however.

-Matt Schumann
Research Student / Eighteenth-Century European Military History
University of Exeter.  Exeter, United Kingdom

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