IB History Responses to Disputes in the 1920s Including Aland Islands Vilna and Corfu Notes

When the League Could Arbitrate, and When It Could Not

1. The League faced several territorial disputes in the early 1920s that tested whether it could function as a peacekeeping body. Its record was mixed: in cases involving minor powers with no great-power patron prepared to back them, it achieved reasonable settlements. In cases where a great power used force, it was far less effective.

Successes: Aland Islands and Upper Silesia

1. The Aland Islands dispute (1920-1921): Finland and Sweden both claimed the Baltic archipelago, and the Swedish-speaking islanders wanted union with Sweden. The League arbitrated a settlement awarding sovereignty to Finland with cultural protections for the Swedish-speaking population, and both sides accepted it.
   1. How the League got there: Britain referred the dispute to the Council in 1920. A commission of jurists first ruled the question was not purely Finland's domestic affair, then a second commission weighed historical claims, strategic needs, and the islanders' own wishes before the League awarded sovereignty to Finland in June 1921 and demilitarized the islands to address Swedish security concerns.
2. The Upper Silesia dispute (1921): a more complicated case, resolved through a League-arbitrated referendum: the region was divided between Germany and Poland, with the industrial areas going to Poland. Both sides remained dissatisfied but accepted the outcome.
   1. The mechanics of the compromise: the March 1921 plebiscite produced a German majority overall but results varied sharply by district, and Polish insurgents then seized territory before the League drew a border giving Germany more land but Poland most of the industrial area, backed by a fifteen-year economic convention protecting trade, transport, and minority rights across the new boundary.
   2. What both cases showed: the League could function as an effective arbitrator when major powers were not directly invested in the outcome.

Failures: Vilna and Corfu

1. The Vilna dispute (1920-1923): Polish General Lucjan Zeligowski staged a "mutiny" and seized Vilna from Lithuania with Polish government backing, despite the League's involvement. The League condemned the action but could not enforce Polish withdrawal because France backed Poland.
   1. Why the League could not reverse it: Polish leader Jozef Pilsudski had secretly supported the seizure, and although the League proposed a plebiscite, military and political conditions made a workable vote impossible. Poland formally incorporated Vilna in 1922 and the Conference of Ambassadors, not the League, recognized the border in 1923, leaving Lithuania to refuse normal diplomatic relations with Poland for years.
2. The Corfu incident (1923): Italian General Enrico Tellini and four members of a boundary commission were murdered on Greek territory while working on the Albanian-Greek border. Mussolini blamed Greece, then bombarded and occupied the island of Corfu.
   1. How Italy sidestepped the League: Mussolini demanded a formal apology, a ceremonial display of respect, and fifty million lire in compensation, then pushed the dispute to the Conference of Ambassadors instead of the League Council. Britain wanted the League to handle it, but France, needing Italian cooperation during its own occupation of the Ruhr, would not insist.
   2. Who actually resolved it: not the League, but the Conference of Ambassadors, which brokered a settlement forcing Greece to pay compensation to Italy before Italy withdrew from Corfu in September 1923. The League could arbitrate between small states, but not when a great power was directly involved.
3. The Greco-Bulgarian crisis (1925): after a border incident near Petrich, Greek forces invaded Bulgaria. This time the League ordered Greek withdrawal and Greece complied, sending League military officers to investigate the frontier before Greece paid compensation. The contrast with Corfu showed the League could act firmly, but only against a weaker state.

How League Arbitration Worked in Practice

1. The legal duty to arbitrate: the Covenant required members to submit disputes to arbitration, judicial settlement, or Council examination before resorting to war.
2. The Council's tools: it could order an investigation, request a ceasefire, and propose settlement terms, while special commissions gathered evidence from contested regions and let rival governments present their claims.
3. No enforcement of its own: League decisions relied entirely on diplomatic pressure, since the organisation had no permanent military force.
4. When a settlement was easiest: when both parties were small states seeking international recognition and economic stability, and when Britain and France agreed, since their agreement gave Council recommendations far greater weight.
5. The limits of legal argument: plebiscites could identify local preferences, but mixed populations made a clean territorial division difficult, and minority guarantees or economic conventions were often needed to make a new border workable.