26/5/1919 Broad decisions in Paris on Italy’s territorial gains

Italian leaders flounced out of the Paris Conference in protest at the lack of respect being shown to their ambitions by the other Allies. Since then Prime Minster Orlando and Sonnino, his foreign minister, have slunk back, hoping to extract whatever they can from the conference.

Italy’s problem is that the world has changed since Britain and France made lavish promises to lure the country into the war against Austria-Hungary. In the secret Treaty of London, Italy was offered not just favourable adjustments of its land border, but also extensive Adriatic territories, both offshore islands and points along the Dalmatian coast. Unfortunately the rise of Wilson and his new-fangled ideas of national self-determination make the Allies less inclined to grant the Slav-inhabited Dalmatian territories to Italy, with the newly emergent state of Yugoslavia the more natural home for these peoples. Italian claims have also not been helped by…