The Postwar World Map: New States and Boundary Changes

• Published in: American Political Science Review
• Main Author: Fifield, Russell H.
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Cambridge University Press (CUP) 1948
• Subjects: Iceland
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/1949917; https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/S0003055400058822

A comparison of the postwar worlds of 1919 and 1948 indicates that the process of nation-building has moved from Europe to Asia. In the peace settlement after the First World War, the new states of the world appeared for the most part in Europe, but in the aftermath of the Second World War the new members of the family of nations come almost entirely from Asia. In Europe, three of the states that emerged from the First World War—Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania—have lost their national existence and are now numbered among the sixteen republics of the Soviet Union. The only new state from a practical viewpoint to appear in the European firmament is Iceland, which dissolved the personal union of a common king with Denmark dating from November 30, 1918, and became a sovereign republic on June 17, 1944. An even exchange may be noted in the incorporation by Poland of the Free City of Danzig, once under the protection of the League of Nations and in the creation of the Free Territory of Trieste under the protection of the Security Council of the United Nations. Although classification is difficult, the new states or near states of Asia fall roughly into a fourfold pattern: independence with partition, independence without partition, de facto or promised independence, and emergence from isolation into the family of nations.