Come hither, friends and countrymen! Join me, the Lord George Nathaniel Curzon, 1st Marquess of Kedleston, in a little trip down memory lane as I recall the creation of the Curzon Line dividing the East and the West!
I had many notable achievements in my distinguished career serving the British Crown. I served as His Majesty’s Viceroy to India. My books on Persia, Russia, Central Asia, and the Far East were widely read by the lords and statesmen of the Empire. I sent the good Sir Francis Younghusband to sign a Peace Treaty with Tibet, outwitting the Russians and their imperial designs on the independent mountain kingdom. And I served in the war cabinet of Lloyd George as the Leader of the House of Lords.
I finished my political career as the British Foreign Secretary after the conclusion of the Great War. In that role I negotiated the creation of modern Poland and the demarcation of the aforementioned Curzon Line.
At the end of the Great War, the Entente powers Britain, France, and America agreed that an independent Poland should be formed from the territories of the crumbling Russian, Austro-Hungarian, and Germany Empires. This new state would grant independence to the noble people of that fine nation, and serve the interests of the West by cutting off Russia from civilized Europe. But alas, Ol’ Wooden Willy was too wrapped up with romantic notions of “national determination” to finalize the Polish border, and Versaille left us with no final answer.
Demarcation was a volatile endeavor. The region is populated by Poles, Lithuanians, Jews, Ukrainians and Russians, with no single group holding a majority. When the time came to properly demarcate the border in 1919, that task was left to me. After careful consideration I drew a border that followed historic, and coincidentally, ethnic lines, but my purpose wasn’t altruism: I wanted a permanent buffer between the land-hungry Russians and Europe Proper. My plan was so cunning you could have put a tail on it and called it a weasel!
The infernal Russians — my eternal nemeses — were determined to foil my plan. By the time I’d finished, they had formed a new government led by pagan Bolsheviks and 
refused to recognize the border, invading Poland later that same year. The brave citizens of the Polish nation valiantly fought the marauding Slavs for a year before they appealed to Britain and France to intervene on their behalf. I led negotiations to propose a ceasefire along the original Curzon Line, which the Soviets rejected. They shouldn’t have. The Soviet army was defeated shortly thereafter at the Battle of Warsaw, and the two countries signed the Treaty of Riga in March of 1921 in which Poland took a large expanse of Russia’s western territory including the cities of Lwow and Wilno (Vilnius). This took a far greater bite into Russian than the Curzon Line proposal could have hoped to achieve. This new border was recognized by the League of Nations in 1923, two years before my death.
DEPARTING FROM THE FIRST PERSON: Although the Curzon Line appeared defunct at the time of its author’s death, it remained an important demarcation through the 20th century. The line separating the German and Soviet zones of occupation following the defeat of Poland in 1939 followed the Curzon Line, and it was used again in 1945 as the basis for the permanent border between Poland and the Soviet Union, although there were substantial differences noted by the varying colored lines in the above graphic. Read more history here or here.
Gone for the weekend, posting to resume Sunday night…
Maybe if you didn’t call him “Wooden Willy,” he would have been more cooperative.
May the Original Lord Curzons soul be with u. I wonder what happens to the world when people like you go to the “state department”.
I would never, ever go to the State Dept as a foreign service officer. And I doubt you’d find many Curzon Jr.’s there — the place is predominantely filled with lefties, as is the CIA. (Most center-right fellows head to the Pentagon.) But if some dear president was to nominate me as Assistant Secretary of East Asian Affairs… that I just might consider.
Well, I think Curzon is missing the point. The point is to make enough money on the government dole that you can turn around later and buy the government for yourself. Then they make you an ambassador, which is a friggin’ awesome job, and sounds better than “assistant secretary.” Plus, you get to wear white ties and tails.
The two ambassadors I’ve met in my life who got their jobs by going through the State Dept (one to somewhere in Central America, one to Lesotho) were bitter people — did I mention they were both former ambassadors by the time I met them? Most people who become ambassadors get ththere through connections or by donating money.
All our Caribbean ambassadors are wealthy donors to the GOP. Many others are political appointees. If you do become an ambassador through the foreign service, you’ll only get stuck with some crap country… such as somewhere in Central America, or Lesotho.
Assistant Secretaries of State make policy, are involved with whole regions as opposed to a single country, and work in a variety of fields, ministries, and help make policy. Ambassadors are primarily in social/PR functions.
Also, the historical purpose of neckties was to catch food falling from your mouth and protect your shirt. Hence, white ties are never recommended. And I would wear my Burberry suit over tails anyday.
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Although I know you’re basically teasing me… :)
I’m afraid what you’re saying is very bad history. The allies and Wilson had in reality nothing to do in the creation of Poland. In the Great War Germany defeated the Russian Empire. Many countries and peoples had been absorbed by the Czars into Russia for centuries before the Great War, The Kingdom of Poland (split up between Catholic Austria, Russo-Eastern Catholic Russia, and Protestant Prussia) was only one of the many. Austria was the preservor of Polish language and culture: building schools and universities for her.
Ludendoff the German generalisomo offered to recreate Poland hoping to get Poles to enlist young Poles in mass after the Austro-German arimies had cleared the original Polish lands of the Czar’s armies (Poles were fighting mostly in the Austrian army). Indeed Finland, and the Baltic nations were also set up this way but Ludendoff ‘s biggest interest was in Poland because of its greater population. Obviously Czarist Russia was an original member of the Entent and France’s main ally for decades before the Great war, how could you think that an English statesman was going to cut up Russia after after 1918 when there was no sizable Allied Army in Russia.
After Germany’s collaspe the Poles tried to seize very bit of land and peeoples they could grab (therefore as you point out they had Russians, Ukrainians, Ruthenians, Germans, Jews (who had no previous country but Russia) as part of their new Empire as long as Germany was so weak before the rise of Hitler and the death of Weimar. In fact the Poles even seized much of German industrialized Silesia and advanced on Berlin (not nice people).
The Poles directly invaded defeated Germany and tried to seize even more but a German civilian band of ex-soldiers fought them off (such military groups was whence came the Storm Trooper clubs in the 20′s and early 30′s)
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