La France et les petits États Baltes

In 1920, the birth of the three Baltic states (Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania) was an unexpected outcome of the French victory. Given the weakness of these new states, together with the ambitions of their powerful neighbours, French opinion feared that north-eastern Europe would be "balkanised". Yet at the beginning of the 1930s, the political, economic and cultural dynamism of these young Baltic democracies contradicted these predictions. Baltic stability seemed to become increasingly linked to maintaining a European order, which France was trying to establish with the more or less direct co-operation of the other powers. The aim of this study is therefore to show how a bilateral relationship between one power and several previously unknown small states was progressively established, through French perceptions of foreign strategy, and through questioning by French opinion of the potential and future of the French 'republican model'. Yet perhaps there was not enough time to remove the severe handicaps which were delaying the Franco-Baltic dialogue, notably in the economic field. The Baltic case is thus a good example of the thought process which developed in French opinion regarding both the positive or negative role of these "small states", and their future in international relations