International Recognition
| “ | We claim for our national independence the recognition and support of every free nation in the world, and we proclaim that independence to be a condition precedent to international peace hereafter: | ” |
An important element in the 1918 Sinn Féin election manifesto was to secure recognition at the forthcoming peace conference that would end World War I. President Woodrow Wilson of the USA had suggested that the Versailles Peace Conference would be inclusive and even-handed, but his "Fourteen Points" had called for "equal weight" between parties at arbitration in article 5, and not outright declarations of independence.
In June 1920 a "Draft Treaty between the new Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic and the Republic of Ireland" was circulated in Dublin. E. H. Carr, the historian of early Bolshevism, considered that ".. the negotiations were not taken very seriously on either side." The RSFSR was a pariah state at the time.
The Irish policy of declaring independence before the peace conference was unsuccessful, and can be contrasted with the Zionist proposals that were allowed to be laid before the conference in February 1919.
Read more about this topic: Irish Declaration Of Independence
Famous quotes containing the word recognition:
“No democracy can long survive which does not accept as fundamental to its very existence the recognition of the rights of minorities.”
—Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945)