André Liebich’s project deals with self-determination in the long 19th century. His last case study concerns the discursive argument on behalf of Czechoslovak independence during the Great War. What made it possible to “think Czechoslovakia,” previously utterly unimagined but within four years a recognized sovereign state? I consider agency, notably, the part played by Masaryk and English advocates, particularly Wickham Steed, foreign editor of The Times and R.W. Seton-Watson. I sketch their portrayal of the Czechs as a nation of Protestant spirit that contrasts with Austria-Hungary as a decadent, Catholic, dynastic estate, moreover, complicit in Pan-German aims as encapsulated in the slogan “Berlin-Bagdad.” Most brilliantly, one of the few original Entente war aims, the restoration of small nations, was reinterpreted to mean the creation of Czechoslovakia.
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