THE FOREIGN POLICY OF FRANCE AND THE MACEDONIAN PROBLEM AFTER THE WORLD WAR ONE

Abstract

The paper analyses the treatment of the Macedonian problem in the framework of the foreign
policy of France in the years following the WWI. After winning the war, the basic tendency of the
French foreign policy was preventing the new rise of Germany and preserving of the postwar status
quo everywhere in Europe, including in the region of the Balkans. For that aim, France relied on
a chain of East European countries, including the newly formed Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and
Slovenes (later: Kingdom Yugoslavia).
The ways in which the postwar peace agreements solved the Macedonian question failed to
produce its easy ending. Therefore, the European states interested in the stability of the postwar
order faced numerous challenges – the activity of the Macedonian organizations, the revisionist
Bulgarian policy, the specific Italian Balkans policy, as well as the policy of USSR – a power
whose foreign policy was steadily rising throughout the postwar years.
Apart from the features of the general politics of France toward the Macedonian problem, the paper
analyses the position taken by France during the Paris peace conference, in the framework of the
League of Nations, the methods in which the French diplomacy prevented the related crises, its
quest for a peaceful solution, as well as its relations vis à vis the involved Balkan and European
states.