Agreement of Saint-Jean-de-Maurienne
The Agreement of St.-Jean-de-Maurienne was an agreement between France, Italy and Great Britain, which emanated from a conference in a railway car at Saint-Jean-de-Maurienne on 19 April 1917 and signed by the allies between 18 August and 26 September 1917.[1]
The 19 April meeting was attended by British and French Prime Ministers, David Lloyd George and Alexandre Ribot, and the Italian Prime Minister and Foreign Minister, Paolo Boselli and Sidney Sonnino.[1]
It was intended as a tentative agreement to settle the Italian Middle Eastern interest, specifically Article 9 of the Treaty of London (1915). The agreement was needed by the allies to secure the position of Italian forces in the Middle East. The goal was to balance the military power drops at the Middle Eastern theatre of World War I as Russian (Tsarist) forces were pulling out of the Caucasus Campaign, even though they were replaced with what would be named as Democratic Republic of Armenian forces.[2] Russia was not represented in this agreement as the Tsarist regime was in a state of collapse (see Russian Revolution of 1917). However, the lack of Russian consent to the Saint-Jean-de-Maurienne agreement was used by the British at the 1919 Paris Peace Conference to invalidate it, a position that greatly incensed the Italian government.[3]