ABSTRACT
Before the war Europe had comprised some 20 independent states (excluding Monaco and Andorra) of widely differing size. Six of them, as we have seen, were so-called ‘great’ powers with populations of more than 30 million people. The remaining countries all fell below the ten million mark with the exception of Spain (with its population of around 20 million). This was Europe's sole middle-ranking power. Only two of the twenty were republics — France and Switzerland: the remainder were all monarchies. But after the First World War much had changed. By 1919 the number of European states had risen to 26, and while the disintegration of Austria-Hungary had reduced the number of great powers to five, the number of middle-ranking powers was swelled by three new countries — Poland, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia. More dramatic was the decline of monarchy in Europe. Now only two of the five great powers remained monarchies, and all six of the new states set up as a consequence of the war, alongside a reformed Russia, Germany, Hungary, Austria and Turkey (now with just a toehold in Europe), lined up as republics.
