May 10, 1920. Carranza ousted, Flappers appear, Home Rule denied, Sims criticized.

On this day in 1920 it became clear that Carranza had been ousted from control in Mexico, the price he paid for trying to dictate who his successor would be.  Mexican rebels were now in control of 25 of 28 Mexican states.

We'll play out the story of Carranza, a major figure in Mexican history, over the next few days. Suffice it to say, however, it's hard to feel sorry for him.  He was a haughty arrogant person who was responsible, if indirectly, for the demise of one of the most admirable figures of the Mexican Revolution, Emiliano Zapata, and now his story was playing out like that of those whom he'd replaced.

The pattern was also set by these events, although it had been by prior ones as well.  The Mexican Revolution was consuming itself.

Another place where a revolution was going on, Ireland, saw an attempt at reviving home rule as a solution when a bill to restore an Irish parliament was considered in London. That bill was defeated.

Ireland had its own parliament from 1297 until 1800, so in considering the bill, the British parliament was considering reviving an institution, on a wider grounds, that had ceased to exist 120 years prior with the Act of Union.

Irish history is really complicated, but the creation of the first Irish parliament really reflected the Anglo Norman ascendency in the country.  Ireland had no unity prior to the Norman invasion of the island and the Normans looked to the English crown for protection.  Over time the native Irish came to increasingly ignore the Anglo Normans and their parliament and as a result in 1494 the Irish parliament subordinated itself to the English one, effectively acknowledging English rule.  Following that, in 1541 English King Henry VIII, apparently not content with making a mess of things in England, declared a separate Irish Kingdom with himself at the head and began the long English attempt to dominate England and protestantise it.  That ultimately resulted in laws that banned Catholics, which the overwhelming majority of Irish were (and are), from occupying various professions, including that of parliamentarian, although the story is complicated as it did not occur all at once and things went back and forth over a long period of time in that context.

Oddly, Ireland was granted legislative independence in 1782, only to be joined to the British state in 1800 with the Act of Union. That eliminated the Irish parliament.  It didn't in any fashion end the complaints of the common Irish and even more of the more prominent Irish, who suffered under discriminatory legislation and second class citizen status.  Revolutionary movements sought to remove the English throughout the 19th Century and movements in Ireland and England were seriously considering "home rule" by the turn of that century.  That direction was firmly dominant just prior to World War One when the war put an end to the discussions, leaving Irish republicans ascendant.  Following the war the Anglo Irish War broke out and by this date in 1920 discussions on home rule were really too late.

In the US a drama was really playing out between Josephus Daniels and Admiral William Sims which dated back to Sims accusations that the US had not been prepared for the war.  While this controversy resulted in a lot of dramatic headlines at the time, Sims would emerge with an unscathed reputation and go on to a second tour as head of the Naval War College.

On this day the 1920s image of young women acquired a name.

Washington Post Photo, Miss Elizabeth Burrnett  wearing sash with a barrel labeled "Fill the Barrel" for Salvation Army fundraising campaign.  May 10, 1920.

Women's styles, and the presentation of young women in image, had been changing rapidly following World War One and probably at least partially due to it.  We've noted before that World War One saw a large percentage of women go to work to support the war and following the war there was a society wide restlessness that expressed itself in all things.  One thing that really was new was the concept of a young woman on her own.

It's really odd how this entire image has been morphed into "it was because of World War Two" when, at the same time, the events of the Roaring Twenties are really well known. We'll look at it elsewhere, but on this day the new on their own women acquired the nickname "flapper".

Oddly, flappers had probably been better presented already by the just released F. Scott Fitzgerald short story Bernice Bobs Her Hair.  But today the film The Flapper introduced the name.

The movie has a fairly typical melodramatic plot for the time involving a flirtatious 16 year old girl at a private school who passes herself off as being 20.  Probably not worth bothering with.

May 15, 1919 The Winnipeg General Strike, the Greco Turkish War commences.

A more localized strike in Winnepeg, Manitoba  that commenced a few days prior spread to being a complete working class strike on this day in 1919.  It would become one of the largest sustained labor strikes in Canadian history.

The world was slipping into an economic depression, one now largely forgotten, and surprisingly brief, but in the immediate politically tense post war situation, a serious event indeed.

Also serious, Greece landed troops in the Smyrna, on the Turkish coast.

Greek troops landing on Smyrna.

An intent to land had been declared the day prior and the action was supported by the Allies.

The city had a large Greek population as did many areas of Turkey at the time.  Like many of the European states prior to the end of World War Two, Turkey contained significant ethnic enclaves including Greek ones, reflecting that Turkey itself had once been a Greek speaking and culturally Greek domain.  It's primarily Greek status had ended with the fall of Constantinople to the invading Ottomans in 1453 but large Greek populations remained.

The Ottoman Empire itself had come to a near end with the Central Power defeat in World War One. The Allies were sympathetic to national claims in Turkey and the Ottoman Empire was being dismantled.  As part of that, Greek claims in Turkey were received sympathetically.

With in a few days, the Greek beachhead in Turkey would expand to the entire province that the city was in, a significant expansion of the operation.  

The landing is the practical starting date for the Greco Turkish War, a war that initially had strong Allied support and which supported extensive Greek claims in Turkey.  Indeed, the war effort was aided by the fact that other Allied powers, including Italy and the United Kingdom, occupied parts of Anatolia and Turkish islands off of the Turkish coast. The initial goals were to partition Anatolia leaving the domain of the Turks much smaller than is presently the case, and which would have not only left a very large portion of it under Greek control, but which would have also left substantial coastal island areas under Italian control, but also some areas under Armenian control and possibly even the creation of a Kurdish state.

In its greatly weakened state Turkey did poorly in the war at first and this vision of a diminished Turkey appeared likely to come into existence.  A treaty to that effect was drafted between the warring powers but neither Greece nor the Ottoman Empire ratified it.  The war would spark support of the young Turkish nationalist who displaced the Ottoman Empire, which fell prior to the war concluding.  The year after the war's full conclusion the Turkish parliament would abolish the caliphate, and the political regime that had come into existence in 1299 would end.

By that time, the Turks were on the advance in the war, which Turks regard as the Turkish War of Independence.  Rather than the treaty that had been negotiated but not ratified, the end result was much more favorable to Turkey which achieved its present borders.  As part of that treat, a massive population exchange was entered into in which Greece and Turkey exchanged their respective ethnic populations and approximately 1,000,000 Greeks whose homes had been in Anatolia left it.  The practical result was, therefore, that a Greek population that dated back to the Byzantine Empire was effectively nearly completely removed, although small Greek populations remain in Turkey to the present day.

In Philadelphia, a Military Police unit paraded, including its mounted officers.