claim. Irredentism is a policy rooted interritorialityand theorganic theoryof the
state, and had a profound effect on thegeopoliticsof the 19th and 20th centuries.
Irredentism is a common aspect of the foreign policies of countries occupying a
shatterbelt, becauseboundariesoften shift in such locations, leaving ethnic
groups divided among two or morenation-states. A synonym is revanchism, a term
derived from the French wordrevanche, meaning “revenge.” Irredentism comes
from the Italian termirredenta, which referred to lands populated by ethnic Italians
that were not incorporated into the Italian state during theRisorgimento, or Italian
unification, during the 19th century. A number of such territories existed, including
Trieste, Nice, and Corsica. Several of the irredenta lay within the Austro-Hungarian
Empire, and the Italian government entered World War I on the side of the Allied
Powers with the expectation that a defeat of the Austrians would open the way for
the absorption of these places into Italy. Over the course of the 20th century, several
of the disputed territories in fact were included in the boundaries of Italy. The col-
lapse of empires usually results in the expression of irredentist motives on the part
of the remnant states, since the existing culturallandscapeof ethnicity rarely corre-
lates directly with the new political borders marking off the new states.
The consequences of irredentist foreign policies have frequently been severe,
leading to larger conflicts. Both the world wars of the 20th century were at least
partially caused by irredentist motivations. Gavrilo Princip, a member of a radical
Serbian irredentist group, killed Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the heir to the throne
of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, on June28, 1914, in the city of Sarajevo. The
assassination set into motion a series of events that quickly erupted into World
War I, and ultimately the death of approximately 16 million people. Ironically,
the creation of Yugoslavia as a result of the war partially fulfilled the ambition of
Princip and his fellow irredentist conspirators. In the 1930s, Germany under Adolf
Hitler began pursuing an aggressive irredentist policy under the guise oflebens-
raum, or “living room,” for the German state. Hitler’s remilitarization of the
Rhineland in 1936, his incorporation of Austria into German control in 1938
(known as theAnschlussin German), and the invasion and absorption of the
Sudetenland region of Czechoslovakia in 1938 all were motivated by irredentism,
and the desire to create a “Greater Germany” from regions holding a sizable
German population. All of these regions were occupied by German troops with
little resistance from other major European powers. Some historians argue that
Hitler’s successful pursuit of an aggressive irredentist policy toward these territories
emboldened the German regime to eventually attack Poland and initiate World War II,
and also bought valuable time for the strengthening of the German war machine
before the outbreak of hostilities. The death toll from Germany’s irredentism was
truly catastrophic, estimated at 60 million worldwide.190 Irredentism