Venizelos, Lloyd George and the Greek annexation of Smyrna: May 1919

As the allied powers deliberated at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919, David Lloyd George encouraged the Greek prime minister Venizelos to seize the former Ottoman city of Smyrna. The consequences for the city, once a bastion of religious and cultural tolerance, would be tragic, but to the British simply consequence of a wider imperial game in the near east.