Sovereignty At The Paris Peace Conference Of 1919

We have known for many decades that the Paris Peace Conference of 1919 "failed", in the sense that it did not prevent the outbreak of World War II. This book investigates not whether the Paris Peace Conference succeeded or failed, but the historically specific international system it created. It explores the rules under which that system operated, and the kinds of states and empires that inhabited it. Deepening the dialogue between history and international relations theory makes it possible to think about sovereignty at the Paris Peace Conference in new ways. Sovereignty in 1919 was about not just determining of answers demarcating the international system, but also the questions. Sovereignty in 1919 was about remaking the world. Most histories of the Paris Peace Conference stop with the signing of the Treaty of Versailles with Germany on 28 June 1919. Sovereignty at the Paris Peace Conference of 1919 considers all five treaties produced by the conference as well as the Treaty of Lausanne with Turkey in 1923. It is organized not chronologically or geographically, but according to specific problems of sovereignty. A peace based on "justice" produced a criminalized Great Power in Germany, and a template problematically applied in the other treaties. The conference sought to unmix lands and peoples in the defeated multinational empires by drawing boundaries and defining ethnicities. The conference sought not so much to oppose revolution as to instrumentalize it in the new international system. The League of Nations, so often taken as the supreme symbol of the failure of the conference, is better considered as a continuation of the laboratory of sovereignty established in Paris.

Ten essays analyzing the history and effects of the Paris Peace Conference following World War I. The settlement of Versailles was more than a failed peace. What was debated at the Paris Peace Conference of 1919–1920 hugely influenced how nations and empires, sovereignty, and the international order were understood after the Great War?and into the present. Beyond Versailles argues thatthis transformation of ideas was not the work of the treaty makers alone, but emerged in interaction with nationalist groups, anti-colonial movements, and regional elites who took up the rhetoric of Paris and made it their own. In shifting the spotlight from the palace of Versailles to the peripheries of Europe, Beyond Versailles turns to the treaties’ resonance on the ground and shows why the principles of the peace settlement meant different things in different locales. It was in places a long way from Paris?in Polish borderlands and in Portuguese colonies, in contested spaces like Silesia, Teschen, and Danzig, and in states emerging from imperial collapse like Austria, Egypt, and Iran?that notions of nation and sovereignty, legitimacy, and citizenship were negotiated and contested. “This is an excellent collected volume, well-conceived and very well written. . . . This is not at all a top-down history of the diffusion of ideas about national self-determination. Rather, it is an examination of the ways in which these ideas were taken up, re-fashioned, and reasserted at many levels to serve local and regional agendas, while at the same time influencing international debates about the meanings and possible implementations of self-determination.” —Pieter M. Judson, author of The Habsburg Empire: A New History

This book, first published in 1963, discusses the events of the Paris Peace Conference- the meeting of Allied victors following the end of World War I to set peace terms. Lord Hankey discusses the political and military terms and issues, as well as those of individual countries. This book is ideal for students of modern history.

This volume offers a number of perspectives on the Paris Peace Conference and its fallout, providing new insights into this crucial point in twentieth-century history from the perspectives of the Great Powers and the small countries struggling for independence, looking at the winners, the losers and the neutral parties. Each chapter offers a detailed examination of a case dating from 1919–1920, or from the aftermath of the Conference. It will be of interest to historians and students of international relations and political science, as well as anyone who wishes to gain a broader perspective on this crucial moment in twentieth-century history.

The year 1919 marks a high point in the world power and prestige of Western democracy. World War I was ended, and the victory belonged to the democratic states. Theirs was the sober task-and the unique opportunity-of formulating a settlement that would guarantee impartial justice and preserve the peace. Dr. Tillman examines here the documentary account of Anglo-American diplomatic relations during this critical period. He shows the interaction of personalities in both governments, the patterns of cooperation and conflict as they negotiated major issues of war and of peace, and the political repercussions in both England and America that led either to compromise or to defeat of some of the best purposes of the Versailles Treaty. Originally published in 1961. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Why does 1919 deserve further study and debate a hundred years later? What lessons for global history may we learn from the world order created at the end of the Great War? Drawing insight from the global turn of the past several decades that has forced us to reconsider the most important world events and processes since the French Revolution and especially the growing interest in World War I as a global conflict that extended far beyond the borders of Europe, this volume explores the global political ramifications of the treaties prepared at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919 by focusing on key topics: how the Paris Peace Conference re-shaped the geo-political configurations of the Middle East, the importance of transformations in Asia and particularly China in the immediate postwar period, the shifts in Southeastern Europe, new feminist movements in Central Europe, and the pre-history of neoliberalism. Read together, the papers demonstrate how the peace treaties signed in 1919 and 1920 marked a profound transformation on local, national, continental, and global scales.

This study chronicles U.S.-Habsburg relations from the early nineteenth century through the aftermath of World War I. By including both high-level diplomacy and analysis of diplomats' ceremonial and social activities, as well as an exploration of consular efforts to determine the citizenship status of thousands of individuals who migrated between the two countries, Nicole M. Phelps demonstrates the influence of the Habsburg government on the United States' integration into the nineteenth-century Great Power System and the influence of American racial politics on the Habsburg Empire's conceptions of nationalism and democracy.