Versailles 1919: A Centennial Perspective

The Versailles Settlement does not enjoy a good reputation: despite its lofty aim to settle the world's affairs at a stroke, it is widely considered to have set the world on the path to a second major conflict within a generation. Woodrow Wilson's controversial principle of self-determination amplified political complexities in the Balkans, and the war and its settlement bear significant responsibility for boundaries and related conflicts in the Middle East. Furthermore, other objectives of the peacemakers, such as global disarmament and minority protection, are yet to be realised. A century on, the settlement still casts a long shadow. This book, fully revised and updated with new material for the centenary of the Paris Paris Conferences at Versailles in 1919 sets the consequences - for good or ill - of the Peace Treaties into their longer term context and argues that the responsibility for Europe's continuing interwar instability cannot be wholly attributed to the peacemakers of 1919-23.