The Modern Scholar - Six months that changed the world- the Pari

Six Months That Changed the World: The Paris Peace Conference of 1919



The world will never see another peace conference like the one which took place in Paris in 1919. For six months, the world?s major leaders?including Woodrow Wilson, president of the United States, David Lloyd George, prime minister of Great Britain, and Georges Clemenceau, prime minister of France?met to discuss the peace settlements which were to end World War One. They faced huge issues and, as the weeks went by, their agenda grew. Because Paris saw such a concentration of power, the world?s problems came before it and petitioners for political, social, and economic causes came to get a hearing.



The Peace Conference dealt with, among other things, winding up the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman Empires, punishing Germany, creating Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia and Iraq, setting up the League of Nations and the International Labour Organization, regulating international waterways and aviation, and feeding refugees. A great war had just ended and political and social structures were collapsing in parts of Europe and the Middle East. New borders had to be established. The peacemakers in Paris worked under great pressures, from their own public opinions and from the forces of revolutionary communism which had been set off by the Russian revolution of 1917 and ethnic nationalism. They made many decisions, many of which have been criticized ever since. Some have argued that the peace settlements of 1919 led directly to the outbreak of World War Two in 1939.



To understand what happened in Paris in 1919 is to understand our century. The burial requiems for the old world were sung there and the new made its uneasy start. Much of the world we live in today is shaped by decisions made all those years ago. The Peace Conference was about many things: punishing the defeated, to begin with, and rewarding the victors. It dismembered old states and created new ones. It was about disarmament, slavery and child labour. It was about Europe but it was also about the Middle East, the South Pacific, Africa and Asia. It was the first truly global international conference. Above all it was about building a better world. Can there be a peaceful and just international order? The question is still with us today.



Lecture 1 The Paris Peace Conference of 1919

Lecture 2 The Peace Conference Meets in Paris

Lecture 3 New Forces in International Relations

Lecture 4 The League of Nations and Mandates

Lecture 5 Germany

Lecture 6 New Nations

Lecture 7 Poland

Lecture 8 Italy

Lecture 9 Greece and Turkey

Lecture 10 Palestine and the Jewish Homeland

Lecture 11 The Arab Middle East

Lecture 12 Germany?s Allies: Bulgaria, Austria, and Hungary

Lecture 13 The Far East

Lecture 14 The End





Professor Margaret MacMillan, University of Toronto

Biography:



Margaret MacMillan is the Provost of Trinity College and Professor of History at the University of Toronto. She was an undergraduate at Trinity and did an Honours B.A. in History. Her graduate work was at the University of Oxford where she did a B.Phil. in Politics and a D.Phil. on the British in India. She was a member of the History Department at Ryerson from 1975 to 2002 and also served as chair of the Department. Her areas of expertise include Asian history, modern European civilization and international relations. She teaches a fourth-year seminar on the Cold War in the University of Toronto?s International Relations Program. She was editor of the International Journal between 1995 and 2002. She has served on the boards of the Metropolitan Toronto Reference Library and the Ontario Heritage Foundation and is currently on the boards of the Canadian Institute of International Affairs, the Churchill Society for Parliamentary Democracy and the Atlantic Council of Canada. She has written numerous articles and book reviews for both scholarly and non-scholarly publications. Her books include Women of the Raj (1988) and Peacemakers: the Paris Conference of 1919 and Its Attempt to End War (2001), published in the United States as Paris 1919: Six Months that Changed the World (2002). In the United Kingdom, the book won the Duff Cooper Prize, the PE/Hessell-Tiltman prize for history and the Samuel Johnson prize for nonfiction, and in the United States the Silver Medal in the Council on Foreign Relations Arthur Ross Book Award. Her most recent book, co-edited with Francine McKenzie, is Parties Long Estranged: Canada and Australia in the Twentieth Century (2003). Dr. MacMillan appears frequently in the media commenting on both history and current international affairs.





Here's some Amazon links to her books:



1. Paris 1919 : Six Months That Changed the World



http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0719562333/qid=1122967376/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/104-4179047-2107923?v=glance&s=books




2. Peacemakers : The Paris Peace Conference of 1919 and Its Attempt to End War



http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0719562376/qid=1122967431/sr=1-5/ref=sr_1_5/104-4179047-2107923?v=glance&s=books




3. Women of the Raj



http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0500278989/qid=1122967431/sr=1-2/ref=sr_1_2/104-4179047-2107923?v=glance&s=books




4. Parties Long Estranged: Canada and Australia in the Twentieth Century



http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0774809752/qid=1122967431/sr=1-3/ref=sr_1_3/104-4179047-2107923?v=glance&s=books