Versailles 1919

The Versailles Settlement suffers a poor reputation, with the stubbornness of the peacemakers blamed for subsequent conflicts, not least the war that ravaged Europe only a generation later. The formation of the League of Nations and Wilson's emphasis on national self-determination - a principle whose application caused huge problems of both morality and practicality in the inter-ethnic kaleidoscope of Eastern and Central Europe - raised expectations amongst colonial peoples that remained unfulfilled. Despite its failure to secure a sustainable role for Germany in Europe, and the redrawing of borders across the Middle East whose ramifications last to this day, the settlement's important contributions to international law, minority protection and global disarmament were significant and are often overlooked. In this trenchant reassessment, and by setting the peace treaties of 1919-1923 in the their longer-term context, Alan Sharp argues that Versailles must be seen as part of a process in which the responsibility for the settlement's perceived failings, not least Europe's continuing interwar instability, must be shared more widely than among the peacemakers themselves.