Paris, 1919: Six Months that Changed the World
Between January and July 1919, after "the war to end all wars," men and women from around the world converged on Paris to shape the peace. Center stage, for the first time in history, was an American president, Woodrow Wilson, who with his Fourteen Points seemed to promise to so many people the fulfillment of their dreams. Stern, intransigent, impatient when it came to security concerns and wildly idealistic in his dream of a League of Nations that would resolve all future conflict peacefully, Wilson is only one of the larger-than-life characters who fill the pages of this extraordinary book. David Lloyd George, the gregarious and wily British prime minister, brought Winston Churchill and John Maynard Keynes. Lawrence of Arabia joined the Arab delegation. Ho Chi Minh, a kitchen assistant at the Ritz, submitted a petition for an independent Vietnam.
For six months, Paris was effectively the center of the world as the peacemakers carved up bankrupt empires and created new countries. This book brings to life the personalities, ideals, and prejudices of the men who shaped the settlement. They pushed Russia to the sidelines, alienated China, and dismissed the Arabs. They struggled with the problems of Kosovo, of the Kurds, and of a homeland for the Jews.
The peacemakers, so it has been said, failed dismally; above all they failed to prevent another war. Margaret MacMillan argues that they have unfairly been made the scapegoats for the mistakes of those who came later. She refutes received ideas about the path from Versailles to World War II and debunks the widely accepted notion that reparations imposed on the Germans were in large part responsible for the Second World War.
A landmark work of narrative history, Paris 1919 is the first full-scale treatment of the Peace Conference in more than twenty-five years. It offers a scintillating view of those dramatic and fateful days when much of the modern world was sketched out, when countries were created--Iraq, Yugoslavia, Israel--whose troubles haunt us still.
Winner of the Samuel Johnson Prize, the PEN Hessell Tiltman Prize and the Duff Cooper Prize
624 pages, Paperback
First published September 6,2001
This edition
- Format
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624 pages, Paperback
- Published
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January 1, 2003 by Random House Trade
- ISBN
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9780375760525
- ASIN
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0375760520
- Language
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English
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David Lloyd George
David Lloyd George, 1st Earl Lloyd-George of Dwyfor, OM PC (1863 - 1945) was a British Liberal politician and statesman. His most important role came as Prime Minister during the First World War and immediately after. He led the Wartime Coalition Governme...
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Woodrow Wilson
Thomas Woodrow Wilson (1856 - 1924) was the 28th President of the United States, in office from 1913 to 1921. In his first term, Wilson successfully pushed a legislative agenda that included the Federal Reserve Act, Federal Trade Commission Act, the Clayt...
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Georges Clemenceau
Georges Benjamin Clemenceau (1841 - 1929) was a French statesman who led the nation in the First World War. A leader of the Radical Party, he played a central role in politics during the Third Republic. Clemenceau served as the Prime Minister of France fr...
About the author
-Wikipedia
