Between January and July 1919, after the war to end all wars, men and women from all over the world converged on Paris for the Peace Conference. At its heart were the leaders of the three great powers - Woodrow Wilson, Lloyd George and Clemenceau. Kings, prime ministers and foreign ministers with their crowds of advisers rubbed shoulders with journalists and lobbyists for a hundred causes - from Armenian independence to women's rights. Everyone had business in Paris that year - T.E. Lawrence, Queen Marie of Romania, Maynard Keynes, Ho Chi Minh. There had never been anything like it before, and there never has been since. For six extraordinary months the city was effectively the centre of world government as the peacemakers wound up bankrupt empires and created new countries. They pushed Russia to the sidelines, alienated China and dismissed the Arabs, 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; failed above all to prevent another war. Margaret MacMillan argues that they have unfairly been made scapegoats for the mistakes of those who came later. They tried to be evenhanded, but their goals - to make defeated countries pay without destroying them, to satisfy impossible nationalist dreams, to prevent the spread of Bolshevism and to establish a world order based on democracy and reason - could not be achieved by diplomacy. This book offers a prismatic view of the moment when much of the modern world was first sketched out.
| ||||||||||||||||||
Book Description
Editorial Reviews
Review
"Lively, fascinating and provocative." -- Choice 20030601 "Engagingly written and well-researched" -- Stand To Magazine 20030401 " Margaret MacMillian deservedly won the 2002 Samuel Johnson Prize for this book that has been reprinted in timely fashion" -- Belgravia 20030603 "Deserving winner of the Samuel Johnson Prize, this pacey and racy account of the statesmen who reshaped the world at the Paris conference of 1919 puts the dash back into diplomatic history" -- THE INDEPENDENT Magazine 20030419 "Every peacemaker sent to determine the future of Iraq should regard it as an essential piece of luggage" -- THE GUARDIAN 20030412 "Enthralling ... detailed, fair, unfailingly lively ... full of brilliant pen-portraits." Allan Massie. -- Daily Telegraph 20030412 "Exactly the sort of book I like: written with pace and flavoured with impudence based on solid scholarship." -- Sunday Times 20030412 "A fascinating piece of history." Tony Blair. -- Guardian 20030412 "Magnificent ... she gives a full, colourful and erudite description of the participants and their motives." Simon Heffer. -- Literary Review 20030412 'This is how to write history...so readable that it appeals as much to laymen who have never read a word of history as it does to specialists in the field' - Dan Snow ('My Six Best Books' column). -- Daily Express 20060414 'A terrific piece of writing ... full of wonderful insights and portraits of the statesmen and women of the day' (listed among 'My Six Best Books' by Chris Patten) -- Chris Patten, Daily Express 20060414
About the Author
Margaret MacMillan has a doctorate from St Antony's College, Oxford, and is Provost of Trinity College and Professor of History, University of Toronto. Her previous books include Women of the Raj and Canada and NATO.
Product Details
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
|
More About the Author
Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.
Customer Reviews
|
Share your thoughts with other customers:
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Masterly,
By
This review is from: Peacemakers (Paperback)
A superb and very readable account of the policies and personalities of those who concocted the peace settlement at the end of the First World War. The general story will be known to most who have an interest in the period, but here we have details that will be known to only a few. The pen portraits of Woodrow Wilson, Lloyd George and Clemenceau are excellent and flesh out the picture that many readers will already have of them, but so are those of participants the names of whom figure in few text-books, like Billy Hughes, the coarse prime minister of Australia, or Prince Saionji and Baron Makino of the Japanese delegation, to mention just a few. And there is a wonderful set piece near the end about the closing scenes at Versailles.
The negotiations and the differences between the peace makers are set out in lucid detail, together with the nicely ironic comment, often as asides in brackets. The author pilots us skilfully through the complications of the Balkans, and only the treatment of the admittedly tortuous developments in Syria and Mesopotamia (Iraq) are a little on the stodgy side. There are model succinct summaries of the past history of the areas under discussion, and equally succinct ones of what happened to them after the peace treaties, right up to the present day. As at the Congress of Vienna in 1815, there is constant mistrust among the peace makers: France did not want a strong Italy; Britain (looking back to the rivalry before the Entente of 1904) distrusted France; Italy constantly tried to thwart the new Yugoslavia and was in competition with Greece. It should be no surprise to any student of politics that double standards were constantly in evidence: statesmen who had got what they wanted described the demands of others as `greedy' (except, unfortunately, for Lloyd George who was bewitched by Venizelos of Greece, possibly the greediest of the lot). There was the sordid haggling over the allocation of reparation payments from Germany, with contempt being shown to little Belgium's claim for a fair share of them. The high-minded and high-handed Wilson simply overruled the majority vote in one of the commissions that the Covenant of the League should include a racial equality clause proposed by the Japanese. He then compensated the Japanese with another betrayal of his own principles by accepting the Japanese claim on Chinese Shantung. Macmillan is particularly illuminating on the Japanese. They were initially included in the Supreme Council which made all the decisions, but were then simply dropped. The service chiefs in Britain and the United States were already contemplating that one day they would have to go to war with Japan - not altogether surprising, since Japan was clearly already set on expansion. But the Supreme Council often gave only cursory attention to areas outside of Europe, and did not listen carefully to what experts could tell them. This accounts to a large extent to the shambles they made in the Middle East. The consequences, as far as the Arabs were concerned, took some time to show themselves; but the stupidity of the peace makers' dealings with Turkey proper were quickly exposed by the success of Kemal Ataturk, who swiftly destroyed the Treaty of Sèvres which had been imposed on the Sultan. Only Clemenceau wanted the League of Nations to have `teeth': he saw it first and foremost as an organization to prevent future German aggression. The other members of the Supreme Council were not prepared to sacrifice any of their sovereignty; and even President Wilson, for whom the League was of greater importance than anything else, knew that Congress would never stand for giving the League real power and did not press for it. Macmillan concludes that Germany was actually better placed after the Versailles Settlement than it had been in 1914: Poland was now a barrier against Russia, and in the South East there were only small states instead of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. This is presumably what Andrew Roberts had in mind when he commended the book as `splendidly revisionist and daringly politically incorrect'. Splendid though this book is, I can see only one other sentence, on p. 476, that would merit that description, and it is one of only two sentences in the book with which I disagree: if you read article 231, you can hardly say, as she does, that this has been inaccurately described as `the war guilt clause'. My other disagreement is that the Sykes-Picot Agreement had not promised Palestine to the French (p.427): only the Upper Galilee. The rest was to be under joint British-French-Russian protection. I cannot fully agree with the author's conclusion, which might perhaps be called revisionist. So many parts of the Peace Settlement left time-bombs, many of which detonated in the Nazi period and some of which (Kosovo, Iraq, Israel-Palestine) are still detonating today. Some of the advice which the peace makers received, but ignored, warned them of the dangers. But Macmillan thinks that the main responsibility for allowing them to detonate lies with the decisions taken or not taken by the next generation, not with the peace makers: `They tried, even cynical old Clemenceau, to build a better order. They could not foresee the future and they certainly could not control it. That was up to their successors.' These very few criticisms aside, I have nothing but praise for this fine achievement.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Excellent primer for 20th century history students,
This review is from: Peacemakers (Paperback)
Margaret Macmillans "Peacemakers" is the book I wished had been written when I was a student (or as I covered the Peace Treaties year after year with my examination students beginning their exam courses). It is valuable on two levels. Firstly there is the obvious: a study of the drafting and setting up of the Peace treaties that ended the First World War. Macmillan writes in a clear readable manner, portraying the key participants, Wilson, Clemenceau & Lloyd George as very human characters, grappling with enormous issues but also showing up their flaws. Wilson for example, spending too much time on the creation of the League and failing to focus on the inconsistencies of Versailles re his 14 Points (especially concerning the German minorities left in Poland & Czechoslovakia). Equally his failure to see the need for US all party support dooms the settlement to US rejection.
The book also shows clearly the emergence of the Anglo-Saxon alliance that is to develop as the 20th century progressed. Most of all it presents the three as facing a novel situation: no real precedents; the sudden German collapse presented no time to prepare for the peace; the pressure of public opinion limited the freedom of action and forced some decisions the three knew would cause future problems. Additionally they were hemmed in by a desire to prevent the further growth of a feared new ideology adopted by their earlier ally - Bolshevism. It is clear the ending of World War 2 was to be very different, much as a consequence of these 1919 issues: no big postwar conference, no deputations from smaller nations. Rather 1945 produced a peace that the Great Powers could realistically enforce on their own, and in their own interests. But perhaps the real value of the book is on another level. It is an excellent primer for the 20th century. Coverage is gloabal as Macmillan goes into detail about the creation and future problems not just of eastern & central Europe but also the Far and Middle East. For Example Japan's concerns over the inclusion of a League principle to guarantee racial equality reveal the depth of unease the west (and especially the white Dominions) had in dealing with a newly industrialised & strong Japan. There is also a clear explanation of the role the Great War played in the rise of an expansionist Japan in China which is not always dealt with in western textbooks. My only reservation is that perhaps like the Peacemakers Macmillan may have ignored the Germans. The full footnotes, bibliography and listing of unpublished sources lack any in German indicating a reliance only on what has appeared in English. Nonetheless, this is a key resource for those beginning courses on 20th century history, making clear the origin of what become the dominant problems and concerns that mark out the century's progression, or in many cases, regression.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Why the Versailles Treaty was an abject failure,
This review is from: Peacemakers (Paperback)
This was required reading for a graduate course in the history of American military affairs. In Margaret MacMillan's impressive book Paris 1919: Six Months That Changed the World her thesis was that many of the monumental problems facing the Allied peacemakers at the treaty negotiations were never settled; such as ignoring national ambitions of Allied colonial possessions. For example, "...in Africa they carried on the old practice of handing out territory to suit the imperialist powers. In the Middle East, they threw together peoples, in Iraq most notably, who still have not managed to cohere into a civil society." In addition, she showed how history came full circle for Wilson, who had turned his back on his progressive supporters during the war. Progressive editors repaid the sentiment by turning their backs on him by writing editorials repudiating Wilson's "coveted" peace treaty, because it was too punitive for Germany and did nothing to eradicate colonialism. "As good pragmatists, they [progressives] now withdrew their allegiance from an idea--the Wilsonian idea of a new, liberal world order--that had failed to be realized." Like other historians, MacMillan observed that with the Senate's denial of ratifying the Versailles Peace Treaty, America's foreign policy was ultimately changed by the Great War experience by first causing America to take a preeminent role on the world stage, and then by reversing course when Americans chose to become isolationists while the ink was still wet on the treaty. MacMillan correctly concluded that the fault of the Versailles Treaty's failure to become ratified in the Senate belonged to Wilson, who was too stubborn to accept even minor changes that would have placated enough senators to pass it. "Wilson could have built his own coalition. The Republicans only had a majority of two in the Senate and he could have won over the moderates among them by accepting some reservations."
Recommended reading for anyone interested in American history.
Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
|
|
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Suggested Tags from Similar Products(What's this?)Be the first one to add a relevant tag (keyword that's strongly related to this product).
|
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
Listmania!
So You'd Like to...
Look for Similar Items by Category
- Books > History > Europe
- Books > History > Military > World War I
- Books > Politics & Social Sciences > Politics
