Level 21
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The Late 19th Century and WWI

The Peace Treaties

The postwar settlements that redrew the map of Europe after World War I.

Wikimedia Commons · John Christen Johansen · Public domain

60-Second Review

Express review

A condensed, point-by-point summary of the module, for reviewing right before a test or exam.

  1. The Paris Peace Conference and Wilson's Fourteen Points. The 1919 Paris conference, dominated by the "Council of Four," negotiated peace around Wilson's idealistic Fourteen Points.
  2. The Treaty of Versailles: territorial and military clauses. Versailles (June 28, 1919) stripped Germany of territory, colonies, and nearly all offensive military capacity.
  3. Reparations, the War Guilt Clause, and Keynes's critique. Article 231 assigned Germany war guilt and underpinned reparations that were repeatedly renegotiated and finally abandoned.
  4. The League of Nations: creation and collapse. The League, built into the Versailles Covenant, relied on collective sanctions without an army and collapsed in the 1930s.
  5. The dismemberment of Austria-Hungary: Saint-Germain and Trianon. Saint-Germain (1919) and Trianon (1920) reduced Austria and Hungary to small states and left millions of co-nationals abroad.
  6. The Ottoman collapse: Sèvres, the Turkish War of Independence, and Lausanne. Sèvres (1920) tried to dismember the Ottoman Empire but was overturned by Turkish victory, replaced by Lausanne (1923).
  7. New nation-states of central and eastern Europe. Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Yugoslavia emerged as independent multiethnic states amid unresolved minority questions.
  8. Mandates, plebiscites, American rejection, and the road to a new war. Mandates, selective plebiscites, U.S. withdrawal, and unresolved revisionism together undermined the postwar settlement.

This module continues after "The Russian Revolution" in the syllabus. If you haven't reviewed it yet, it may help set the context.

Key points

Visual module map

1The Paris Peace Conference and Wilson's Fourteen Points
2Reparations, the War Guilt Clause, and Keynes's critique
3The dismemberment of Austria-Hungary: Saint-Germain and Trianon
4The Ottoman collapse: Sèvres, the Turkish War of Independence, and Lausanne
5Mandates, plebiscites, American rejection, and the road to a new war

Alternative visual view: a simplified sequence of some of the module's key points, in their order within the syllabus.

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Final test

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Optional mini-games

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Review Flashcards

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Memory

Match each concept with its definition in as few attempts as possible.

Time Attack

Answer true or false statements before time runs out.

Chronological Order

Put the module's key points back in their original order.

Further reading

Bibliography and cited sources used to create this module.

  • Margaret MacMillan, Paris 1919: Six Months That Changed the World.
  • John Maynard Keynes, The Economic Consequences of the Peace.
  • Woodrow Wilson, "Fourteen Points" Address to the United States Congress, January 8, 1918.
  • Treaty of Versailles (1919), full text, The Avalon Project, Yale Law School, available at avalon.law.yale.edu.
  • Étienne Mantoux, The Carthaginian Peace, or the Economic Consequences of Mr. Keynes.
  • Carole Fink, Defending the Rights of Others: The Great Powers, the Jews, and International Minority Protection, 1878-1938.
  • E. H. Carr, The Twenty Years' Crisis, 1919-1939.
  • Zara Steiner, The Lights that Failed: European International History, 1919-1933.