Rating: 
Summary: highly readable serious history
Review: I'm not normally a reader of history, but this book grabbed and held my attention. It provided, very enjoyably, a better background to the world than my recollections of high school and college studies.Unfortunately, either the writing or the research tailed off near the end. The section on the Middle East was less detailed and written with less impact. I still recommend this book as a good read.
Rating: 
Summary: Well Written Description of Critical Time
Review: MacMillan, a descendant of Lloyd George, has produced a well-written and well-researched account of the Peace Conference that followed the First World War and which resulted in the Treaty of Versailles. She illustrates the difficulties faced by the Allied Powers and, intentionally or not, their naivete in assuming that they could solve the deep-seated, long-festering problems of Europe and its various nationalities in such a brief period of time. Fascinating insights into the process and into the characters who made up the peace conference. She is objective with Lloyd George, her ancestor.
Rating:
Summary: War Winners, Peace Losers
Review: After WWI, the victors, mainly the U.S., Britain and France, had the responsibility to draw a new world order after the fall of the old one, at the Conference of Paris and other conferences thereafter. Possibly frustrating some readers, Margaret MacMillan rightly chose a thematic approach to the issues that the Big Three had to address during the Conference of Paris. MacMillan does a good job making the necessary connections between the chapters so that readers do not lose sight of the big picture. Each theme is so complex that it could be the subject of a book on its own. Paris 1919 can entice readers to know more about this period. MacMillan clearly shows the disconnect between a peace conference and happenings in the field. Despite the best intentions of the U.S., Britain and France, these countries were often inconsistent in the application of some key principles such as auto-determination and territory swaps, in their desire to reward the victors and punish the losers. Furthermore, the U.S., Britain and France tended to focus on short-term gains without considering long-term implications. Whoever needs convincing on this point can think about Palestine, Iraq, former Yugoslavia and Hungary, to name a few. Paradoxically, the Treaty of Lausanne that almost complelety wiped out the punitive Sevres Treaty (one of the aftermaths of the Conference of Paris) towards Modern Turkey has been the most successful and the most lasting of all the post-war treaties. Modern Turkey, one of the defeated nations at the end of WWI, successfully rebelled against the respective diktats of the victorious nations and humbled them one by one first on the battlefields and then in the diplomatic arenas. As George Curzon, a British imperial statesman, noted at the end of the conference in Lausanne: Hitherto we have dictated our peace treaties. Now we are negotiating one with an enemy who has an army while we have none, an unheard of position. Iraq is a current example of how difficult making peace can be compared to winning war. Fair elections, though possibly subpar if organized in the short term, could promote peace in Iraq. These elections could send a strong signal to Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds alike. To the Shiites by making clear that the unjust, past rule of the Sunni minority is over. Elections would help convince the Sunnis and Kurds that in a federal structure they will be their own masters in a wide range of matters. Of course, each community will have to guarantee the basic rights of minorities in their respective entities. The Coalition and Iraqis should find some very useful inspiration in the Belgian Constitution and its implementation laws. The Flemish-speaking majority has coexisted peacefully with the French and German-speaking minorities for many years in a federalist structure while deciding on its own destiny in a wide range of matters that do not interfere with the viability of the Belgian federation. Similarly, the French and German-speaking minorities can preside over their respective future in the same matters without endangering the existence of the Belgian federal state.
Rating: 
Summary: MacMillan makes sense out of a perplexing historical event.
Review: If nothing else, Margaret MacMillan's book on the on the World War I peace conference, "Paris 1919", shows exactly how complex, intricate, and convoluted the politics were that began the war and would dictate the post war actions. It's nothing short of amazing how deeply MacMillan probed in order to make the serpentine mess of the Paris Peach Conference accessible to the lay reader. Most people superficially know that the Treaty of Versailles imposed harsh penalties on Germany for World War I and that Hitler used the national anger towards this treaty as his means of rising to power. Of course, that is a gross oversimplification. In truth, the terms of the Treaty were not as harsh as people make them out to be and the language of the treaty made it essentially impotent in enforcing those terms. By the time Hitler had rendered the treaty null and void, Germany had only paid about 10 percent of the reparations they were scheduled to. Discoveries like this are present throughout "Paris 1919".
MacMillan emphasizes the flaws of the Council of Four and how that affected their ability to develop an effect peace accord. France and Italy were the most greedy and demanding members of that Council, yet Italy had never won a single battle and France was saved from utter disaster only by the intervention of the United States in 1917. The other two members flopped as well. British Prime Minister, David Lloyd George, frequent demonstrated his lack of political acumen and U.S. President Woodrow Wilson was both intractable with regards to his 'Fourteen Points' declaration and nebulous with his definition of what national 'self-determination' meant. With a leadership like this, it's hardly surprising that this treaty became such a debacle. On the other side, the Germans felt their dealings with the Council were quite suspect. For starters, many Germans even questioned if they had lost the war, given that no fighting had even occurred on the German soil prior to the armistice. Second, they felt that the punishments that were to be levied on their country should not be that severe, given that they had expelled the leadership responsible for the aggressive actions that started this war (including Kaiser Wilhelm, himself).
In the midst of the conflicts between the major powers, there were still many issues to contend with and fires that had yet to be put out. While the main body of fighting ended in 1918, different ethnic and geographic skirmishes connected to this war continued well into the 1920's. Turkey and Greece kept fighting for many years after World War I ended. Many of the Baltic States made their grabs for land and influence while also contending with the collapse of the empire of Austria-Hungary. Unnatural nations were built, like Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia. Much of this occurred outside the realm of the Council of Four's focus. Then, there is the little matter of the Russian Bolshevik threat and the Japan's Pacific land grab, both of which received scant attention from the peacemakers (except for a brief expeditionary force sent to Siberia with an unclear goals in trying to contain bolshevism).
This is just the tip of the iceberg with regards to the wealth of information MacMillan gives to the reader. At times, the material can seem ponderous, but this is due to some of the subject matter. There is also the tendency of MacMillan to jump around events and briefly get redundant. These are minor quibbles, though, when one considers the rich, brilliant narrative that the author has provided in helping to unlock the mysteries and myths surrounding the peace conference that eventually ensured, as one quipster put it, 'a just and lasting war'.
Rating:
Summary: Fascinating
Review: Fascinating stuff. I'm not normally a reader of non-fiction. This book kept my interest throughout. And sheds considerable light on the current political dynamics of Europe and the Near East.
Rating:
Summary: Roots of the modern world
Review: Macmillan's book should be required reading for anyone who wants to understand our world as it is today, now just how it was a century ago. Again and again, the origins of our world today, whether it be Kosovo and Bosnia, the continuing conflict over Palestine, the origins of Iraq, or events over the last 50-60 years in Asia, are informed by the peace conference in Paris in the first six months of 1919. This is not to say that Macmillan takes the easy way out and blames Versaille for everything that followed, in particular the rise of Nazi Germany; on the contrary, she is explicit that Versailles was nothing more than an excuse for Hitler and in its absence, another would have served as well. But what Macmillan does so well is to show that the roots of our problems today existed in 1919 and show how understanding how those problems were dealt with, for good or bad, after World War I tells us so much about how they can be dealt with, or at least understood, today. At the same time, this book is simply a good read. As another reviewer pointed out, this is a book about real people, the movers and shakers. Macmillan shows how those real persons, with all their foibles, shaped the great events of the time. It is through her sketches of these real people and their motivations, (not just Wilson, Lloyd George, and Clemenceau, but also their supporting cast: Balfour, Curzon, House, Foch, Ataturk, Bell, Lawrence, Faisel, etc. etc. etc.) that Macmillan has generated such a vivid, interesting, and readable tale of some of the most important events of the last century.
Rating: 
Summary: Good reading for high school level
Review: Was excited to read it but slightly dissapointed after finishing it. While the book seems well researched it lacks critical facts that need be understood before attempting to analyse the complexity of tribal Europe after WWI war. With the exception of the 4 big players many other descriptions are not anything more than caricatures. The author defends the results of the peace conferece while making little to no reference to the will of the people inhabiting the areas in question. This is needed to better understand the real impact of this major historical event on the rest of the 20th century.
Nevertheless this is a good starter for people that know little to nothing about the 20th century Europe and its complexities and want to know what questions they need ask from further readings.
Rating:
Summary: Into the bosom of proper History - Great Man History
Review: Phew. The thirty year long walk away from the fashion of social history, of history from below has finished. Macmillan trumps in the Peacemakers not only through her spellbindingly clear and absorbing prose, but from an energizing demonstration that the most informative history happens when Clio turns her pen onto the big characters, onto the giants who move mountains, the doers, not the talkers. You can't write a page turner on medieval French Peasants. You can't make a truly great book out of the diary entries of Victorian spies and narks. But, as the Peacemakers testifies, you can do it deftly, and brilliantly, with the flavoured correspondence and paper of Paris 1919. MacMillan's genius consists of locking into the reader's mind the giddy picture of three flawed, idiosyncratic men, Clemenceau, Wilson and Lloyd George, with Orlando, the Italian PM hanging onto their coats, somehow attempting to mould a lasting peace. They might be hunched over maps, arguing over nationalities as if disagreeing over the sharing of sweeties ; it's that pathos, that ultimate realization that these peacemakers were only men that Macmillan brings out. She makes us accept that Wilson was no King Utopus, but a anxiety prone Presbyterian with little more than the flimsy flag of his fourteen points to guide his deliberations. Clemenceau becomes a sad old fool to be pitied, not derided by cant undergraduate historians who tar him with catch all words such as "revengeful" and "hate-filled". The Clemenceau Macmillan describes is a sad thing, taking absurd amounts of pleasure in organising, entirely of his own accord, the actual signing ceremony of the Treaty of Versailles with the Germans. Lloyd-George too is no bumbler, but a politician being pulled from every side, by his own imperial delegation, by his party loyalties and by the Americans. In its infinite detail, The Peacemakers affirms the simple truth that historical change needs great figures, whose convictions are not political expedients, bartered willy-nilly but abiding philosophies. So, the figures who excel in MacMillan's study are Wellington Koo, the loyal Chinese representative, who was to spend a lifetime fighting against injustive, who believed in the parameters of international law and Artaturk, who was to turn Turkey into a land of economic prosperity, with a secular dynamic, at peace with its neighbours. And, like the best histories, MacMillan is unafraid to challenge. For her, conformist views of the Treaty of Versailles are wrong and off the mark. It was no harsh diktat. It was an eminently acceptable peace, which would have been despised by the German nation no matter what the peacemakers had written as to its terms. MacMillan goes a long way to piercing that wretched "war guilt clause" theory that the Big Three heaped all the guilt, because they were a vindictive lot, on Germany. The clause was, in fact, a piece of legalese, to justify reparations, its context warped by acidic German attacks and the writings of lazy historians. From a mechanical point of view, more maps would have been useful in such a detailed study as a great part of the text was spent discussing those intricate manipulations of borders that the peacemakers had the unenviable task of constructing. But generally, a wonderful read. The book's pitted, irascible ditties - such as the Parisian prostitutes complaining of a downturn in customers once the peacemakers shut of shop - to its commendable refusal to judge the principle players make this one history that we can all enjoy.
Rating:
Summary: Present at the Creation
Review: "Had I been present at the creation, I would have given some useful hints for the better ordering of the universe." So Alfonso X, King of Castile and Leon, as quoted in the epigraph to Dean Acheson's memoir of his time as U.S. Secretary of State just after World War II. The Acheson years were indeed "the creation" of a lot, but Alfonso might have done even better to be in Paris in the Spring of 1919, in time for the peace conference that sought to sort out the consequences of World War I. Perhaps the most vivid inference the reader carries away from Msrgaret MacMillan's crisply informative account of the peace negotiations is the sheer volume of what was accomplished. This is not necessarily a good thing: life might have been better for everyone if they had done less. But the impulse to bring home a finished product must have been overwhelming to take them as far as they did. Undertaking to cover so much within manageable limits, MacMillin has made an organizational choice that is not entirely satisfactory, although it is hard to think of a better: she has organized her material topically, instead of chronologically. This undoubtedly improves readability: far better to handle the Serbians (say) at a go, rather than having to remember where they were when last you saw them, after a gap of weeks or months. The cost is, of course, that it obscures the way in which the separate threads do impinge on each other: what happened to the Serbs on Tuesday may have something to do with what happened to the Palestinians on the Monday, just by way of example. MacMillan also exercises what must have been heroic self-denial when it comes to second-guessing or, indeed, to any kind of evaluation. She does suggest that she doesn't think the treaty is quite the cock-up that a lot of its detractors believe. But even here, she doesn't really press the point, leaving plenty of room for the interpretations of others (or perhaps for her own, in another book, later?). But it is easy to come up with particular questions which cry out for commentary. Why, to take just one example, did the Hungarians do so badly at the conference? One speculates it has a lot to do with internal difficulties at home during precisely the time when the Hungarians needed to make themselves felt at Versailles -- but this is more a guess than any kind of informed judgment. Even in the absence of any judgment on the part of the author, some conclusions seem to commend themselves. Most notably, I don't see how anyone could come away from this book with an enhanced opinion of Woodrow Wilson. We've grown up on the teaching that Wilson was an "idealist," and I suppose this is true. He was also rigid, sanctimonious, and crashingly uninformed. One finds oneself far more at ease with the cheerful cynicism of Clemenceau and Lloyd George. MacMillan has clearly covered a daunting array of original sources here, although perhaps not quite as much as you might guess. The vast majority of her sources seem to be English. Indeed, the only other language that I find in her primary-source list is French. English and French would surely be any researcher's firs two choices. But it certainly leaves room for others who work in German, Russian, Arabic or heaven knows how many other languges. All this is, of course, asking a lot, and it shouldn't detract from what Macmillan has accomplished: she has produced a brisk and readable narrative of what actually happened. We can leave it to Alfonso X to suggest how it might have gone differently.
Rating:
Summary: A great story well told, and then a letdown
Review: I agree wholeheartedly with the positive review others have given Ms MacMillan's book. Regrettably, her analysis and conclusions are superficial, and, although I hesitate to say it, cliches. Yes, indeed, the statesmen and their assistants and experts worked hard and well to redraw the maps of the world; that they ultimately failed in their principal objectives was not merely because other men subsequently made decisions that failed to enforce the treaty. Ms MacMillan writes at length about Great Britain's promises to everyone coming home to roost, whether to the Italians, the Japanese, the Arabs, the Jews, in fact, almost anyone who they perceived could help them win the war. Like the situation famously depicted in "The Producers" success proved their undoing. It was forseeable that the British Empire would become a hollow shell, most particularly in the Far
East, staffed by second-raters, that immediately collapsed when confronted the Japanese army half its size, a mere twenty-three years later. The French collapse in May, 1940, was even more dramatic, and in fact starred many of the same characters. Both the British and the French knew in 1919 that they lacked the resources to enforce a punitive peace, and yet they went ahead with a treaty that was bound to come back to bite them. In 1940, Germany came back with a ferocity that forced France to sue for peace in less than three weeks; and the British barely escaped losing their entire army. That should tell us something about the essential flaws in the Paris accord. Woodrow Wilson's dream, the League of Nations, proved to be a moderate success in the interlude between wars; but again, it provided mostly a forum for conducting routine diplomatic business. In short, Both Britain and France lost their nerve, and that was evident from the moment the fighting stopped. For their part, the Americans early on concluded that they had been played for suckers by the British and the French, and refused to participate in the League, or to assist in maintaining peace in Europe. The Neutrality Act and other restrictive legislation in the late 1930's was a direct consequence of attitudes that were formed by the American public after the war. That judgment was essentially correct, although the response inevitably created a much more dangerous situation than it might have been. Contrast the interwar period with the Cold War, which ended decisively in favor of the West. While some gloated over the Soviet Union's collapse, our government's primary response was to provide economic and political support to its fallen adversary. Could that have been done in 1919, maybe, but no one made an effort to even try. One might have thought that the British were smarter than that; but perhaps it took a virtual defeat to drive the point home.
|
