#15 Victors and Spoils:  Notorious Peace Conferences

Wednesday – 10:00 a.m.                                                  Winter Term 2009 (14 weeks)
Coordinator:  Alton Leib                                                  Co-coordinator:  Lee Zlotnick

Course Description
As Napoleon was defeated, the victors joined forces at the Congress of Vienna [1814-1815] to restore the old regimes he had destroyed and to crush further attempts at revolution, or even reform.  They disregarded the feelings of subject minorities, but their efforts brought stability of a sort to Europe---- there was no general war there for a century. 
When World War I ended, many believed or hoped that another century of peace was assured by Woodrow Wilson’s advocacy of self-determination for subject peoples, open diplomacy, and a League of Nations.  However, the 1919 Paris Peace Conference imposed decisions and redrew the maps of Europe and the Middle East in ways that contributed to even greater disasters.
Seeing these conferences through the eyes of their leading figures will afford
an easy and entertaining way to understand the arc of modern European history.
We will view the Vienna and Paris conferences as the dramatic and often bizarre events they were, and come to know the players (Metternich, Talleyrand, Tsar Alexander, Wilson, Clemenceau, Lloyd George, Lawrence of Arabia) as fascinating, idiosyncratic people who failed in pursuit of noble goals.

Topics
Jan. 5              Prelude:  Treaty of Westphalia (1648) ends the Thirty Years War; general                              European Settlement; doom of Holy Roman Empire - Germany made a                                  power vacuum.  150 years later, Napoleon destroys the old regimes,                           creating new and shifting alliances by conquest and marriage, and then is                          defeated.

Jan. 12           The Congress of Vienna:  Intrigue, massive spying, double-dealing and
blackmail during more than a year of costume balls, feasts, and other lavish
entertainments; Napoleon escape from Elba and final defeat at Waterloo.
Metternich--  Kissinger’s role model for realpolitik and the Tsar’s love rival.

Jan. 19           France’s Talleyrand---Napoleon’s diplomatic genius, then betrayer–
principled upholder of legitimacy or “a silk stocking full of merde?”

Jan. 26           Russia’s Tsar Alexander – obstinate and unstable; self-styled enlightened                              democrat and essential tyrant; advocate of Polish freedom and subjugation.               Pivotal roles of Prussia and Saxony.

Feb. 4             Castlereagh and Wellington - British goals and tactics;
Neutrals and buffers - Netherlands and Switzerland.

Feb. 11           German and Italian unification - Bismarck; Cavour and Garibaldi

Feb. 18           World War I diplomacy - Setting the stage for the Paris Peace Conference:
Secret treaties to bribe Italy to join the allies and between France and
Great Britain to divide up the Middle East; Wilson’s Fourteen Points,
the Balfour Declaration and the Russian Revolution.

The Paris Peace Conference (1919)
Feb 25            Woodrow Wilson’s messianic vision, ignorance and lack of preparation; self- determination surrendered for League of Nations

March 4          Lloyd George, the peace aims of Great Britain; the peace aims of its
Empire; re-drawing the map of the Middle East into “mandates”, not
colonies; the role of Lawrence of Arabia; ambivalence about German
reparations; support for Greek expansion

March 11        Clemenceau and French war aims; attempted assassination; reparations
and border issues; dividing up the Middle East per the secret Sykes-Picot     Agreement

March 18        Italy’s efforts to acquire more than it had been secretly promised
to enter the war; D’Annunzio and “Fiume o Morte!”; Japan’s acquisition of
German Pacific islands and outrage over racial exclusion laws;
response of Australia  and New Zealand

March 25    Nations created at the Paris Conference:  Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia
and Poland - The Good, the Bad and the Ugly     

April 1   Post-War conflict between Greece and Turkey – the Treaty of Sevres;
alliance between Lloyd George and Greek Prime Minister Venizelos; the rise of Kemal Attaturk,
defeat of Greece and the Treaty of Lausanne

April 8    Aftermath:  The Colonial office and the Middle East under Churchill and Lawrence;
consequences of installing non-native rulers in Middle Eastern “mandates” lacking ethnic coherence
; the “stab in the back”, “mutilated peace” and the rise of Hitler and Mussolini

Core Books
Nicolson, Harold.  The Congress of Vienna.  Viking 1936.  ([paperback)
McMillan, Margaret.  Paris 1919.  Random House, 2003. (paperback)

Note:  “Vienna 1814" by David King is full of the scandalous doings and lurid gossip, but is badly written

Pre-Meeting:  Wednesday December 10, 2008 , 10:00 a.m.