Book description
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 three
great powers - Woodrow Wilson, Lloyd George and Clemenceau - but
thousands of others came too, each with a different agenda. 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 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. 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,
struggled with the problems of Kosovo, or the Kurds, and of a homeland
for the Jews. The peacemakers, it has been said, failed dismally, and
above all failed to prevent another war. Margaret MacMillan argues that
they have been made scapegoats for the mistakes of those who came later.
They tried to be evenhanded, but their goals could never in fact be
achieved by diplomacy. Margaret MacMillan has a doctorate from St
Antony's College, Oxford, and is Provost of Trinity College and
Professor of History, University of Toronto.
