Versailles Treaty Excercise: An Excercise in the Versailles Treaty

I enjoyed the peace conference exercise we did on Friday. The inclusion of Germany and Japan would have made it more interesting, and probably much more complicated, but the situation and the goals of each country (or potential country) were still fairly accurate. The one aspect of the conference that wasn't covered was colonialism and imperialism. Although the territories involved fall outside of the boundaries of Europe, the existence of colonies or desire to establish colonies in those areas played their part in the relations between the countries. In Africa, Britain and France kept their colonial empires and split up the German colonies between themselves. There had already been tension between Britain and France (and Russia before the Revolution) over the fate of the Ottoman Empire during World War One, and once the war was over these problems became apparent during the peace conference, resulting in the division of the Middle East into British and French mandates and the disastrous consequences of such actions. In addition, the imperialist tendencies of the British and French undermined the peace process and made the League of Nations more than a bit hypocritical, contributing to its lack of power in the following decades. After World War One, imperialism was still a potent force.

David Fromkin's "A Peace to End All Peace" is an excellent book on the subject.