One hundred years after the Paris peace treaties, their role in reshaping the world order in the wake of the First World War is the subject of fresh interpretations. Moving away from previous debates about the sustainability of the Versailles peace and the treatment of Germany, historians have recently reassessed the international system that emerged from the Paris Peace Conference by examining new norms and structures such as the League of Nations (Susan Pedersen, Patricia Clavin), the appropriation of self-determination in colonial contexts (Erez Manela), or the changed legal framework of sovereignty (Leonard Smith). Building on this previous research, this timely volume provides case studies that complement these broader surveys by discussing local understandings and adaptations of the Paris system.
Rather than the conference negotiations, the book's focus is “the partly codified, but partly unwritten principles and promises of a new normative international regime” (1) established in Paris and their resonance all over the world. It shows how the redefinition of concepts such as sovereignty, legitimacy, or self-determination was the product of a dynamic process where the peacemakers were only one of the key actors, the others being local elites across Europe and beyond. The shift to local contexts, as the editors convincingly argue in the introduction, is not merely geographical, but also analytical: it illuminates how the principles and institutions of the Paris system were reshaped in their confrontation with specific regional or national agendas. This is a great subject and, moreover, one particularly suited to the edited volume format.
The invitation in the title to look “beyond Versailles” encompasses several meanings developed in the various chapters. First, the many contributions on east-central Europe and the Middle East broaden the usual geographical scope to take into account some of the other treaties (Saint-Germain, especially) and the subsequent conventions. More fundamentally, however, “beyond Versailles” is a call to explore the concrete implementation on the ground of the Paris ideas and decisions. This is particularly the case in the first two chapters, which focus on plebiscites, and also in Marcus Payk's chapter on Danzig. The treaties themselves left several territorial questions unresolved or soon to be challenged, which required many adjustments “beyond Versailles.” These adjustments revealed the discrepancy between the lofty principles and the pragmatic compromises with the messy (and often violent) reality of post-1918 Europe.
In both the case of Upper Silesia studied by Brendan Karch and that of Teschen studied by Isabelle Davion, plebiscites emerged as an expedient solution to resolve diplomatic failures, and not as the consecration of the self-determination ideal. Karch shows that this strategic attitude also characterized the voting campaign in which economic arguments and social tensions played a greater role in drawing voters to one state or the other than supposedly immutable national allegiances. If in Teschen the plebiscite was finally abandoned, it was for similarly contingent reasons, as the progression of the Polish-Soviet War and the fear of Bolshevism pushed the great powers to a quick settlement in favor of Czechoslovakia. According to Davion, this decision epitomized the “triumph of power politics” (51) in the post-Versailles world. The last chapter, by Marcus Payk, considers one of the most iconic symbols of the precarious new order: the Free City of Danzig. His analysis of the disputes surrounding the establishment of a Polish post office reveals the long shadow of contested sovereignty after Versailles. What might first appear as a minor local issue (repeated attacks on mailboxes, discussions over the building's location) became the subject of an international legal arbitration that engaged the very basis of political legitimacy and territorial sovereignty at the heart of the Paris system.
In this sense, the phrase “beyond Versailles” also points to the contradictions inherent to the ideal of nation-states promoted at the peace conference, which automatically linked a people to a territory and a state. Several essays question the notion of the nation-state as the “natural” unit of international relations by exposing the construction process at work, beyond the redrawing of borders. Jesse Kauffman thus investigates scientific research by German and Polish academics on contested regions. Experts in both countries deployed historical, ethnic, and geographical arguments to back national claims to a specific territory and make them fit within the new nation-state paradigm. Aimee Genell's chapter on the evolving legal status of Egypt shows the contingencies of the decisions made during and after the war and probes the various meanings placed behind the notions of independence and national sovereignty.
The following chapters, among the most innovative in the collection, extend these reflections by studying the redefinitions of citizenship. New categories were shaped by the principles articulated in the treaties, local preconceptions of nationality, imperial legacies, but also practical concerns. Jeffrey Culang considers the various drafts of Egypt's nationality laws in the 1920s to sketch the progressive legal construction of the “Egyptian national.” Nationality was increasingly conceived in restrictive terms aiming for homogeneity and leading to the creation of a majority ethnicity, with “Ottomans” pushed toward the status of foreigners. John Deak's essay examines nationality in the Republic of Austria through the fate of state employees. Civil servants assessed as “non-Germans” were not entitled to employment or pensions. The requirements were not based on residence (which was the case for citizenship) but on the 1910 census's language declaration and participation in national associations. These restrictions reflected both national ideals and pragmatic considerations: the small Austrian state could not afford to keep all the former employees of a large empire. Both chapters underline the shift to a nationally exclusive conception of citizenship and present vivid cases of individuals who had fit the mold of Habsburg or Ottoman citizenship and maybe even held state jobs, but who found themselves outside the categories of the new world of nations created by the Paris system.
Roberta Pergher's chapter perfectly dovetails with these analyses of the boundaries of inclusion and exclusion from the national community by comparing Italian policies in the colonial provinces of Tripolitania and Cyrenaica and the newly annexed northeast provinces. Whereas the fascist regime treated the allogeni (“foreign natives”) in former Habsburg regions as “lost Italians” who could undergo forced assimilation, it encouraged strict segregation in the colonies and pursued the nationalization of these territories through the resettlement of Italians. This nuanced contribution highlights fascism's complex relationship to the Paris principles: its conception of nationality reflected the reinforced prestige of the homogenous nation-state but without the protection of others that the new order was supposed to guarantee. In many ways, fascist Italy embodied some of the contradictions and challenges of the new order both on European soil and in the colonies.
Finally, two chapters explore the competing visions of internationalism based on self-determination that developed “beyond Versailles.” The most innovative is Timothy Nunan's essay, which provides an original perspective on Iran, a country often overlooked in accounts of World War I and the interwar era. Nunan analyzes the evolving debates on self-determination among Persian intellectuals from the wartime Brest-Litovsk treaty to post-1918 settlements, showing, for example, that the independence of Ukraine briefly appeared as a model. He reveals the currency in Iran's quest for independence of not only Paris principles, but also alternative visions developed by the Germans and the Bolsheviks. Here also, contingencies were more decisive for the outcome beyond the broken promises from foreign powers and the effective appropriation of the language of self-determination by local elites. Less original is Simões de Araújo's distinction between the diplomatic chancelleries of “Versailles” and the “Paris spirit” that flourished among the international intellectuals who came to the French capital during the peace conference. This chapter focuses on attempts to mobilize Black international networks for political enfranchisement both in the colonial world and in the United States, and the role of racial categories in Black intellectuals’ discussions of self-determination.
An important conclusion to be drawn from this volume as a whole is that local responses shaped the global meaning and legacy of self-determination as much as original decisions made by the peacemakers in Paris did. The contributions all showcase the variety of reinterpretations of the new norms of sovereignty and political legitimacy across the world. Some are more based on original primary research than others, but they form a coherent book that will prove invaluable to historians of the period or those interested in citizenship or international law. The relative imbalance in geographic coverage, although hardly avoidable in such collections, can be deplored: several essays deal with Poland and Egypt but none covers, for example, Hungary or the post-Ottoman mandates. It also would have been appreciable if the comparisons between the different (post-)imperial contexts had been more developed in the vein of Roberta Pergher's contribution. Her essay judiciously questions strict delimitations between colonial and European spaces and demonstrates the potential of more directly comparative approaches. The reader is left wanting to hear more about other places or wondering about more explicit connections, but that certainly testifies to the breadth and depth of the questions raised by the different chapters. Overall, this is a very welcome addition to the growing historiography on the aftermath of the Paris peace treaties. It fills a gap concerning more localized studies of the reception of the Paris system and will likely inspire further research.
