tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12510685003419454102024-03-13T15:20:57.742-05:00Design of a Violent CenturyBlogging the Paris Peace Conference Ninety Years LaterHunt Tooleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09765258125246901690noreply@blogger.comBlogger47125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1251068500341945410.post-46694192593541586012016-06-12T22:00:00.005-05:002016-06-12T22:00:48.075-05:00If you are reading this series of blog entries on the Paris Pear which I wrote some years ago, you are probably reading and researching the war and its aftermath in other ways too. This is wonderful, and certainly fulfilling as we plow through the Centennial of this massive event.
But if you want to take a break in the action (and some of you may well have battle fatigue at this point!), I wouldHunt Tooleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09765258125246901690noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1251068500341945410.post-10097460582931223082014-06-28T12:47:00.000-05:002014-06-28T12:47:02.163-05:00June 28 A Century Ago
Franz Ferdinand was a difficult person in many ways. Dark. Angry at times. He became heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary when his cousin, Rudolf (whose tutor was the father of the Austrian School of Economics, Carl Menger) died in an apparent murder-suicide with his young mistress in 1889. The death of Rudolf was only one of many tragedies in the Habsburg family in the two generations leading Hunt Tooleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09765258125246901690noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1251068500341945410.post-85218156802895557032009-10-02T15:28:00.007-05:002010-01-08T22:45:17.260-06:00Border Issues and the Paris Peace--Ninety Years AgoWe will be doing quite a bit more of looking into the border changes upon which the Paris Peace decided. Much German territory was given to neighboring states. In several cases, however, the local people were given a hand in the decision--even though these lands represent a small percentage of all the territorial changes on Germany's borders. Today, I want to get this issue on the board by Hunt Tooleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09765258125246901690noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1251068500341945410.post-32046386619467429892009-09-27T20:43:00.002-05:002009-09-27T20:47:05.505-05:00Diktat III--Imposing the Treaty on the Republic<!--StartFragment--> When I left off speaking of the "Diktat," I mentioned that it took the new republic a few historical moments to absorb what was happening. I would like to expand on that point for a few moments. Let us discuss just was going on politically in the new republic that received the treaty conditions in late spring and was being coerced into signing by mid-summer. Back to the Hunt Tooleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09765258125246901690noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1251068500341945410.post-89977237613236427862009-09-08T16:40:00.002-05:002009-09-08T16:52:53.052-05:00Where did August go?OK, here I am, guilty again (but at least not guilty of the war!).Probably any readers have given up on me, but I have--he said boldly--not given up on myself!Actually, there is much good historical material pertaining to August 1919. And more about September. So in the days to come, I intend to finish the consideration of War Guilt, talk about the King-Crane Commission a good bit (and hence Hunt Tooleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09765258125246901690noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1251068500341945410.post-40615744320369827222009-07-28T20:40:00.004-05:002009-07-28T20:49:33.765-05:00Diktat II<!--StartFragment--> We continue here a consideration of the "dictated" nature of the Versailles Treaty. Many scholars of the issue today, perhaps most, will bridle at descriptions of the Treaty as dictated. Indeed, since the period of historiographical "revisionism" that began even before the Peace was concluded (see the NY Times article of May 10, 1919 on the conference, for example), Hunt Tooleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09765258125246901690noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1251068500341945410.post-12840467831765410542009-06-28T19:51:00.003-05:002009-06-28T20:05:59.451-05:00Diktat IToday ninety years ago, the Versailles Treaty was signed in the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles. Ninety-five years ago today, a Bosnian Serb, Gavrilo Prinzip, assassinated the Archduke Franz Ferdinand to precipitate the crisis that led a few weeks later to the unthinkable war whose settlement was supposed to be provided by the Paris Peace. That was some five years! A half-decade that was itselfHunt Tooleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09765258125246901690noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1251068500341945410.post-66899549261970995572009-06-27T15:31:00.005-05:002009-06-27T15:42:23.755-05:00Framework of Events: May/June at the Paris Peace ConferenceOK, so I have bitten off more than I can chew! But that doesn't mean that we can't continue exploring important aspects of the "peace" year and even beyond. To those who are still reading, many thanks for your patience in waiting for the recent posts. In the coming days, we will be dealing with the German territorial issues, especially North Schleswig, and Upper Silesia, as they were embodied Hunt Tooleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09765258125246901690noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1251068500341945410.post-78539390021233524242009-06-17T15:34:00.004-05:002009-06-17T15:49:19.728-05:00Self-Determination: A Deeper Look<!--StartFragment--> Self-determination, as we have seen, became a primary theme of the Paris Peace Conference. I would like to examine this conception here in a bit more depth. Even before American entry into the war, Woodrow Wilson had introduced into the public discourse on the territorial aspects of the war the expression "self-determination," not a new phrase in itself, but an old Hunt Tooleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09765258125246901690noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1251068500341945410.post-9493785624633652612009-06-17T15:32:00.000-05:002009-06-17T15:34:02.069-05:00Here We Go Again<!--StartFragment--> Apologies to any who might be following my attempt to keep up with the Paris Peace Conference. I am losing ground! But I had to undertake a very specific research trip at this very specific time, and what with the end of the semester, my travel, etc., I have been remiss in keeping up. Well, no use crying over blog entries unwritten. Indeed, my research pertained to Hunt Tooleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09765258125246901690noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1251068500341945410.post-13641738295532032982009-05-21T17:20:00.003-05:002009-05-21T18:50:00.498-05:00Finals, Flu, and Some Developments on SchleswigOK, so I have missed some of my anniversaries. Unfortunately, working with about two dozen term papers and then being overwhelmed with finals, an especially sick group of test-takers (no swine flu that I know of, but several hospitalized with lung infections, etc.), and some severe cases of senioritis has taken its toll.By the way, my college, Austin College, is in Texas, though nowhere close toHunt Tooleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09765258125246901690noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1251068500341945410.post-22395821508487522692009-05-05T08:11:00.004-05:002009-05-05T23:32:43.679-05:00Yeats, Violence, and "The Second Coming"Yeats was not at Paris, but maybe this would be a good time not only for me to get back on the line, but also to introduce the theme of a broader cultural critique of the age of the "The Peace."As we have seen in the last post (pun accidental, but there it is, at least for all who are familiar with the famous British bugle call), the violence of the war had lessened in its horrifying intensity Hunt Tooleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09765258125246901690noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1251068500341945410.post-31669684745780485362009-04-23T07:32:00.003-05:002009-04-23T07:35:38.850-05:00Peace.... Isn't It Wonderful!: Violent Europe, Spring 1919<!--StartFragment--> Let me just list a few events outside Paris in these busy peacemaking days. March 3—Freikorps units continue their pacification of "leftists" and resume "force and awe"-type tactics in Berlin. Twenty-four "radicals" are killed in Berlin in early March with more to come. In Latvia, other "volunteer" fighters under German General von der Goltz began an advance on Riga, Hunt Tooleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09765258125246901690noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1251068500341945410.post-20418943358791027502009-04-15T21:17:00.002-05:002009-04-15T21:19:59.951-05:00A Word On Upper SilesiaI want to say something now about German perceptions of what was going on in Paris, especially in connection with the coal-producing territory of Upper Silesia. Remember that no Germans were allowed visas to be in any part of France during the conference, except at the few occasions when the German delegation was invited to come. At the same time, the Germans were not just sitting on their Hunt Tooleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09765258125246901690noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1251068500341945410.post-7056907947243555142009-04-05T22:09:00.000-05:002009-04-05T22:09:11.117-05:00"No Further Along Than Almost a Month Ago"
Colonel House looked over his previous diary entries on April 2, 1919, perusing them for preparation to be sealed and put in a safe deposit box. He thought that this piece of his diary of events at Paris would make him seem a "false prophet": "At the beginning of this last reading, I predicted an earlhy peace, even thought we might be ready as early as March 20 to ask the Germans Hunt Tooleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09765258125246901690noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1251068500341945410.post-52905710914518180482009-03-29T17:09:00.002-05:002009-03-29T17:12:27.365-05:00An Afrikaner at Paris: Jan Smuts, part oneTalk about a life trajectory. From a farm in southern Africa to a statue in Parliament Square in London.Jan Christiaan Smuts was born in 1870 to a family of sturdy Calvinist Afrikaner farmers in Cape Colony (in the territory of the modern state of South Africa). Southern Africa was technically under the control of the British, the British having acquired the coastal area of southern Africa as aHunt Tooleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09765258125246901690noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1251068500341945410.post-64460116637608728442009-03-28T16:49:00.000-05:002009-03-28T16:49:36.584-05:00Note to SelfNote, part 1. Next time you think about committing yourself in public to do a year-long blogging project on a near daily basis... stop! Drink some tea! Calm down! Ask hard questions of yourself. Let's think about this for a while...
Note, part 2. If I am finding it hard, some days, to get up enthusiasm to deal with the Peace Conference, what must those folks inHunt Tooleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09765258125246901690noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1251068500341945410.post-57401772579860841532009-03-20T15:43:00.013-05:002009-03-20T16:12:20.263-05:00A Primer in Austrian and Habsburg HistoryWe need to talk about Austria-Hungary. The Dual Monarchy, as Austria-Hungary was sometimes called, was the most recent constitutional shape of the Habsburg Empire, based on what was for the house of Austria the tumultuous changes of 1866/67.
Actually, the Habsburg Empire was intimately connected with the history of Central Europe and Europe as a whole for hundreds of years. Hunt Tooleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09765258125246901690noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1251068500341945410.post-90246428659606241782009-03-16T17:25:00.003-05:002009-03-16T23:13:59.101-05:00How Time Flies!Well, it does. I have been away from the blog, traveling to and attending a conference, working on a couple of papers, and just generally taking some time off from the grind of the Paris 1919. But the guys couldn't do that ninety years ago. Well, Wilson seemed to. He jumped on board the USS George Washington (the 1919 version of Air Force One) and steamed to the United States in mid-February.Hunt Tooleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09765258125246901690noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1251068500341945410.post-86071194050460049462009-03-08T22:14:00.005-05:002009-03-08T22:21:31.603-05:00Who's in Charge Over There?
Back to Paris to meet Col House the only man the Pres ever listened too,.... Will Rogers
As Woodrow Wilson steams back toward Europe, we should think briefly about his intentions as to what should happen in Paris while he was gone, at least his intentions as to leadership in peace matters.
Lloyd George had gone home for a short stay about the time that Wilson departed, but he Hunt Tooleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09765258125246901690noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1251068500341945410.post-8985409436332540892009-03-01T14:52:00.000-06:002009-03-01T14:52:51.794-06:00A Multitude of ProblemsSo much was happening at once, in these days ninety years ago.
Woodrow Wilson was still in Washington trying to figure out how to get congressional support for his peace plans. Not much luck.
At the Conference, the hard work of hearing claims and working out positions within committees goes on.
Subjects discussed from Monday, February 24, the day after Wilson landed in the USA:&Hunt Tooleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09765258125246901690noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1251068500341945410.post-91533039006311900542009-02-26T20:17:00.003-06:002009-02-26T20:26:08.621-06:00Who's in Charge Here?
Of course there was a lot of dissatisfaction against the Pres going, Mostly by people whom he did not take along,... I was in favor of his going because I thought it would give us a chance to find out who was Vice President, But it Dident,... Will Rogers
The Cowboy Philosopher made a good point: who held down the fort at home during those six months when Wilson was away?
True, the Hunt Tooleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09765258125246901690noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1251068500341945410.post-69253618756975583382009-02-24T22:51:00.006-06:002009-02-25T07:43:17.917-06:00Will Rogers on the Peace ConferenceWill Rogers was a enormous American presence by the end of World War I, known both for his vaudeville act and the movies which he had just begun making. His monologue, of course, consisted chiefly of commentary on current events (a commentary usually accompanied by lariat tricks, with his faithful pony on hand). By the end of the war, he had also begun some writing that would turn eventually Hunt Tooleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09765258125246901690noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1251068500341945410.post-69408135450464412312009-02-23T21:15:00.003-06:002009-02-25T07:58:38.356-06:00Wilson's Return to the United StatesNinety years ago today, Woodrow Wilson arrived aboard the George Washington at Boston. There are some wonderful photographs of Wilson's four voyages on the GW at: http://www.history.navy.mil/photos/sh-usn/usnsh-g/id3018-p.htmWow! If anything about the whole picture of 1919 impresses upon us the differentness of that time from our own, I nominate Wilson's whole course of action relating to the Hunt Tooleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09765258125246901690noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1251068500341945410.post-19311662138169731042009-02-22T20:46:00.006-06:002009-02-25T08:01:02.175-06:00Denmark's Territorial Wish ListNinety years ago yesterday, the Conference heard the claims of the Danish government to a piece of Germany—the northern strip of German territory from the North Sea to the Baltic. The area was called either Nordschleswig (North Schleswig) and Sønderjylland (South Jutland), depending on whether one was looking at the region from the German or the Danish perspective. We have to work through some Hunt Tooleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09765258125246901690noreply@blogger.com1