Eröffnung ZGT18 I Festvortrag von Margaret MacMillan

The Paris Peace Settlements of 1919 and the fate of Europe

Do. 5. April
10:00 Uhr

Van Swieten Saal der MedUni Wien
Van-Swieten-Gasse 1a
1090 Wien

 >< Veranstaltung ausgebucht

The peace made at the end of the First World War is often blamed for creating the conditions which sent some European nations down the road towards dictatorship and led Europe and the world towards the Second World War. This lecture will examine the peace settlements and assess their long-term impact. Europe, it is true, was badly damaged, politically, socially and psychologically, by the 1914-18 war. Great empires fell to pieces and the successor nations struggled to establish their borders and political structures. The interwar years also saw the rise of radical anti-democratic forces and parties on both the right and the left. Yet liberal democracy, at least in some countries such as Britain and the United States, proved resilient. The League of Nations, which is now seen as a failure, inaugurated new institutions and norms, many of which we still value today. The lecture will ask whether the accepted view, that the peace settlements of 1919 doomed Europe, is a fair one. It will also suggest ways we might learn from the past as we face a turbulent and uncertain present.

Margaret MacMillan specializes in the international history of the 19th and 20th centuries. She served as Warden of St Antony’s College, Oxford between 2007 and 2017 and is currently a Professor of History at the University of Toronto. Her most recent books are The War that Ended Peace: The Road to 1914  and History’s People: Personalities and the Past.