After the Peace Treaty of Versailles (1919)

Book excerpt: The peace treaties of Versailles, Saint-Germain and Trianon, with their provisions on new borders, mainly affected the situation in Central Europe. At the same time, however, it was in this region that the limits of their principles and applicability became most evident. This was particularly evident in the areas of border guarantees, the settlements of territorial disputes, the regulations of minority rights and the ideal of national self-determination. The volume analyzes how these contradictions appeared and how they were treated in both an internal, Central European, and an external perspective. It focuses more on the medium-term implications of further development than on the course of peace negotiations. It is on the strategies and visions of the future arrangement during and especially after the peace negotiations. Contributors from Albania, Austria, the Czech Republic, Germany, Italy, Poland, Slovakia, Russia and the United States examine, on the one hand, the strategies and discourses of the actors of individual national societies, but on the other hand apply a comparative and transnational approach. They deal with both the “great” actors of history (such as diplomats, politicians, intellectual elites) and the structural conditions of the functioning of the “Versailles system”.