The Failures of the Paris Peace Conference
Europe is ravaged by war shortly after the onset of the 20th century. After many years the first world war finally comes to an end in the year 1918. After many years of gruesome battle, the victors must now decide what to do with Europe. For this the allies met at the Paris Peace Conference. Here they discussed what would happen to Europe after the war, and created peace treaties for all involved nations. Leaving their enemy’s empires as they were was completely impossible, so they had to be divided into multiple smaller countries, and territory was to be reassigned to the victors. Redefining the borders of a continent is a difficult task, one that the allies did not handle very well. It is quite obvious that they wanted to increase their power over Europe by making their enemies weak, and taking more territory for themselves. The Paris Peace Conference is unsuccessful in creating a stable European community because he British empire and France impose their might upon Europe leading to harsh treatment of Germany, and complete mismanagement of the Balkans.
The Paris Peace Conference was sub divided into four treaties. The Treaty of Neuilly dealt with Bulgaria. At the onset of the war Bulgaria was a major power in the Balkans. Now with the allies’ purpose to destabilize their enemies, they would not remain very powerful for long. The allies cut off Bulgaria from the Mediterranean, and give away key pieces of their territory to other countries, some of which were only newly created in the treaty. Part of the land is given to the newly established Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes. What the allies tried to do is to destabilize the entire Balkans in order to assure that no new powers would rise from this region for many years. They accomplished this by mixing the ethnic groups in the region, diving them and combining them in the wrong countries. In this new Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes, there are, as the title suggests, three different ethnic groups. This ensured that there would never be complete unity in this country or Bulgaria, and therefore they could not become a major power in Eastern Europe.
The Treaty of Trianon is the treaty that dealt with Hungary. Austria-Hungary was split into two countries of the war: Hungary and Austria. Hungary was dealt a harsh blow with this treaty. Large amounts of the Hungarian people were now declared as parts of Romania, and a new country named Czecho-Slovakia. Czecho-Slovakia was also a mixture of two peoples in order to insure instability. Here we can see an example of the victors dividing a large population. The Hungarians were too many and too powerful for the allies’ tastes, so they were divided into several different countries and mixed with other ethnic groups. This ensured conflict between the groups in their struggle to create a stable governing structure in their newly founded and created countries.
The Treaty of Saint Germaine en Laye dealt with Austria. Austria’s size was drastically decreased, because territory was given to Italy, and the newly created Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes. Austria-Hungary was once the leading power in the Balkans, but the allies decided that instead of taking control of the Balkans they would give them the illusion of freedom. They gave them their own countries but they mixed ethnic groups so heavily that the region is still unstable today. To further insure that Austria could not rise up either, they did not allow it to join with Germany, which was at the time the most popular solution in Austria. Instead its geographical and military size was greatly decreased, and it was surrounded by newly created countries, disabling it from expanding, and coming to power in Europe again.
The Treaty of Sevres was the treaty that redefined the Ottoman empire. The Ottoman empire stretched far to the East, so far, actually, that the allies partially did not really care about what happened to those countries. The Ottomans were forced to pull out of North Africa and the Middle East, and were renamed to Turkey. Turkey was the name of a nation, and not an empire, and therefore this was a further step to insure that it would not rise to power to quickly after the war. This treaty is actually rather lenient compared to the others. Instead of dividing such a large empire into many smaller nations, and mixing ethnic groups to ensure instability, the Turks were left in piece. They were given a large piece of land, where the Turks could live in unity, and they were only forced to give up control of the straits connecting the Black Sea to the Mediterranean.
The problem with the treaty of Sevres was that it could not be signed because Turkey was undergoing a revolution at the time. Not long after this treaty was written, a new government rose to power under Kemal Ataturk. The new government did not agree with the original treaty, so a new one was written, named the Treaty of Lausanne. Some of the land taken under the Treaty of Sevres was given back to Turkey, and this treaty was even more lenient. The allies believed that this new government could not stabilize such a large region quickly enough and saw no threat in leaving the Turkish people unified in one rather large country. One would think that this was a major miscalculation, and that the Turks would rise to power quickly, but in truth they have been rather ostracized from Europe since the events of World War I.
Overall it is quite obvious what the allies meant to accomplish. They wanted to retain power and did so by destabilizing the rest of Europe, ensuring that no other nations would be in position to gain power for a long time to come. This of course would leave Britain and France with time to consolidate their power, and to rule Europe for many years to come. At least, that was the idea. Unfortunately the Treaties they created were too harsh. The Treaty of Versailles led to a depression in Germany, which created the optimal scenario for Hitler to rise to power, and the Balkans are a region of conflict even today. The redesigning of Europe might have looked like a great idea at the time this was done, but by today’s standards the Paris Peace Conference is a miserable failure. The treaty served its purpose in that it at least for several years kept all nations except the victors weak, but the long term effects were definitely negative, such as World War II, and the unstable situation in Eastern Europe that lasted for decades, and still persists today.
