The Unsettling Settlement of 1919

Epilogue from "The Making of a World OrderGlobal Historical Perspectives on the Paris Peace Conference and the Treaty of Versailles" by Albert Wu & Stephen W. Sawyer

Though in conventional narratives the First World War ends in 1918, in fact, in many parts of the world—the war’s alleged “side-shows”—it went on into 1919 and beyond. The Versailles Treaty of 1919 was not so much a peace settlement as a set of great power agreements that further unsettled the world. The European war may have formally ended, but the far-flung conflicts that made the war a “world” war continued. With Britons desperate for demobilization, their government turned to new ways of prosecuting war with fewer boots on the ground and with greater discretion to avoid the check of a mass democracy anxious to prevent further war. Britain faced uprisings across its empire, wreaking military revenge on entire villages. This chapter’s survey of 1919 in the British Empire seeks to put to bed the myth that war ended in 1918 and that a peace was “settled” in 1919. It was a time of revolution rather than restoration, provocation rather than peace, and unsettlement rather than settlement.