Review: The Treaty of Versailles
| Author | Margaret Macmillan |
| Published date | 01 March 2000 |
| Date | 01 March 2000 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/002070200005500122 |
| Subject Matter | Review |
Reviews
There
are
a
handful
of
niggling
problems
with
this collection. Some
of
the
papers suffer
from
too
much
jargon;
all
of
them
could
have
used
more empirical
evidence
to
demonstrate
precisely
how
changes
in
administrative
structure
have
affected
policy-making.
More
impor-
tant,
this
collection
too
often
tries to
compare
apples
and
oranges.
While
most
of
the
papers explore
how
individual
FMs
have
coped
with
a
common
set
of
external
and
internal
challenges,
the
papers
on
South
Africa, Russia,
Norway,
and
Israel
reflect
such
unique
national consid-
erations
that
any
broader comparison
is
meaningless.
And,
finally,
it
seems
odd
that
in
a
collection
devoted
to 'change
and
adaptation,' the
proliferation
of
personal
computers,
the
Internet,
and
e-mail
is
hardly
mentioned,
and
its
implications
are
left
unexplored.
These problems
aside,
this collection
should
help academics
and
diplomats
alike
devel-
op
a
more
nuanced
understanding
of
the
role
of
the
modern
FM,
pro-
viding
a
basis
for
further
explorations
into the art
of
diplomacy.
Greg
Donaghy/Department
of
Foreign
Affairs
and
International
Trade,
Ottawa
THE
TREATY
OF
VERSAILLES
A
reassessment
after
75
years
Edited
by
Manfred
F.
Boemeke,
Gerald
D.Feldman,
Elisabeth
Glaser
Washington and
Cambridge:
German
Historical
Institute
and
University
of
Cambridge
Press,
1998,
656
pp,
us$90.00,
ISBN
0521621321
John
Maynard
Keynes
set
the
pattern
in
his
coruscating
and
deeply
unfair attack
on
the
Treaty
of
Versailles.
His
picture
of
a
vengeful
France,
a
careless
Britain,
and
a
naive
United
States
was
taken
up
eager-
ly
at
the
time
in
Germany,
for
obvious
reasons,
and among
liberals
in
the
Anglo-Saxon
countries.
The
treaty remains
a
byword
for
vindic-
tiveness,
folly,
and
short-sightedness,
which
led,
so
most
people
still
believe, to
the
Second
World
War.
This
collection
of
essays,
which
reflects
the
work
of
leading
historians,
revisionist
history
at
its
best,
challenges
that
view.
Historians
and economists
have
been
working
away
modifying
many
of
the
key
charges
but
until
now
their
work
has
been
in
specialist
journals or monographs
and
has
had
little
wider
impact.
The
burden
of
reparations,
about
which
German governments
in
the
1920s
complained
so
loudly,
was,
as
Sally
Marks,
Niall
INTERNATIONAL
JOURNAL
Winter
1999-2000
165
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