Why didKeynes an exceedingly well connected young man with his feet very well planted in the English establishment,decide to take the risk of writing such an explosive book like The Economic Consequences of the Peace in 1919? After all, others had their doubts about Versailles; butnone went public;and ifor when theydid,it was certainly not to criticizethe peace settlementor the peacemakersin such a vitriolic fashion. SowhatledKeynes to write a book likeThe Economic Consequences of the Peace? What was his purpose in doing so? Who did he think he was writing it for?Was it his last word on the subjector was it – as Keynes believed at the time – merely the first step in a longer struggle to effectively render the economic parts of the Treaty invalid? Finally, why was the volumethe great success it turned out to be at the time, and whyis it still being debated today by both admirers and critics alike?

Just over a century old, John Maynard Keynes’s The Economic Consequences of the Peace (1919) remains a seminal document of the twentieth century. At the time, the book was a prescient analysis of political events to come. In the decades that followed, this still controversial text became an essential ingredient in the unfolding of history. In this essay, we review the arc of experience since 1919 from the perspective of Keynes’s influence and his changing understanding of economics, politics, and geopolitics. We identify how he, his ideas, and this text became key reference points during times of turbulence as actors sought to manage a range of shocks. Near the end of his life, Keynes would play a central role in planning the world economy’s reconstruction after World War II. We argue that the “global order” that evolved since then, marked by increasingly polarized societies, leaves the community of nations ill prepared to provide key global public goods or to counter critical collective threats.

Sering’s son died in the last week of the war. Following this, Sering asked to write the Reich Settlement Law (Reichssiedlungsgesetz), which covered plans to settle veterans and Freikorps. Sering fought the Diktat of Versailles. There were calls for plebiscite in Posen to divide Poles from Germans. Sering then spent the early, poor years of Weimar attacking Versailles treaty, setting up the Sering-Insitut, and training PhDs, before formally retiring in 1925. The chapter goes on to cover the rise of racial thinking among Sering’s inner colonial peers. Sering then returned to the USA in 1930 with his student Constantin von Dietze. During the rise of the Nazis, Hitler turned to the agrarian sector for votes. Chancellor Brüning was a big fan of Sering. Initially, in 1932, Sering seemed open to some of the more radical language.

Molière’s comedy ballets were devised to glorify Louis XIV and were often performed in the grounds of royal palaces, where the decors created spectacle by means of effects involving doubling and continuity with the surrounding area. This is true of La Princesse d’Élide and George Dandin, both performed in the Petit Parc at Versailles; Les Amants magnifiques, given at Saint-Germain-en-Laye; and Psyché, which was staged in the Salle des Machines in the Tuileries. This courtier-like celebration of the prince’s domain and his fairy-tale magic via Vigarani’s stagings was haunted by the memory of the sumptuous festivity Fouquet had offered the King in his gardens at Vaux shortly before his fall from favour, which had itself been inspired by Apolidon’s enchanted castle in Renaissance texts. It suggested that the domain of the powerful could only be imagined and created by means of the performance of fantasies that stimulated adhesion.

Chapter 4 traces how the German firms, big business and bazaar exporters alike, reentered India after World War I. It shows how the postwar situation triggered a joint sense of victimhood among Germans and Indians who both felt mistreated and exploited by the British, laying the groundwork for a mental map of nationalism that highlighted their parallel history. Both Germans and Indians experimented with new sensemaking offers, among them the bold idea of an Indo-German “Aryan” community that claimed a joint heritage of both people. However, this “identity work” required constant effort and investment. And, many of the Indian suggestions seemed too audacious for most German businesspeople to approve. While they often advocated political neutrality towards the goals of the Indian Independence movement and other independence movements around the world, they also took notice of the similar national aspirations of countries, which otherwise had little in common and started discussing them as a cluster.

The Peace conference was the climax of Anglo-Italian relations. Traditional interpretations of it need to be significantly revised to fully grasp how and why Italy’s victory was ‘mutilated.’

The Paris Peace Conference convened in January 1919 and did not officially close until one year later, after Germany formally ratified the Treaty of Versailles, but Wilson, Lloyd George, and the leading foreign dignitaries left for home in late June, as soon as the Germans signed their treaty. The Allies designated ambassadors or under-secretaries to represent them in the conclusion of the treaties for Austria (St. Germain), Bulgaria (Neuilly), Hungary (Trianon), and the Ottoman Empire (Sèvres), the latter two not signed until 1920. As the US secretary of state, Lansing, had feared, Wilson’s direct involvement at the conference reduced him to the level of just another negotiator and his Fourteen Points to mere bargaining chips, most of which were sacrificed in whole or in part to achieve the fourteenth: the creation of the League of Nations. While the provisions regarding Germany (reparations, war guilt, near-disarmament, and loss of territory and colonies) received the most attention, outcomes haunting the world into a second great war (and in some cases, beyond it) included the borders drawn in the dismemberment of Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire, as well as the decision of the conference to disregard the interests of Russia and, to a lesser extent, Italy.

This chapter discusses how the argument for a right to equal pay for work of equal value started and how it developed. It starts by noting that equal pay was promised during the Great War and then discusses the promises to implement it as a right in legislation in the following years, the failures to fulfil those promises and false steps, until the right became established. It then discusses the current problems with that right. Overall it explains the refusal to make substantive comparisons between men’s and women’s work.

Chapter 3 focuses on the history of the DNVP from the elections to the Weimar National Assembly to the Reichstag elections of June 1920. It deals in particular with the way in which the DNVP established itself as a party of “national opposition” at the National Assembly with particular attention to its positions on the Weimar Constitution and the Versailles Peace Treaty. It also examines the success with which hard-line conservatives around Count Westarp were able to assert themselves in the deliberations over the party program and in pushing back against efforts of the young conservatives around Ulrich von Hassell to shape the DNVP into a progressive conservative party free from the follies of the past. The chapter ends with the Kapp putsch in March 1920, the adoption of the party program a month later, and the Reichstag elections of June 1920 in which the DNVP improves upon its performance at the polls in the elections to the National Assembly.