Kursuse teave

After 52 months, with the armistice in November 1918, the guns fell silent in a war of empires which had begun locally and affected the whole world, although there had not been fighting everywhere. In 1917 the USA had entered the war with the slogan “to make the world safe for democracy” – Russia had exited the war after the revolution with a “Decree on Peace.” The “Peacemaking” beginning in Paris in 1919 was supposed to create a new world order. The Hohenzollern, Habsburg and Ottoman Monarchies had fallen apart after the war. Selectively applying the right of peoples to self-determination proclaimed by Wilson and Lenin, a number of successor states emerged in East Central Europe containing large national minorities. In the Middle East a system of Mandates secured France and the United Kingdom to attain their empires’ greatest respective extent. Japan gained most of Germany’s colonies in the Far East, which compelled China to stay away from the signing of the Versailles Treaty with Germany. While in Paris was shaped the League of Nations including the still existing International Labour Organisation (ILO), in Moscow was formed the Communist International (KI). This course will, on the basis of new and latest literature, offer a look at all these dimensions, expanding the view up to 1923.