Tagungsbericht

Settlement and Unsettlement. The Ends of World War I and their Legacies

| vom 22.03.2018 | bis zum 24.03.2018
Screenshot von maxweberstiftung.de

Vom 22. bis 24. März 2018 fand in Washington, D.C. die Jahrestagung der Max-Weber-Stiftung unter dem Thema „Settlement and Unsettlement. The Ends of World War I and their Legacies“ statt. Themenstíftend war der 100. Jahrestag des Endes des Ersten Weltkriegs. Betont wurde hierbei, dass weder das Jahr 1918 noch das Kriegsende als isolierte Landmarken betrachtet werden sollen, sondern als Teil eines größeren Prozesses mit weitreichenden Konsequenzen. In der bisherigen Forschung zu den Auswirkungen des Kriegsendes findet sich häufig ein Fokus auf die Pariser Konferenz von 1919 und deren Bedeutung für die europäischen Staaten. Ein solcher Fokus vernachlässigt jedoch die Bedeutung, die das Kriegsende nicht nur für die europäischen Staaten, sondern weit darüber hinaus hatte und die die globale Ordnung nachhaltig beeinflusste.

The centenary of the 1918 Armistice provided a perfect occasion to reassess the historical consequences of the First World War. To this end, the 2018 Annual Conference of the Max Weber Foundation, which took place at the German Historical Institute in Washington on March 22-24 in cooperation with the American Historical Association (AHA), the National History Center (NHC), and the German Historical Association (Verband der Historiker und Historikerinnen Deutschlands, VHD), set out to reassess the postwar settlement's global repercussions. The conference was opened on the evening of March 22 by SIMONE LÄSSIG (GHI Washington DC), HANS VAN ESS (Max Weber Foundation) and DANE KENNEDY (National History Center), who highlighted the legacies of the Great War, including the principle of national self-determination, the redrawing of borders, decolonization and forced migration, and noted new research trends and the need to reassess the war’s legacies.


Den Tagungsbericht von Paul Schweitzer-Martin für H-Soz-Kult können Sie hier weiter lesen.

Conference Overview:


Simone Lässig (GHI Washington DC) / Hans van Ess (Max Weber Foundation) / Dane Kennedy (National History Center): Welcome remarks


Jörn Leonhard (Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg): Keynote “Overburdened Peace: Competing Visions of World Order in 1918 / 19”


Panel 1 Treaties and the Making of the Postwar Order


Regine Mathias (Ruhr-Universität Bochum), chair
Jesse Kauffman (Eastern Michigan University): Brest-Litovsk at 100: Re-evaluating a Misunderstood Peace
Leonard Smith (Oberlin College): The Politics of Recognition at the Paris Peace Conference
Tosh Minohara (Kobe University): Elusive Equality: Japan’s Leadership and the Postwar Issue of Race


Panel 2 Wilsonianism and its Discontents


Jan C. Jansen (GHI Washington DC), chair
Roberta Pergher (Indiana University): Fascist Italy and the Rights of Others
Miklós Zeidler (Eötvös Loránd University): Revisionism as a Means of Nation Building: The Characteristics of Hungarian Revisionism between the World Wars


Panel 3 Empires after the War (part 1)


Birgit Schäbler (Universität Erfurt / Orient-Institut Beirut), chair
Noriko Kawamura (Washington State University): Post-World War I Search for an Order in the Pacific: Reexamination of the Versailles-Washington Treaty System
Donal Hassett (University of Bristol): Contesting the Colonial Culture of Victory in the French Empire


Panel 4 Empires after the War (part 2)


Mustafa Aksakal (Georgetown University), chair
Sean Andrew Wempe (Washington State University): A Question of Respectability: Colonial German Responses to the Treaty of Versailles and “Colonial Guilt”
Leila Fawaz (Tufts University): WWI and the Reshaping of Daily Life in the Eastern Mediterranean
Panel discussion at Residence of the German Ambassador Peter Wittig
Adam Tooze (Columbia University): Brief keynote “1918: The Botched Entry into the American Century”
Heidrun Tempel (German State Department), chair
Aviel Roshwald (Georgetown University)
Jeremi Suri (University of Texas at Austin)


Panel 5 Internationalisms


Axel Jansen (GHI Washington DC), chair
Madeleine Herren-Oesch (Universität Basel): The Coincidence of Densification and Disentanglement: An Alternative History of the Twentieth Century
Michele Louro (Salem State University): Nehru, India and Global Anti-Imperialism between the World Wars
Claudia Siebrecht (University of Sussex): “Universal Conscience” and Lasting Peace: League of Nation Youth Education in the 1920s and 1930s


Panel 6 Post-war Economies / Labor and Economy after the War


Jamie Martin (Georgetown University), chair
Anna Karla (Universität zu Köln): Reparation Policies Reconsidered: Material Reconstruction after World War I in Europe and Beyond
Madeleine Dungy (European University Institute): Economic Freedom of Movement in the League of Nations and the International Labor Organization, 1919 –1923
Nicholas Mulder (Columbia University): The Birth of Economic Sanctions from the Spirit of Blockade, 1918 –1920


Panel 7 Minorities


Carole Fink (Ohio State University), chair
Volker Prott (University of Melbourne / Aston University): Taming Wilsonianism: The League of Nations and Territorial Conflict after Versailles
Laura Robson (Portland State University): Capitulations Redux: The Imperial Genealogy of the post-WWI “Minority” Regimes
Concluding discussion
Adele Lindenmeyr (Villanova University), chair
Leonard Smith (Oberlin College)
Barbara Potthast (Universität zu Köln)
Elizabeth Thompson (American University)