Asia After Versailles ─ Asian Perspectives on the Paris Peace Conference and the Interwar Order, 1919-33

This volume traces the complex story of the Asian response to the Paris Peace Conference of 1919, an important but neglected watershed for Asian nations. The Conference marked the end of a conflict which, although intrinsically European, had globalized the world on many levels, politically as well as economically, culturally and socially. It also stood at the beginning of a new order that saw the power centre shift towards the US and Asia, and whose systemic structures and troubling legacies it created still remain, in part, with us today. In this momentous development, Asian countries and people played a significant role that has been much neglected in historical studies so far. Bringing together an international range of experts in the history of China, Japan, India and the Ottoman Empire/Turkey, this pioneering volume demonstrates the importance of Asia in the multifaceted global transformations that revolved around the Paris Peace Conference and its aftermath.

Traditional historical analysis focuses almost exclusively on US and European responses to the Paris Peace Conference of 1919 and the post-war order and often fails to take into account non-western, particularly Asian voices this is the first book to demonstrate the far-reaching Asian dimensions of the impact of Versailles in an unprecedented way making this an invaluable and interdisciplinary resource for academics and researchers in the fields of politics, international relations, area studies and history.

Urs Matthias Zachmann is Handa Chair in Japanese-Chinese Relations in the School of Literatures, Languages and Cultures at the University of Edinburgh.