To what extent was the Congress of Vienna more successful than the Paris Peace Conference?

This academic paper will weigh up the most important decisions that were made at two of the most significant peace treaties that were ever made over the previous centuries and they are the Congress of Vienna and the Treaty of Versailles and to analyse if a realist approach to international relations are a superior method in securing peace between nations. Most treaties are criticised in some manner, but none have been attacked more than the Treaty of Versailles which has occurred for almost a hundred years since its inception. The majority of the criticisms has come from politicians and historians from a range of backgrounds that include radical Marxists and conservative realists. But in reality how fair are these attacks that have been thrown at the authors of the peace treaty? Also, can modern peace makers learn from these perceived wrongs and look at other treaties such as the Congress of Vienna, which has always been maintained by the realist historians as a model of how well a treaty can work as it was constructed with the ideals of balance of power politics and thus it ensured a longer peace and security. Or is it?. To fully understand how correct these assumptions are this essay will be fully examining the main criticisms that have been pointed at the Versailles Treaty, such as the war reparations that were forced on Germany were too ruthless, the granting of "Self-Determination" of other counties in Europe but at Germanys expense, not including major nations during the assembly of the treaty such as Russia which caused problems down the line and finally the treaty itself was almost overly ideological and didn't use the realistic application of balance of power. Nevertheless, as this paper will explain, there were key aspects of the Congress of Vienna that can be seen as very important in creating a stable Europe and has been overstated by many historians. The almost hundred years of peace that followed the Congress of Vienna is generally attributed to it, but this doesn't stand up to cross examination and it can also be suggested that it was almost infirmed in its outlook and was very controlling of the populace and last and probably the most important was the treaty didn't take into account that Europe as it always does holds a great deal of national pride and this always fuels conflict and resentment. But in short it can always be understood that both theories of peace negotiations such as Liberalism and Realism can achieve success; but, logic would dictate that there needs to be some sort of harmony between the two to achieve a stable, longer and fairer period of peace and protection. One of the main criticisms and talking points by historians on the Treaty of Versailles has always focused on the war reparations that were forced onto Germany following its inception. One of the main critics was also involved in the construction of the Treaty. Keynes (1920) the British economist who was heavily involved in the financial part of the treaty resigned before the treaty was fully ratified published a book a short few years after explaining completely why he made his decision, it was called The Economic Consequences of the Peace . The book outlines his feeling during the first phase of the draft but the book mainly focuses' on his option on how president Wilson handled the other major players at the summit. He accuses Wilson of being to lacklustre in his handling of Clemenceau who was very vindictive and was under a great deal of pressure to punish the Germans from his own people and his mishandling of the British Prime Minister Lloyd George who was always quick in wanting to punish the Germans and together they produced one of the most malicious and impractical treaties of all time or as Keynes eloquently put it a 'Carthaginian' peace. Another historian by the name of Sharp (2009) has questioned Keynes theories of his book and highlights Keynes points on the leaders during the treaty and belies that they didn't have as much power as he thinks they did. Sharp also argues that it was Britain and not France that wanted to punish Germany economically and at such exorbitant numbers, with Britain wanting 24 billion

pounds and France with a more realistic figure of 9 billion pounds. Sharp also criticises Keynes belief that Wilson went to the negotiation table at Versailles to help the nations of Europe to come to some sort of reconciliation with Germany but was fooled into a more aggressive stance when it came to writing the treaty; as Wilson proclaimed in September 1919: "seeks to punish one of the greatest wrongs ever done in history, the wrong which Germany sought to do to the world and to civilization, and there ought to be no weak purpose with regard to the punishment. She attempted an intolerable thing, and she must be made to pay for the attempt." (Trachtenberg,1982,p.491) The impression that Germany was solely responsible for the Great War was clearly defined in the famous or infamous article 231 or what is commonly called the 'Guilt Clause', which is a completely absurd concept in the mind of the realist historian and foreign policy makers because the use of morals as an argument can only be attributed to an individual person and not an entire country. Thus, this kind of diplomatic course of action is not the most successful and so it was the realist approach that was used during the Congress of Vienna and was clearly more fortuitous. The famous diplomat Henry Kissinger (1994) highlighted in his book Diplomacy that the type of negotiation was much more in favour of France being satisfied with the treaty and this was achieved, albeit so strong feelings that they should be much harsher on France and this was decided because any wrongdoings would make France resentful and would gain national support for war in the future. But many historians believe that the reparations that were forced onto Germany weren't as harsh as other academics make out and it wasn't the reason that Germany fell into a deep depression, but on the other hand Germany by 1933 had completely stopped paying the damages back and had defaulted on its loans, furthermore she had only paid 2% of the full amount in almost 18 years which was used as excellent propaganda by the Nazi Party in the future (Slavicek,2010). Kissinger (1994) as he is a realist historian believes that unlike what transpired at Vienna not evolving the defeated nations at the peace conference led these nations down a very slippery road which some devastating consequences: "As a result, the months of negotiation cast the Germans beneath a pall of uncertainty, which encouraged illusions. They recited Wilson's fourteen points as if by heart...deluded themselves into believing that the allies' final settlement would be mild. Therefore, when the peacemakers revealed their handiwork...the Germans were shocked and embarked on two decades of...undermining it." (Kissinger,1994,p.231) One of the most bizarre moments in the writing of the treaty was the omission of Russia from the peace talks and so two of the most powerful nations in Europe and thus the world which also contained well over half of the population of Europe wasn't evolved which in hindsight was always going to be the downfall of the Versailles settlement and as Kissinger points out the two biggest military potential was left by the wayside and could of contributed to a longer peace. (Kissinger, 1994). The sheer size of the amount of reparations that Germany had to pay and also with her being left out of the negotiation and ultimately the biggest criticisms that people can throw at Versailles. But there is another criticism of the treaty that many historians leave out and that was the theory of national self determination was applied to Germany in a sporadic fashion and at her expense and this needs to be explored further. The criticism is clearly accurate and this can be seen from Wilson's original fourteen points where his states the all German speaking people and their land that were under the control of the Austrian-Hungarian Empire should be allowed to join together with Germany to form a united Fatherland. But the other 'Great Powers' at the table had other ideas and blocked that plan which was a vital part of

Wilson's fourteen points, but it was fully realised many years later when the Nazi's ignored the League of Nations agreement and marched across Europe to realise that dream (Mazower,1991), if only this had been passed at the negotiation table maybe over 30 million lives might have been saved. Although to surmise that the movers and shakers at Versailles had a full grip on such points as territorial provisions doesn't due justice as to how complex the whole process was and not to mention that local nationalist elites and their supporters had gained a lot of influence at this table. Sharp (2009) again highlighted a very relevant point that seems to go unnoticed and that is the huge amount of difficulties that the authors of the treaty had to face and which almost was completely impossible due to the huge amount of people and delegates that all had a different ideologies and convictions that needed to be addressed as well as people wanting to be freed from foreign rule, such was the tension and stress Wilson commented, "What is expected of me only God could perform" (Sharp,2009,p.7). Despite the delegation pulling in different directions the peacemakers were quick in reacting to the great deal of change that was happening in Eastern Europe and they were even quicker at reshaping it. Even before the end of the Great War prospective peoples were scrambling to carve out what they perceived to be their rightful countries either by force or by paper. In July 1917 the Serb, Croat and Slovene delegate declared the Corfu Declaration which was the beginning of the Yugoslav nation which would cause a number of problems in the future, then the Provisional Peoples Government was acknowledged by the Poles in 1918 and also around this time the Czechs got involved and the Czech National Committee captured Prague and thus the creating the Czechoslovakian state (Mazower,1999). The realist section of historians of criticised this part of the Versailles treaty as it created a power vacuum and it also created a lot of problems with over two million German speaking people came under Czech rule. This is completely true when the theory of balance of power politics come into play as the smaller states would not be able to expand their territory as the colossal military power of Germany and Russia would be too great as they tried to do leading up to World War II. But there is a flip side to that coin as it can be said that the leaders of the future were just as responsible for not backing up the Versailles treaty with arms which eventually led to World War II. Policy makers have come a long since these treaty's of old for example one has just have to look at the territorial settlements that occurred during the Congress of Vienna. As mentioned by Stapleton (2008) as the 'watchman era' as a "depressingly repressive collective security system' the congress of Vienna was very quick and clever when it came to dealing with the reappearance of revolutionary elements and this was done by diplomatic means in some cases but the main deterrence was that of the quadruple alliance which was made up of Britain, Russia, Austria and Prussia. Unfortunately the men at the Congress of Vienna had made no plans for those nations of a smaller stature such as the Poles or the Italians, but the great Kissinger (1956) has defended those gentleman's lack of actions to calm the fire of nationalism as these men were a product of their time and wouldn't of been aware of this trend. As usual Kissinger has his critics and Zamoyski (2008) doesn't pull any punches and calls Kissinger's statements as absurd as the peacemakers at Vienna were actively talking about the futures of such nations and with the anger that some people were showing such as Tsar Alexandra who was outraged at the break up of Poland and thus it shows that the power players at the settlement were still seeing a nation as a collection of aristocratic rule rather than a state "had come to be seen as a moral entity a right to a life of its own."(Zamoyski,2008,p.562). Yet again there was a counter to this argument as Stapleton (2008) indicates that the era of nationalism during this period is generally overplayed and was really a minority as most people in Europe at the time were illiterate, but would get much better traction over the next 70 years or so. But historians like Zamoyski (2008) have occluded that other methods may have not yielded better results, but in short, the success of Vienna over Versailles cannot be ignored as it overlooks the constructive progress like

national self determination which has been made more famous by recent political treaty's. As mentioned before the success of the Congress of Vienna has been overstated and has been supported by many historians like Kissinger (1956 & 1994) and Chapman (1998) which all proclaim the almost 100 years of peace, Chapman goes on to compare the sucess of Vienna against Versailles: "However, the centaury of peace that followed the congress of Vienna was in marked contrast to the twenty-one year truce that separated the end of the First World War from the start of the second. Whatever the failings of the diplomats of 1815, their contribution to the peace that followed deserves respect." (Chapman,1998, p.93) Luckily enough there are still historians that don't have a narrow view of these events and so Zamoyski (2008) and Anderson (2007) have corrected this view by explaining that war was the rule and not the exception during the centaury leading up to World War I and the fact that between 1815-1871 there were almost 30 conflicts that the European nations par took in. And to overlook the Crimean War which three of the five great powers of the time were involved would be unintelligent (Anderson, 2007). In conclusion there are both positives and negatives that can be learned from both treaty's. As with most mistakes hindsight is always beneficial and so to not involve the nations that were defeated for example like they did at Versailles gave future leaders such as Hitler a great deal of propaganda to use. If Germany were involved with developing the treaty during Versailles and not forced to pay a huge amount of war reparations there would have been nowhere near the amount of resentment that Germany had towards the great power nations, but at the conference the Germans became misguided at the idea of the 'Wisonian' peace and thought it would be easy to bear and thus the amount of support that Hitler received at speed validates this point. And so there were huge mistakes in the territorial settlement at Versailles and so for the argument it was solely responsible for the subpar distribution of a 'balance of power' doesn't due justice to the difficulties that the authors of the treaty were facing as they were mostly conflicting and contradicting. It also doesn't take into account of the rising nationalism in Eastern Europe as they were already fighting to carve out their own country before the war had ended rather than to hope and wait to see the outcome of the settlement. As mentioned before some historians are too narrow minded in their approach to their analysis and to dismiss the issue of nationalism and its effect on the statesman (which it wasn't and it was ignored) caused as much damage as any decision that was made at Versailles. And so to completely ignore nations that wanted to form independently like they did at Vienna is backward looking and the lesson was learned at Vienna and was used at Versailles albeit poorly. So it shows that if the defeated nations were included into the treaty talks then maybe Versailles would have secured a longer peace.

Reference List Anderson, S. (2007). Metternich, Bismarck, and the Myth of the Long Peace, 1815 -1914 . Peace & Change, Volume 32, Number 3 , 301-328. Chapman, T. (1998). The Congress of Vienna: Origins, processes and results. London and New York: Routledge. Keynes, J. M. (1920). The economic consequences of the peace. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Howe. Kissinger, H. (1994). Diplomacy. New York: Touchstone. Kissinger, H. (1956). The Congress of Vienna: A reappraisal. World Politics , 264-280. Mazower, M. (1999). Two cheers for Versailles. History Today, vol.49 Iss.7 . sharp, A. (2009). The Big Four: Peacemaking in Paris in 1919. History Today . Slavicek, L. C. (2010). The Treaty of Versailles. New York : Infobase Publishing. Stapleton, F. G. (2008). Making sense of 19th century nationalism. History Today, Iss. 61 . Trachtenberg, M. (1982). Versailles after sixty years. Journal of Contemporary History, Vol. 17, No. 3 , 487-586. Zamoyski, A. (2008). Rites of Peace: The fall of Napoleon & the Congress of Vienna . Hammersmith: Harper Perennial.