Foreword

Abstract

June 2019 saw the 100th anniversary of the conclusion of the Treaty of Versailles. There may have been only a few other international events that had shaped our international environment as profoundly and as pervasively as did the settlement after the First World War. Often termed in Hungarian as “peace treaties concluded in the vicinity of Paris” (that is, as Párizs környéki békeszerződések), it is not only a contested accord, but a whole system of interstate contacts. “Versailles” as a concept thus refers both to a treaty between the Entente powers and Germany, and, as a metaphor, to the “world order” that unfolded after the cessation of hostilities. This order has been heavily criticized as well as cautiously praised ever since, with its interpretations varying between descriptions as a dangerous destruction of the balance of power, as the promising beginning of liberal internationalism, and as a hypocritically set up facade for old school great power politics.