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The Paris Peace Conference was the meeting of the Allied victors, following the end of World War I to set the peace terms for the defeated Central Powers following the armistices of 1918. It took place in Paris during 1919 and involved diplomats from more than 32 countries and nationalities. The major decisions were the creation of the League of Nations; the five peace treaties with defeated enemies, including the Treaty of Versailles with Germany; the awarding of German and Ottoman overseas possessions as "mandates," chiefly to Britain and France; reparations imposed on Germany, and the drawing of new national boundaries (sometimes with plebiscites) to better reflect the forces of nationalism. The main result was the Treaty of Versailles, with Germany, which in section 231 laid the guilt for the war on "the aggression of Germany and her allies." This provision proved humiliating for Germany and set the stage for very high reparations Germany was supposed to pay (it paid only a small portion before reparations ended in 1931). The "Big Four" were the Prime Minister of Great Britain, David Lloyd George; President of the United States, Woodrow Wilson; the Prime Minister of France, Georges Clemenceau; and the Prime Minister of Italy, Vittorio Emanuele Orlando. They met together informally 145 times and made all the major decisions, which in turn were ratified by the others.〔Rene Albrecht-Carrie, ''Diplomatic History of Europe Since the Congress of Vienna'' (1958) p. 363〕 ==Overview and direct results== The conference opened on 18 January 1919. Delegates from 27 nations were assigned to 52 commissions, which held 1,646 sessions to prepare reports, with the help of many experts, on topics ranging from prisoners of war, to undersea cables, to international aviation, to responsibility for the war. Key recommendations were folded into the Treaty of Versailles with Germany, which had 15 chapters and 440 clauses, as well as treaties for the other defeated nations. The five major powers (France, Britain, Italy, the U.S. and Japan) controlled the Conference. In practice Japan played a small role and the "Big Four" leaders were the dominant figures at the conference. They met together informally 145 times and made all the major decisions, which in turn were ratified by the others.〔 The open meetings of all the delegations approved the decisions made by the Big Four. The conference came to an end on 21 January 1920 with the inaugural General Assembly of the League of Nations.〔Antony Lentin, "Germany: a New Carthage?" ''History Today'' (2012) 62#1 pp. 22–27 online〕〔Paul Birdsall, ''Versailles Twenty Years After'' (1941) is a convenient history and analysis of the conference. Longer and more recent is Margaret Macmillan, ''Peacemakers: The Paris Peace Conference of 1919 and Its Attempt to End War'' (2002), also published as ''Paris 1919: Six Months That Changed the World'' (2003); a good short overview is Alan Sharp, ''The Versailles Settlement: Peacemaking after the First World War, 1919–1923'' (2nd ed. 2008)〕 Five major peace treaties were prepared at the Paris Peace Conference (with, in parentheses, the affected countries): * the Treaty of Versailles, 28 June 1919, (Germany) * the Treaty of Saint-Germain, 10 September 1919, (Austria) * the Treaty of Neuilly, 27 November 1919, (Bulgaria) * the Treaty of Trianon, 4 June 1920, (Hungary) * the Treaty of Sèvres, 10 August 1920; subsequently revised by the Treaty of Lausanne, 24 July 1923, (Ottoman Empire/Republic of Turkey). The major decisions were the creation of the League of Nations; the five peace treaties with defeated enemies, including the Treaty of Versailles with Germany; the awarding of German and Ottoman overseas possessions as "mandates," chiefly to Britain and France; reparations imposed on Germany, and the drawing of new national boundaries (sometimes with plebiscites) to better reflect the forces of nationalism. The main result was the Treaty of Versailles, with Germany, which in section 231 laid the guilt for the war on "the aggression of Germany and her allies." This provision proved humiliating for Germany and set the stage for very high reparations Germany was supposed to pay (it paid only a small portion before reparations ended in 1931). As the conference's decisions were ennacted unilaterally, and largely on the whims of the Big Four, for its duration Paris was effectively the center of a world government, which deliberated over and implemented the sweeping changes to the political geography of Europe. Most famously, the Treaty of Versailles itself weakened Germany's military and placed full blame for the war and costly reparations on its shoulders – the humiliation and resentment in Germany is sometimes considered as one of the causes of Nazi success and indirectly a cause of World War II. The League of Nations proved controversial in the United States as critics said it subverted the powers of Congress to declare war; the U.S. Senate did not ratify any of the peace treaties and the U.S. never joined the League – instead, the Harding administration concluded new treaties with Germany, Austria, and Hungary. Neither Republican Germany nor Communist Russia were invited to attend, but numerous other nations did send delegations in order to appeal for various unsuccessful additions to the treaties, ranging from independence for the countries of the South Caucasus to Japan's unsuccessful demand for racial equality amongst the other Great Powers. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Paris Peace Conference, 1919」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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