After World War One

This massive yet gracefully written book is a definitive political history of Europe during the period of the Paris Peace Conference from November• 1918 to June 1919. The work provides a worthy sequel to Mayer’s earlier study, Political Origins of the New Diplomacy, 1917- 1918, which analyzed European politics and diplomacy in the last two years of World War I. Both books exhibit Mayer’s methodological effort to abandon what he has termed “the constricting framework of orthodox diplomatic history” in favor of an emphasis “on the making of foreign policy prior to its being fed into the diplomatic and military machinery, particular care being taken to probe those points at which domestic affairs intersect with foreign policy, military preparedness, and diplomacy.” Moving beyond the traditional official sources for diplomatic history, Mayer is particularly concerned with “an investigation of party, pressure, and interest politics; [...