1919: A Turning Point in World History

1919 was a pivotal year. While the Paris Peace Conference dominated the headlines, events elsewhere in the world would have a major impact on the twentieth century and beyond. In Ireland, Egypt, India, China, and the Middle East, Britain, France, and Japan faced gathering resistance to their rule. Nationalist leaders like Gandhi, Saad Zaghlul, and Ho Chi Minh rose to prominence, while the leaders of the Irish rebellion against Britain enjoyed more immediate success. In 1919 the world was poised between triumphant imperialism and emerging nationalism. 1919 also witnessed fear of communism on a global scale, fuelled by Bolshevik success in Russia, a short-lived revolutionary government in Munich, and Bela Kun's seizure of power in Hungary. In Italy and Germany, Fascism and National Socialism emerged as alternatives to both Communism and the bourgeois status quo, while in the United States Attorney General Mitchell Palmer's attempts to quell radicalism and enforce Prohibition launched the career of J. Edgar Hoover. By looking beyond Europe and the first six months of 1919, including the Third Afghan War, this book gives a global perspective of the events and upheavals explored in Margaret Macmillan's seminal history of the peace conferences of that year, Paris 1919 . Alan Sharp and TG Fraser bring together their renowned knowledge of what happened when four empires collapsed simultaneously; a historical constellation unique to the aftermath of the First World War.