Hello, I am preparing a dissertation and my interest is the Great War, especially the Treaty of Versailles, which I have grown a fascination for. I have an extensive knowledge about it and have made a list of preliminary sources.
The thing is that I don't really know how to go about it, I fear falling in something that has been done too much. I only know that it's THE subject for me. Is anyone interested in helping me find a suitable topic? Thank you guys!
I have an extensive knowledge about it and have made a list of preliminary sources.
This is exactly where you start!
By reading through your sources (see: how to read an academic book), you'll get a sense of what has been said and is currently being said about WWI/ToV. It should also help inspire your own questions about what still needs to be said, or to be reevaluated!
I like to go back and forth between secondary and primary sources when I'm on the hunt for a topic/argument--I see something in scholarship that catches my eye; I track down the primary reference; that leads me to want to put it in a slightly different context; that sends me to another secondary work...and so forth. Eventually, things coalesce!
I only know that it's THE subject for me.
Isn't that the best feeling in the world? :D
I have no idea whether anyone has done an in-depth look at the impact of the lesser empire's players (ie New Zealand, South Africa, and of course, Australia) upon the deliberations and decisions of the Versailles Peace Treaty framers.
At Paris, ‘Billy’ Hughes led the Australian delegation. He had objectives that were specifically Australian: to secure Australian (and British Empire) control over the old German colonies in New Guinea and the islands. Australian armed forces had seized these territories in 1914 and Hughes would have liked to simply annexe them under direct Australian rule. In this, he was initially opposed by President Wilson who believed that colonies of great empires were really only territories held in trust until the day their peoples would gain independence and rule themselves. (1976 and many feel that the period of stewardship should have been longer considering the political and social turmoil of 2016.) Wilson wanted it declared a trustee territory of his proposed league. It was Australia’s strategic front door, Hughes reckoned, and the size of our casualty list entitled us to outright ownership. “Am I to understand that Australia is prepared to defy the opinion of the whole civilised world, Mr Hughes?” Wilson brusquely demanded.
Hughes fiddled with his hearing aid and pretended not to have heard. Wilson, dripping sarcasm, repeated the question. “That’s about the size of it, Mr President,” drawled Hughes.
Considering the perceived threat from Asian Invasion, that is, the swelling masses flooding down into Australia from China and Japan, a cornerstone of Australia's Immigration Restriction Act, 1901 (White Australia Policy), Hughes was also keen to keep these Asian nations as far away as possible.
Wilson distrusted the old empires and the way in which they seemed to be gathering in Paris to carve up the ex–colonial territories of the defeated powers, especially Germany and Turkey, rather than simply to make a new and more just world order.