January 18 in History

In January 1871, the German Empire was proclaimed in the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles, bringing most of the German-speaking states of central Europe under a single national government for the first time. The new state, dominated by Prussia, quickly became the strongest power on the European continent. Its creation upset the balance of power that had held since the Congress of Vienna in 1815 and shaped the politics of Europe for the next seventy years.

The Paris Peace Conference, held in 1919, was the gathering at which the victorious Allied powers negotiated the terms of peace after the First World War. Meeting mostly in and around Paris, it produced the Treaty of Versailles with Germany and separate treaties with the other defeated powers, redrew the maps of Europe and the Middle East, and created the League of Nations. Its decisions shaped the interwar world, and its failures are still debated as one of the roots of the Second World War.