Photograph of May 4th demonstrators, Beijing, 1919

[T]he meaning of the Versailles settlement [is reconfigured] by exploring its unintended consequences in stimulating movements of national liberation in Egypt, India, Korea, and China. Instead of telling us about the interplay of Great Power politics, he shows how non-Europeans invented their own version of Wilson in their search for a kind of self-determination that he, alongside Lloyd George, Clemenceau, and Orlando, was unprepared to offer to them. Who could have imagined that the decision these men took to award rights to Shandong Province, formerly held by Germany, not to China but to Japan would lead to major rioting and the formation of the Chinese Communist Party?

The Legacy of the Great War
Jay Winter (Editor) pages 7 and 8.