In the 19th century imperialism was still going strong through most of the world, and these tendencies didn’t disappear at the turn of the century. In fact, during the Paris Peace Conference in 1919 most of the great powers, with the exception of the United States were still using the goals of imperialism to shape what they were fighting for. 

Let’s start with explaining what imperialism entailed during the 19th century. Imperialism is a situation in which one country has a lot of power or influence over others, especially in political and economic matters. In the 19th century most world powers mainly aimed to expand their rule and gain more land and power. It was a bperiod of colonial expansion among European powers, the United States and Japan. We can see through the requests of the participants in the peace conference that these attitudes continued into the 20th century, and effected the conference. 

First let’s talk about David Lloyd George, the Prime Minister of Britain’s goals when it came to the Peace Conference. By the end of the war Britain owed tremendous debts, especially to the USA, but gained German colonies and most of the Ottoman Empire. Along with that it became a naval superpower, being mainly in control of the seas. During the negotiations Britain was fighting to maintain naval supremacy, to get Germany to pay reparations with which Britain could pay off their debts, and to expand at the expense of Germany, gaining more colonies. 

Britain, wanting to maintain their naval power believed this could happen if they got all of Germany’s colonies, obtaining all the ports, making it almost impossible for any sort of naval power within Germany. 

Similarly, Italy had hoped to gain colonies from the treaty they were working on. Italy, when joining the war only chose to do so after being promised colonies. They had wanted to gain the Italian speaking Austria-Hungary territories, wanting to create an Italian empire. Considering why Italy ended up joining the war, their main goals during the conference were also territorial. In the Treaty of London, the treaty made convincing Italy to join the war, they were promised large sections of Italian speaking Austria-Hungary land. During the peace conference they were mainly fighting to obtain what they were promised, as well as reparations from Germany. 

France had lost territory which they believed should be theirs, which they were able to gain back through the Treaty of Versailles. During the conference however, their other main goal was more taking colonies away from Germany and making them their own countries. France believed that creating Poland out of Germany territory would balance out Germany’s power, and letting the Rhineland become hindependent would weaken Germany’s economy, taking away important resources. Along with this of course, France also hoped that French territories could be made with land in the Ottoman Empire. 

However, Woodrow Wilson had much different plans for the peace conference. He believed it would be much more beneficial to create smaller countries rather than empires, allowing for more nationalistic feelings, and creating nations of people with similar beliefs, customs and languages. Along with this, he created his 14 points which he believed would make it much more likely to obtain world peace, and force Germany to agree. 

As you can see, all the countries wanted Germany to pay for the war, however they had different ideas of how this should be done. France, Italy and Britain all seemed to think they could gain the most from Germany by obtaining more colonies and expanding. The United States on the other hand, agreed with some of this, but more than anything just wanted to ensure world peace. You can see from their goals that all of the countries involved, except for the United States, were still acting like imperial powers, through their requests and goals. Wanting to expand their empires and power is similar to how they acted in the 19th century. The United States however, instead focused less on empires and more on creating individual countries.