The Big Four Meet
January 12, 1919 - First Meeting in Paris of the Leaders of the Big Four
On this day in 1919, British Prime Minister David Lloyd George met with prime ministers Vittorio Orlando of Italy and Georges Clemenceau of France, as well as President Woodrow Wilson of the United States, at the Quai d'Orsay in Paris. The "Big Four" nations conducted this conference in order to establish the post-bellum peace terms after defeating the Central Powers (Germany, Autro-Hungary, and the Ottoman Empire) and winning the Great War or the First World War - WWI - as many of us know it.
The Armitise or ceasefire had been declared two months earlier on 11 November 1918 and the meeting of the "Big Four" of the Allied Powers convened the Paris Peace Conference to settle claims resulting from the Great War. After a week the conference would be expanded and move to the Palace of Versailles, and six months later present the Treaty Of Versailles as the formalized end of the war.
Some of the results and consequences to come from the Big Four and their following treaties would be the dissolution of four previous empires - German, Austo-Hungarian (the Hapsburgs), Ottoman, and Russian - which would also set the stage for the demise of the British Empire. The treaties would bring about the emergence of several new autonomous countries, the creation of the Soviet Union, and sow the seeds for not only World War II, but also the Cold War, and an unstable Middle East.
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