The Paris Peace Conference was a meeting between the Allied Powers on how to handle the end of World War I. In this meeting, the three most influential voices were France, Great Britain, and the United States. All three different countries had unique ideas on what should happen to Germany after World War I.
The United States did not want to financially punish Germany.
The British did want to punish Germany financially. However, they wanted them strong enough to still be able to trade.
France however, wanted Germany to pay for all the damage caused during World War I. France was one of the countries that suffered the most damage from this war, hence why they were so insistent on Germany paying the price for the war.
In the end, Germany is forced to pay over $100 billion in damages for World War I and were forced to take responsibility for starting the war. This plan most accurately reflected France's idea on how to punish the Germans.
They just wanted to civilize the world, teach it Christianity, save souls and take native peoples under their protective wings as the children of God: “Let us subdue savage Africa by JUSTICE, by KINDNESS, by the talisman of CHRISTIAN TRUTH” [1]. And if the colonialists made a few bucks doing it the entire better.
The colonial powers are collectively saying that they deserve to carry no guilt or shame. They have no responsibility or obligation nor owe any reparations for the past. In fact, they greatly resent even being reminded of their ancestors’ trespasses and their continuing transgressions. It is time that the world forgets; get over it, stop making excuses and deny it ever happened.
The empires are still protecting what they see as their turf. Colonization was the deliberate policy of extracting raw materials from colonies. The raw materials were taken by the use of force and gun-boat diplomacy. Raw materials were taken from colonies so that they could be used to feed the industrial revolution and the economic development of the more powerful countries.
The British Empire was not the first empire of extraction but it became the most influential in developing cheap manufactured mass production during the industrial revolution. Cheap mass production depended on the ability to extract even cheaper raw materials, use exploitative cheap labor to manufacture value-added finished goods for trade.
Gunboat diplomacy was used to open world markets for England’s mass production. In so doing they became the “Walmart” of their day, destroying competition from craftsmen and cottage industries with cheap goods. Craftsmen, peasants and their families unable to sustain themselves then flooded into cites looking for work in the factories for survival.
During the 2oth century, it was in the <span>(3) Amazon Basin that</span> <span>deforestation has been a significant environmental issue due to the expansion of industrial mining.
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Citizens should be the authors of society's laws according to Rousseau because in that way they are free and follow their own rules, created by the General Will of the people. Rousseau thought that only the Republic is acceptable as a form of government, and in it all the people are in charge of creating the law.
