(image: the "Big Four" at the Versailles Peace Conference; source: Wikimedia Commons)
Abstract:
This chapter analyses the essential provisions of the Versailles reparations scheme and argues that this scheme, with its concept of reparations and with other features, was unprecedented in the history of peace treaties. The chronology of the management of the German debt – a story of treaty execution and treaty revision from 1920 to 2010 – can be divided into various reparation schemes, most significantly those of the Dawes Plan and the Young Plan. However, the degree to which already the Paris Conference set the basic patterns for this entire history of reparations is striking. Its themes, schemes and devices appeared again and again in one guise or another. The chapter concludes on what these recurrent themes can mean for the legal framework of sovereign debt management beyond the singular experience of the Versailles Treaty.
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(source: International Law Reporter)
