Aspects of American Policy towards Poland at the Paris Peace Conference and the Role of Isaiah Bowman

Abstract

American participation in the First World War reflected new tendencies in American foreign policy evident only since the Spanish-American War of 1898. During the nineteenth century the United States adhered to an isolationist policy first set out by George Washington in his farewell address of 1796: ‘Europe has a set of primary interests, which to us have none, or a very remote relation. … Why … entangle our peace and prosperity in the toils of European ambition, rivalship, interest, humour, or caprice?’¹ With the American intervention in April 1917, President Woodrow Wilson overturned this traditional policy by involving his country in European politics and war. At the Peace Conference in Paris he quickly discovered the consequences of this new involvement in European affairs. Wilson and his advisers had to consider longstanding political problems of the old world. One of those questions was the problem of the restoration of the Polish state.