The Paris Peace Conference was the meeting of the Allied victors following the end of World War I to set the peace terms for the defeated Central Powers following the armistices of 1918. It took place in Paris during 1919 and involved diplomats from more than 32 countries and nationalities. They met, discussed various options and developed a series of treaties ("Paris Peace Treaties") for the post-war world. These treaties reshaped the map of Europe with new borders and countries, and imposed war guilt and stiff financial penalties on Germany. The defeated Central Powers' colonial empires in Africa, southwest Asia, and the Pacific, would be parceled between and mandated to the victorious colonial empires, based on the different levels of previous development and the creation of the League of Nations.

At the center of the proceedings were the leaders of the four "Great Powers": President Woodrow Wilson of the United States, Prime Minister David Lloyd George of Great Britain, George Clemenceau of France, and, of least importance, Italian Prime Minister Vittorio Orlando; Orlando eventually had pulled out of the conference and did not play a role in constructing the final draft of the Treaty of Versailles. Germany and Communist Russia were not invited to attend, but numerous other nations did send delegations, each with a different agenda. Kings, prime ministers and foreign ministers with their crowds of advisers rubbed shoulders with journalists and lobbyists for a hundred causes, ranging from independence for the countries of the South Caucasus to racial equality.