Woodrow Wilson

Woodrow Wilson’s presidency coincided with the First World War (the worst catastrophic event to descend on Europe since the Black Death) and the Paris Peace Conference of 1919. Both these seminal events had far reaching consequences that still haunt our world today. The First World War propelled a sleeping industrial giant out of the shadows where it had languished since the end of the Civil War onto the world stage and elevated Woodrow Wilson to a world statesman and placed him firmly in the pantheon of outstanding 20th-century American presidents. Wilson’s call to Congress in the Spring of 1917 to declare war against Germany ultimately changed the course of the war – a war which Great Britain and France and their allies could well have lost without the intervention of the United States.

By inheritance Woodrow Wilson was from Scottish and Irish stock. His mother was born in Carlisle in north-west England. Before he became the 28th president of the United States, Wilson spent five summers in Britain – mainly in the Lake District which he regarded as his second home. Wilson was a profoundly emotional man, an incurable romantic, an idealist. Reading William Wordsworth’s The Farewell would bring tears to his eyes. Wilson was twice married and had three daughters by his first wife who died aged 54. He also had a long-standing (possibly romantic) friendship with a married woman which brought him close to political disaster.

This book illuminates Wilson’s Anglophilia, his time spent in Britain, his two marriages, his academic and political achievements and failures, his decision to support Britain and France and their allies in the First World War, and his role in (a) establishing the League of Nations (the forerunner of the United Nations) and (b) the main architect in reshaping the world after the demise of four empires in the wake of the First World War.