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victory of the entente powers in the First World War. At the Versailles Conference after the war, the Americans made the redrawing of the European map conditional upon the consent of the governed, sometimes in referendums and occasionally in elections. While he did not use the term “self-determination of the people”, Wilson made clear that peoples “Should be accorded the freest opportunity to autonomous
his address to Congress on 8 January 1918, and took with him to the Versailles Conference in December. These included ‘Open covenants of peace, openly arrived at’, with no secret agreements; freedom of the seas; the removal of economic barriers to trade; the reduction of national armaments to the lowest level consistent with domestic safety; a free hearing of all colonial claims to self-determination; the restoration of occupied territories; and the formation of a general association of nations ‘for the purpose of affording mutual guarantees of political