Have politicians always destroyed the work of soldiers?

This morning we start our extra sessions for students in our school who are thinking about studying History at university. The classes are designed to broaden out pupils’ historical knowledge, understanding, their awareness of history as a discipline and to enable them to explore their own interests beyond the syllabus that we teach.

To start we’re going to look at how, over the last couple of hundred years, politicians have formalised the work of soldiers. After each major war there is nearly always a political settlement, in the form of a treaty. The question for our pupils is how far the politicians have made a settlement that has done justice to the work that the soldiers have done. Prior to the session we’ve asked the participants to research the following treaties:

Treaty of Utrecht, 1713 Treaty of Paris, 1763 Congress of Vienna, 1816 Treaty of Paris 1856 Treaty of Vereeniging, 1902 Treaty of Versailles, 1919 Yalta and Potsdam Conferences, 1945 The situation in Iraq today

The flow of the session is going to go something like this:

Why has the political settlement in Iraq been so bad?

So, what makes a good political settlement?

Looking at the various treaties what types of settlements have there been?

Which settlements have been successful?

Overall, then, what are the common factors in a successful political settlement?

I’ll post an entry on how the session goes later. If any teachers have any great ideas on further sessions for university candidates I’d love to hear from them!