Chicago 18 History Literature Review Example: The Paris Peace Conference

What changed in Chicago 18

This page follows the 18th edition published in 2024:

• Chicago now prefers repeating an author's name in successive bibliography entries instead of replacing it with a three-em dash.

• Shortened citations remain the preferred form for later notes;

  ibid.

  is discouraged because it can become unclear when notes move during editing.

• Place of publication is generally omitted from book citations.

Older departmental handouts may preserve 17th-edition or local conventions. Do not mix systems silently: identify the edition and follow the requirements governing the assignment or publication.

The history-writing task

A history literature review does more than arrange books by publication date. It asks how interpretations changed, what evidence made a change possible, and which people or archives remain outside the dominant account.

A focused question for this example is:

How have historians reinterpreted the Paris Peace Conference and Treaty of Versailles, and how did postcolonial and global approaches change a debate once centered on European diplomacy?

Historiographical map

Annotated history literature review example

Paragraph 1: Establish the interpretive problem

[Historiographical thesis] Interpretations of the Paris Peace Conference have moved away from a single moral verdict on Versailles toward competing explanations centered on constrained diplomacy, enforcement, international order, and colonial exclusion. Margaret MacMillan's reconstruction presents the peacemakers as political actors working under domestic and international limits rather than as authors of one predetermined disaster.1 Sally Marks more directly challenges the popular account that the treaty itself caused the Depression, Hitler's rise, and the Second World War; her review essay emphasizes both the treaty's relative moderation and the consequences of later policy and non-enforcement.2 [Synthesis] These works do not simply “defend Versailles.” They change the causal question from whether the treaty was punitive to how its provisions interacted with political choices after 1919.

Paragraph 2: Show how the archive and geographic frame changed

[Postcolonial intervention] Erez Manela shifts the center of the story from European negotiators to anticolonial nationalists who interpreted Wilsonian self-determination as a promise with global implications.3 The importance of this approach lies not only in adding non-European cases. It shows that the meaning of the conference was produced by actors in Egypt, India, China, and Korea as well as by the officials who controlled the settlement. [Longer chronology] Zara Steiner, meanwhile, embeds the peace within European international history through 1933, examining the political and institutional conditions under which the postwar order weakened.4 [Synthesis] Read together, these works reveal two different expansions of scope: one extends the geography beyond Europe, and the other extends the chronology beyond the treaty's signing.

Paragraph 3: Identify what remains unresolved

[Reassessment and source criticism] The essays collected by Manfred Boemeke, Gerald Feldman, and Elisabeth Glaser demonstrate that “the Versailles settlement” contains multiple problems—security, reparations, borders, minority protections, and international institutions—that cannot be collapsed into one verdict.5 Alan Sharp's survey of the settlement similarly provides a structured account of peacemaking across several treaties and regions.6 [Precise gap] A useful next review would compare how Japanese diplomatic records and anticolonial petitions treated the proposed racial-equality clause, then connect that evidence with Ottoman and Arab responses to the mandate system. [Completion standard] Such a review would name the archives, languages, actors, and imperial settings required to test whether the English-language historiography still reproduces the conference's own hierarchy of voices.

Notes used by the sample

1. Margaret MacMillan,

   Paris 1919: Six Months That Changed the World

   (Random House, 2002). The work appeared in the United Kingdom as

   Peacemakers: The Paris Conference of 1919 and Its Attempt to End War

   (John Murray, 2001).

2. Sally Marks, “Mistakes and Myths: The Allies, Germany, and the Versailles Treaty, 1918–1921,”

   The Journal of Modern History

   85, no. 3 (2013): 632–59, https://doi.org/10.1086/670825.

3. Erez Manela,

   The Wilsonian Moment: Self-Determination and the International Origins of Anticolonial Nationalism

   (Oxford University Press, 2007).

4. Zara Steiner,

   The Lights That Failed: European International History, 1919–1933

   (Oxford University Press, 2005).

5. Manfred F. Boemeke, Gerald D. Feldman, and Elisabeth Glaser, eds.,

   The Treaty of Versailles: A Reassessment after 75 Years

   (Cambridge University Press, 1998).

6. Alan Sharp,

   The Versailles Settlement: Peacemaking after the First World War, 1919–1923

   , 2nd ed. (Palgrave Macmillan, 2008).

These notes cite whole works because the sample paraphrases their broad interventions. A submitted paper should add the exact page or range whenever a claim, quotation, or localized argument depends on a specific passage.

Full notes and shortened notes

Use a full note on first citation unless a complete bibliography and your governing instructions permit a different approach. For later citations, use the author's surname, a shortened title, and a locator when needed:

• MacMillan,

  Paris 1919

  , 215.

• Manela,

  Wilsonian Moment

  , 91–93.

• Marks, “Mistakes and Myths,” 640.

The locators above demonstrate form. Confirm the relevant passage in the edition you actually used before retaining any page number.

When the same author has two works, the shortened title distinguishes them. Do not rely on ibid. or a three-em dash to resolve ambiguity.

Bibliography

Boemeke, Manfred F., Gerald D. Feldman, and Elisabeth Glaser, eds. The Treaty of Versailles: A Reassessment after 75 Years. Cambridge University Press, 1998.

MacMillan, Margaret. Paris 1919: Six Months That Changed the World. Random House, 2002.

Manela, Erez. The Wilsonian Moment: Self-Determination and the International Origins of Anticolonial Nationalism. Oxford University Press, 2007.

Marks, Sally. “Mistakes and Myths: The Allies, Germany, and the Versailles Treaty, 1918–1921.” The Journal of Modern History 85, no. 3 (2013): 632–59. https://doi.org/10.1086/670825.

Sharp, Alan. The Versailles Settlement: Peacemaking after the First World War, 1919–1923. 2nd ed. Palgrave Macmillan, 2008.

Steiner, Zara. The Lights That Failed: European International History, 1919–1933. Oxford University Press, 2005.

What a weak history review gets wrong

Chicago 18 history checklist

• [ ] The paper identifies Notes and Bibliography as its citation system.

• [ ] The first citation supplies a full note and later citations use a clear short form.

• [ ] Note numbers appear after punctuation unless a governing rule requires otherwise.

• [ ] Direct quotations and passage-specific claims include verified locators.

• [ ] The bibliography alphabetizes entries and uses hanging indents in the final document.

• [ ] Repeated authors' names are written out under the Chicago 18 preference.

• [ ] Book citations omit place of publication unless a specific exception applies.

• [ ] Every note has a matching bibliography entry when a bibliography is required.

• [ ] Historiographical categories are supported rather than imposed as labels.

• [ ] The review distinguishes published primary sources, archives, and secondary scholarship.

How Acade can support a history literature review

Acade can help researchers formulate a historiographical question, develop literature-search terms, organize source notes, map interpretive disagreements, prepare an outline, and revise citation-supported academic writing. A practical workflow is:

1. Define the event, period, geographic scope, languages, source types, and historiographical question.

2. Search for foundational works, later reassessments, and scholarship from outside the dominant geographic frame.

3. Record each source's thesis, archive or evidence base, scale, intervention, and limitation.

4. Group sources by disagreement or methodological shift rather than by author.

5. Draft the synthesis and attach Chicago notes to the claims they support.

6. Verify every page locator and bibliography field in the exact edition used.

Acade does not verify archival provenance automatically, replace language expertise, guarantee citation accuracy, or decide which interpretation is historically persuasive.

Tell Acade your period, historiographical question, archives, languages, and Chicago requirements, then ask it to help organize the next source-verification task.

Frequently asked questions

Does every history paper use Chicago Notes and Bibliography?

No. Notes and Bibliography is common in history, but departments and journals may use another style or a modified house system. Follow the rules attached to the assignment or publication.

Do I need a bibliography if I already have footnotes?

Many academic assignments require both, but Chicago also accommodates note-only documentation in some contexts. Use a bibliography when required and ensure it matches the works actually cited.

Should I use ibid. in Chicago 18?

Chicago discourages ibid. in favor of shortened citations because a short author-title form remains understandable if notes are moved or displayed separately.

What happened to the three-em dash?

Chicago 18 prefers repeating the author or authors in successive bibliography entries. The three-em dash remains visible in older work and departmental materials, but it should not be presented as the current preference.

Can I copy the page numbers in this model?

No. Pagination can differ by edition, and a locator must point to the passage supporting your claim. Verify every page in the copy you actually consulted.

Related examples

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• Annotated literature review sample by citation style

• Chicago Manual of Style 18th guide

Chicago rules, sources, and product information checked September 2, 2026. Verify the current manual, local requirements, exact editions, and Acade plan details before use.