JAN CHRISTIAN SMUTS AND THE FOUNDING OF THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS

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INTRODUCTION

The United Nations today occupies a political space at the centre of the global dialogue. To most of the world, the United Nations symbolises much of the hope for international peace and security through global cooperation, dialogue, collective responses to security threats, and, perhaps predominantly, through human rights.

The Janus face of international law, politics, and organisation

The instances of the Janus face of international law, politics, and organisation are legion. For the sake of expediency, this thesis is limited to examples of this phenomenon during the period of Smuts’ activity on the international stage, i.e., from approximately the fin de siècle to 1948. This thesis also emphasises the expression of the Janus face in the context of a number of highly contentious international issues of that era, namely self determination; racial equality; great power hegemony; national sovereignty; and especially the ‘human rights’ idiom during and shortly after the Second World War.

The human rights idiom during the Second World War – The Atlantic Charter, the Declaration of the United Nations, and the Dumbarton Oaks Proposals

In the early stages of the Second World War, it became increasingly clear to Roosevelt that, although technically his country was still a non-belligerent, he had to formulate with Churchill a joint strategy to respond to growing pressure in their respective countries to declare a common purpose.Towards this end, on 9 August 1941, Roosevelt and Churchill met for three and a half days under conditions of strictest secrecy and under heavy naval protection at Placentia Bay, off the coast of Newfoundland.

Great power hegemony

In his conception of the United Nations, Roosevelt exhibited an uncanny ability to accomplish two seemingly contradictory goals at the same time. His visions combined an appeal to universal principles of peace, freedom, and human rights, with an organisational structure deliberately designed to expand United States political and economic dominance of world affairs.

CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION
1. The Janus face of international law, politics, and organisation
1.1 Self-determination, mandates, and racial equality at the Paris Peace Conference
1.2 The human rights idiom during the Second World War –
The Atlantic Charter, the Declaration of the United Nations, and the Dumbarton Oaks Proposals
1.3 Great power hegemony
1.4 National sovereignty
2. Moral compartmentalisation
3. The Janus face of Smuts
4. A brief personal history of Smuts
PART I JAN CHRISTIAN SMUTS AND THE FOUNDING OF THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS
CHAPTER 2 ‘HANDYMAN’ AND ‘ORATOR’ OF THE EMPIRE
1. A brief history of international organisation
1.1 Ideas regarding international organisation and peace prior to the 19th century
1.2 International organisation from 1814 to 1914: The Concert of Europe
2. ‘Handyman of the Empire’: Smuts as a member of the British War Cabinet 1917 – 1918
3 ‘Orator of the Empire’: Smuts’ reflections on the League of Nations idea during the war
3.1 ‘The necessity of devising means to diminish the risk of future wars’
3.2 ‘A real Magna Carta for the whole of humanity hereafter’
3.3 ‘The real nucleus of the world government of the future’
3.4 ‘The greatest creative effort of the human race in the sphere of political government’
3.5 ‘We must from the very start of the conference co-operate with America as far as is consistent with our own interests’
CHAPTER 3 ‘THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS: A PRACTICAL SUGGESTION’
1. ‘A short sketch, hastily written at the last moment, and amid other pressing duties’
2. ‘An ever visible, living, working organ of the polity of civilization’
2.1 Idealism and pragmatism
2.2 An anti-legalist, organicist league based upon a moral paradigm
3 Reaction to Smuts’ pamphlet
3.1 Views of scholars
3.2 Reaction of British politicians
3.3 Influence on Wilson
4 Intellectual communion between Smuts and Wilson
4.1 Organicist, evolutionary theory of international politics
4.2 Anti-legalist theory of international politics
4.3 Global public opinion in international politics
4.4 A moral paradigm of international politics
4.5 The tension between international interests and state sovereignty
5 A realpolitik calculation
CHAPTER 4 SMUTS AT PARIS: ‘IT HAS EVER BEEN THUS WITH THE PROPHETS
1. ‘Work, and despair not’
2 Smuts on the Commission on the League of Nations
CHAPTER 5 MANDATES AND REPARATIONS
1. The mandate for South West Africa: ‘[I]f the interpretation were to come in practice from General Smuts’
1.1 The confrontation between Wilson and the Dominions
1.2 Smuts’ compromise solution
1.3 The mandate system: Veiled annexation or step along the evolutionary path of international organisation and human rights?
2 Reparations: ‘Logic? I don’t give a damn for logic I am going to include pensions’
2.1 Introduction
2.2 A brief background to the controversy
2.3 Smuts’ ‘legal’ opinion of 31 March 1919
2.4 Evaluation: ‘A bad means’ of achieving ‘distributive justice’
CHAPTER 6 SMUTS’ STRUGGLE FOR REVISION OF THE TREATY OF VERSAILLES: ‘I FIND MYSELF IN A WORLD WHERE DESPAIR SEEMS ALREADY TO HAVE SETTLED ON MEN’S SOULS’ I FROM HOPE TO APPREHENSION
1. ‘A bad spirit about’
2 ‘An impossible peace, conceived on a wrong basis’
3. ‘The terms of peace . . . will leave a trail of
anarchy, ruin, and bitterness’
4. ‘This is the time for the Griqua prayer’
5. ‘Under this Treaty Europe will know no peace’
6. ‘The final sanction of this great instrument
must be the approval of mankind’
II FROM ‘FURIOUS REVOLT’ TO RESIGNATION
1. ‘[A] Wilson Peace’ or ‘a scrap of paper’
2. ‘The war was only the vanguard of calamity’
3. ‘This Treaty breathes a poisonous spirit of revenge’
4. To sign or not to sign
5. ‘Not in criticism but in faith’
6. ‘The word reconciliation has to be writ large on our skies’
7. Conclusion
PART II JAN CHRISTIAN SMUTS AND THE FOUNDING OF THE UNITED NATIONS
CHAPTER 7 THE UNITED NATIONS: PRODUCT OF EVOLUTION OR REVOLUTION?
1. Introduction
2. The United Nations as a United States institution
2.1 Introduction
2.2 The overwhelming influence of
the United States on the United Nations
3. Smuts and Churchill
4. The veto
5. ‘Peace unbacked by power remains a dream’
6. Smuts at San Francisco
CHAPTER 8 THE PREAMBLE TO THE CHARTER OF THE UNITED NATIONS
1. Introduction
2. The Meeting of Commonwealth Prime Ministers
in London (4 to 13 April 1945)
3. The San Francisco Conference
4. The name of the new post-war international organisation
CHAPTER 9 SMUTS AND THE 1946 UNITED NATIONS GENERAL ASSEMBLY
1. Introduction
2. The incorporation of South West Africa
into the Union of South Africa
3. The quarrel with India
3.1 The arguments
3.2 The implications
3.2.1 Implications for the United Nations
3.2.2 Implications for the human rights movement
3.2.3 Implications for South Africa
3.2.4 Implications for Smuts
CHAPTER 10 THE SMUTSIAN CONCEPT OF ‘HUMAN RIGHTS’
1. The human rights idiom during the early 1940s
1.1. Roosevelt’s ‘Four Freedoms’ speech (6 January 1941)
1.2 The Atlantic Charter (14 August 1941)
1.3 The Declaration of the United Nations (1 January 1942)
1.4 The rights of man campaign of HG Wells
and Hersch Lauterpacht’s An bill of rights of man
1.5 The Proposals for the establishment of a
general international organization (‘Dumbarton Oaks Proposals’) (9 October 1944)
1.6 The human rights idea during the Second World War: An ‘empty vessel’?
2 Holism and human rights
2.1 A brief exposition of Smuts’ ‘Idea of the Whole’
2.2 The role of Holism in Smuts’ statecraft
2.3 ’Freedom’ and ‘Personality’
2.3.1 Freedom
2.3.2 Personality
3. What rights are ‘human rights’?
4. Human rights as an ideological response to war
4.1 ‘A war of the spirit, of man’s soul’
4.2 Human rights as a reaction to Nazi atrocities
CHAPTER 11 SMUTS IN CONTEXT: A CORRECTIVE TO MAZOWER AND MOREFIELD
1. Introduction
2. ‘The visionary, globe-trotting statesman-philosopher, committed to his evolutionist paradigm of cosmic harmony under beneficent white guidance’
2.1 Introduction
2.2 Smuts and race
2.2.1. The peril of labels
2.2.2. ‘The general who spent his weekends with Quakers’
2.2.3 Politics as the art of the possible
2.2.4 The ‘sphinx problem’
2.2.5 Smuts, the upholder of Western civilisation
2.2.6 ‘Cosmological time’
2.2.7 Hofmeyr as Smuts’ successor
2.2.8 Smuts, the ‘father of apartheid’?
2.2.10 Social policy away from politics
3. Conclusion
CHAPTER 12 CONCLUSION
1. Mazower’s central question
2. The significance of Smuts’ introduction of the phrase ‘human rights’ into the Charter of the United Nations
2.1 The unintended consequences of grandiose phrases
2.2 The transformative effect of ideas
2.3 The gravitational effect
2.4 The perils of perfectionism
3. The expanding circle
4. Smuts’ paramount contribution
BIBLIOGRAPHY

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‘To Save Succeeding Generations from the Scourge of War’: Jan Christian Smuts (1870 – 1950) and the Genesis of International Organisation and Human Rights