General Smuts: South Africa

Makers of the Modern World: The peace conferences of 1919-23 and their aftermath
By Antony Lentin

Listen to Professor Anthony Lentin on the Today Programme talk about Smut's legacy and his attempts to prevent the severe war reparations imposed on Germany after the Treaty of Versailles. 

Jan Christian Smuts (1870-1950) was one of the key figures behind the creation of the League of Nations; Woodrow Wilson was inspired by his ideas on the League and borrowed heavily from them, including the mandates scheme, whereby South Africa took responsibility for Namibia. Alarmed at the turn that peacemaking was taking, Smuts took the lead in urging moderation on reparations and Germany’s frontiers with Poland and pleaded for a magnanimous peace, warning that the treaty of Versailles would lead to another war.
Declaring ‘I return to South Africa a defeated man’, Smuts encouraged Keynes to write The Economic Consequences of the Peace, and denounced the occupation of the Ruhr in 1923. He became Prime Minister of South Africa and a leading Commonwealth statesman. He made important contributions to the British cause in the Second World War and was instrumental in the establishment of the United Nations.

Professor Antony Lentin , formerly a Professor of History at the Open University, is a Senior Member of Wolfson College, Cambridge, a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and a Barrister. He is author of Guilt at Versailles: Lloyd George and the Pre-History of Appeasement (1985), Lloyd George and the Lost Peace: from Versailles to Hitler 1919-1940 (2001), and The Last Political Lord: Lord Sumner (1859-1934) (2009). 

Preview the book online: http://www.book2look.de/vBook.aspx?id=GmQc5xZtYw

A great review in the Spectator - 28th April 2010 by Will Robinson:

http://www.spectator.co.uk:80/books/5949863/a-firm-believer-in-leniency.thtml

'Ninety years after the ill-fated European peace settlement dictated by the victorious Allies at Versailles, it is fitting that a publisher should commission a series of 32 monographs devoted to the men and consequences of the Peace entitled ‘Makers of the Modern World’. Collectively they will reveal the full extent of debate among the statesmen who redrew the map of Europe in 1919, setting the agenda for international relations in the age of Hitler, Stalin and Churchill.

In this contribution to the series, Professor Antony Lentin examines the role of General Jan Smuts, who came to the Paris Peace Conference as Deputy Prime Minister of South Africa. As the most forceful voice in favour of a compromise settlement with Germany, Smuts is the perfect subject for a scholar who has devoted much of his career to unravelling the making of the ‘Carthaginian Peace’.

Smuts was born on his parents’ remote Cape Colony ranch in May 1870, and, although not sent to school until he was almost 13, became one of the most learned statesmen of the 20th century: lawyer, scientist, fellow of the Royal Society and philosopher. He began with a double First from Cambridge, a university he attended courtesy of a well-deserved scholarship between 1891 and 1894. This paved the way for a long political and military career, which saw him sucessively serve as State Attorney of the Transvaal, a legendary guerrilla commander in the Anglo-Boer War (1899-1902), Colonial Secretary and Prime Minister of South Africa from 1919-1924 and 1939-48.

Where Lentin adds to W. K. Hancock’s magisterial two-volume biography is in focussing on Smuts in relation to the Paris Peace Conference. Smuts’ faith in the workability of a lenient settlement was based on what he called ‘the contagion of magnanimity’, which required Germany to be admitted to the League of Nations — an institution he did much to establish. From his own experience he anticipated that the exclusion and humiliation of Germany would not bring peace, but would result in the undermining of the Weimar Republic and the liberal values for which it stood. He spoke with the authority of a man who had himself fought and lost against the British; after which he re-negotiated a lasting peace with the Liberal Prime Minister, Henry Campbell-Bannerman, in 1905. He believed that a similar solution could be found to the conflict of 1914-18, but his more triumphalist colleagues paid him short shrift: Georges Clemenceau called him ‘the saboteur of the Treaty of Versailles’.' - Will Robnison, 28 April 2010

A nice review from the H-Diplo review project in America. Click here for the full PDF.

Reviewed in The Wittnes (South Africa's oldest newspaper)

'As this excellent book powerfully shows, he was a man of exceptional broad-mindedness, moral (and physical) courage, realistic wisdom happily married to idealism, admired and almost revered by major figures in Europe, and driven by a highly positive dynamism, all inspired by a passionate longing for, simply, a better world...'

'...A great strength of this book is the fact that about 40% of it is made up of quotations — most from Smuts’s own writings and speeches, but many uttered by leading British and European figures who knew him, and some by members of his family. The author mostly allows the characters to speak for themselves, which gives his account great solidity. A fascinating and inspiring read.' - David Pike, 22 September 2010

Reviewed in the South African Journal of International Affairs

'This excellent book by Anthony Lentin is in a series which concentrates on the men (including Smuts) who shaped the Paris Peace Conference after the First World War. Lentin not only describes Smuts' contribution in Paris, but he also outlines his life from farm boy of the Western Cape to his state funeral in Pretoria 80 years later. Lentin does this in less than 200 pages (excluding references and the index), which is a tribute to his clear, elegant and economical English style.' - James Barber, 2010