Date of Award

6-1-1963

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Arts (MA)

Department

History

First Advisor

Dr. A. Stanley Trickett

Abstract

Jan Christian Smuts of South Africa was one of the most remarkable and interesting personalities of the past century. Although he came from a small, and in some ways, backward country, his influence spread throughout much of the world. In his lifetime of eighty years, 1870-1950, he had several careers. Although his profession was the law, he was also, at various times, a soldier, a statesman, a diplomat, a scientist, and a philosopher. He served as a general officer in three wars and helped to found two world peace organizations: the League of Nations and the United Nations. Many aspects of Smuts's life and work are worthy of detailed study, but his role at the 1919 Paris Peace Conference was chosen for this paper for several reasons. First, the Peace Conference has been extensively examined from almost every angle, but no one has written specifically of Smut's role at the Conference. Second, this one episode in his life is a reasonably compact unit which can be fully treated in a work of this length, and yet it serves well to illustrate the kind of man Smuts was and his impact on world events.

Comments

A Thesis Presented to the Graduate Faculty of the Department of History University of Omaha In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Master of Arts. Copyright 1963, Naomi Howerton Coryell.

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