Jan Christiian Smuts

A statesman and philosopher, Jan Christiian Smuts was a well-known military leader in South Africa during the early twentieth century. He was a Dutch-speaking Boer whose family originally arrived in South Africa in 1692 as farmers. Smuts grew up in the hostile political climate in which the British and the Dutch were fighting for control of South African land. Educated in law, Smuts adhered to the idea that to cultivate the continent, compromise and peace were necessary between the warring European nations. After the Jameson Raid (an effort by the British to provoke a war), however, Smuts sided with the Boers and proclaimed his loyalty to Afrikaner nationalism.

When the Boer War erupted in 1899, Smuts was still hoping to achieve peace between the British and the Dutch, but was consistently disappointed by efforts to negotiate. Smuts distinguished himself as a military leader during the war, and...