In 1902, he played a key role in negotiating the Treaty of Vereeniging, which ended the war and resulted in the annexation of the South African Republic and Orange Free State into the British Empire.

He played a leading role at the Paris Peace Conference of 1919, advocating for the creation of the League of Nations and securing South African control over the former German South-West Africa.

His second term in office ended with the victory of his political opponents, the reconstituted National Party at the 1948 general election, with the new government implementing early apartheid policies.

At the end of his career, Smuts supported the Fagan Commission's recommendations to relax restrictions on black South Africans living and working in urban areas.

Sir Alfred Milner, head of the British delegation, took exception to his dominance, and conflict between the two led to the collapse of the conference, consigning South Africa to war.

[18][19] The Austrian medical doctor, founder of the school of Individual Psychology, and psychotherapist, Alfred Adler (1870–1937), also showed a great interest in Smuts's book.

In the early stages of the conflict, Smuts served as Paul Kruger's eyes and ears in Pretoria, handling propaganda, logistics, communication with generals and diplomats, and anything else that was required.

[22] Combined with the British failure to pacify the Transvaal, Smuts's success left the United Kingdom with no choice but to offer a ceasefire and a peace conference, to be held at Vereeniging.

Defeated but not deterred, in January 1905, he decided to join with the other former Transvaal generals to form a political party, Het Volk ('The People'),[25] to fight for the Afrikaner cause.

In particular, Meinertzhagen thought that frontal attacks would have been decisive, and less costly than the flanking movements preferred by Smuts, which took longer, so that thousands of Imperial troops died of disease in the field.

Smuts initially recommended renewed Western Front attacks and a policy of attrition, lest with Russian commitment to the war wavering, France or Italy would be tempted to make a separate peace.

[38][39] By mid-January 1918, Lloyd George was toying with the idea of appointing Smuts Commander-in-Chief of all land and sea forces facing the Ottoman Empire, reporting directly to the War Cabinet rather than to Robertson.

He worked with Smuts to draw up plans, using three reinforcement divisions from Mesopotamia, to reach Haifa by June and Damascus by the autumn, the speed of the advance limited by the need to lay fresh rail track.

[41] Like most British Empire political and military leaders in the First World War, Smuts thought the American Expeditionary Forces lacked the proper leadership and experience to be effective quickly.

[43][44] According to Jacob Kripp, Smuts saw the League as necessary in unifying white internationalists and pacifying a race war through indirect rule by Europeans over non-whites and segregation.

[44] Kripp states that the League of Nations mandates system reflected a compromise between Smuts's desire to annex non-white territories and Woodrow Wilson's principles of trusteeship.

"[48] While in Britain for an Imperial Conference in June 1921, Smuts went to Ireland and met Éamon de Valera to help broker an armistice and peace deal between the warring British and Irish nationalists.

Du Bois wrote in an article which would be incorporated into the pivotal Harlem Renaissance text The New Negro, Jan Smuts is today, in his world aspects, the greatest protagonist of the white race.

In all this he expresses bluntly, and yet not without finesse, what a powerful host of white folk believe but do not plainly say in Melbourne, New Orleans, San Francisco, Hongkong, Berlin, and London.

[63][64]In December 1934, Smuts told an audience at the Royal Institute of International Affairs that: How can the inferiority complex which is obsessing and, I fear, poisoning the mind, and indeed the very soul of Germany, be removed?

The continuance of the Versailles status is becoming an offence to the conscience of Europe and a danger to future peace ... Fair play, sportsmanship—indeed every standard of private and public life—calls for frank revision of the situation.

Let us break these bonds and set the complexed-obsessed soul free in a decent human way and Europe will reap a rich reward in tranquility, security and returning prosperity.

[65]Though in his Rectorial Address delivered on 17 October 1934 at St Andrews University he stated that: The new Tyranny, disguised in attractive patriotic colours, is enticing youth everywhere into its service.

The British Cabinet shared Churchill's sympathetic view, which led to self-government within the year, followed by dominion status for the Union of South Africa in 1910.

[85]In general, Smuts's view of black Africans was patronising: he saw them as immature human beings who needed the guidance of whites, an attitude that reflected the common perceptions of most westerners in his lifetime.

Appearing personally before the United Nations General Assembly, Smuts defended the policies of his government by fervently pleading that India's complaint was a matter of domestic jurisdiction.

[89] In 1948, he went further away from his previous views on segregation when supporting the recommendations of the Fagan Commission that Africans should be recognised as permanent residents of White South Africa, and not merely as temporary workers who belonged in the reserves.

[91] In the assessment of South African Cambridge professor Saul Dubow, "Smuts's views of freedom were always geared to securing the values of western Christian civilization.

[96] However, Smuts was deputy prime minister when the Hertzog government in 1937 passed the Aliens Act that was aimed at preventing Jewish immigration to South Africa.

This proved to be a two-way street; in 1946 the General Assembly requested the Smuts government to take measures to bring the treatment of Indians in South Africa into line with the provisions of the United Nations Charter.