The Creative Advance Must Be Defended

Miscegenation, Metaphysics, and Race War in Jan Smuts's Vision of the League of Nations

Bibliographic Data

ID3363554
AuthorsJacob Kripp (0000-0001-8657-9110, Johns Hopkins University, corresponding author)
Year2022
Volume116
Issue3
Pages940-953
Publication date2022-08-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueAmerican Political Science Review (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0003-0554 • E-ISSN: 1537-5943
PublisherCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s0003055421001362
OpenAlexW4200212351
LanguageEN
Citations received7
References cited53

This paper argues that the idea of global peace in early twentieth-century liberal international order was sutured together by the threat of race war. This understanding of racial peace was institutionalized in the League of Nations mandate system through its philosophical architect: Jan Smuts. I argue that the League figured in Smuts's thought as the culmination of the creative advance of the universe: white internationalist unification and settler colonialism was the cosmological destiny of humanity that enabled a racial peace. In Smuts's imaginary, the twin prospect of race war and miscegenation serves as the dark underside that both necessitates and threatens to undo this project. By reframing the problem of race war through his metaphysics, Smuts resolves the challenge posed by race war by institutionalizing indirect rule and segregation as a project of pacification that ensured that settlement and the creative advance of the cosmos could proceed

Colonialism · Destiny (ISS module · Empire · Humanity · League · Mandate · Manifest destiny · Metaphysics · Political science · Politics · Race (biology · Sociology · Theology · Australian History and Society · Gender Studies · Historical and Contemporary Political Dynamics · Law · Philosophy · South African History and Culture

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