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‘Segregation has fallen on evil days’: Smuts' South Africa, global war, and transnational politics, 1939–46

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 October 2012

Jonathan Hyslop
Jonathan Hyslop*
Affiliation:
Department of Sociology, University of Pretoria, 19th floor Humanities Building, Lynnwood Road, Pretoria 0002, South Africa E-mail: jhyslop@colgate.edu
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Abstract

South African state policy in the 1940s moved in significantly new political directions that were not simply the prelude to apartheid. This shift, under the leadership of Jan Smuts, towards a welfarist management of black urbanization, can only be understood by focusing on transnational dimensions of the period that have been neglected by historians of South Africa. The reorganization of the state was made possible as a consequence of the business of fighting a global war. South African policy changes were intimately linked to the evolution of British colonial policy. And the South African interventions in world politics to support the creation of the United Nations and to reconfigure the southern African subcontinent were to have drastic and unforeseen consequences.

Keywords

decolonizationJan SmutsSecond World WarSouth AfricaUnited Nations
Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Global History , Volume 7 , Issue 3 , November 2012 , pp. 438 - 460
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2012 

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