Background
James was born on August 6, 1874 in Strathroy, Ontario, Canada, the son of John Blansfield Shotwell, a teacher and small farmer, and of Anne Thomson.
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James was born on August 6, 1874 in Strathroy, Ontario, Canada, the son of John Blansfield Shotwell, a teacher and small farmer, and of Anne Thomson.
Shotwell was educated in the local public schools and graduated from the University of Toronto in 1898 with a B. A. in history. He then enrolled in the graduate program at Columbia University, where he established himself as one of the bright stars of the history department and became James Harvey Robinson's outstanding pupil in medieval history. In 1903 Shotwell received his Ph. D.
His mastery of the "New History, " which sought to infuse traditional political and diplomatic history with socioeconomic material led to his appointment in 1905 as adjunct professor of history at Columbia. In 1908 he was promoted to professor. He remained associated with Columbia until his retirement in June 1942 as Bryce Professor Emeritus of the History of International Relations.
The theme of the impact of science and technology was prevalent in his famous essay on "History" in the eleventh edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica (1910) and in The Religious Revolution of To-Day (1913).
The outbreak of World War I destroyed Shotwell's tranquil world of historical scholarship and college teaching. Increasingly his attention turned to the nature of international conflict and the possibility of its elimination. In September 1917 Shotwell accepted a position with the Inquiry, a committee charged with studying the major political, economic, legal, and historical questions that would have to be faced in the peace conference at the end of the war.
In 1919 he went with Wilson to Paris as an adviser to the American peace commission. At the Versailles Conference, Shotwell played a minor role, but he did assist in organizing the International Labor Organization. By the end of the war Shotwell had concluded that future international conflicts could be avoided only through collective security and free trade.
Shortly after the war he agreed to edit the massive Economic and Social History of the World War for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. The project, which took seventeen years, consisted of 152 volumes dealing with the conduct and consequences of the war. In 1924 Shotwell became director of the Carnegie Endowment's Division of Economics and History and used that position to work for United States entry into the League of Nations, the World Court, and the International Labor Organization. In 1927 his suggestion to French Foreign Minister Aristide Briand that the United States and France negotiate a treaty renouncing war as an instrument of national policy led to the Kellogg-Briand Peace Pact, signed the following year by sixty-four nations.
During the interwar period he wrote extensively on international issues and headed research committees for such organizations as the Institute of Pacific Relations and the Social Science Research Council. In addition, he became the American representative to the League of Nations Committee on Intellectual Cooperation. From 1935 to 1939 he was president of the League of Nations Association.
Along with his colleague Clark Eichelberger, executive director of the League of Nations Association, he established the Commission to Study the Organization of Peace in 1939. The commission produced numerous reports during the war designed to provide a "practical" blueprint for world peace. In addition, Shotwell served on the Advisory Committee on Postwar Foreign Policy, established by Secretary of State Cordell Hull, and in 1945 he became chairman of the consultants to the American delegation to the United Nations Conference in San Francisco. At the conference he did much to promote the cause of human rights and to strengthen those sections of the United Nations Charter dealing with the social and economic activities of the organization.
In 1949 he became president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace but resigned in 1950 to devote his remaining years to the writing of history. He died in New York City.
Always an activist, James Thomson Shotwell worked in a variety of ways to promote peace and internationalist ideals, so he played an instrumental role in the creation of the International Labour Organization, in promoting inclusion of a declaration of human rights in the UN Charter. He also established the Commission to Study the Organization of Peace, helped to organize the National Board for Historical Service. In addition to his many books, Shotwell was co-author of several studies on international relations and was the editor of a series of 150 volumes of the Social and Economic History of the World War as well as a series of 25 studies on Canadian-American relations.
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( This work has been selected by scholars as being cultur...)
Shotwell promoted the cause of liberal internationalism and the United Nations. He worked to counter U. S. isolationism and to promote U. S. entry into the League of Nations. He strongly backed President Harry S. Truman's activist foreign policy, although he had many reservations about the government's strong anti-Soviet stance.
In his teaching and writings Shotwell emphasized the impact of science and technology on Western civilization. He had long predicted that science and technology would be utilized by the military unless they could be harnessed for peaceful purposes. The war reaffirmed the need to develop a viable international system based on world organization.
Shotwell combined his activism with scholarly concerns.
Quotes from others about the person
His obituary in the New York Times observed that he was "among the most respected and dedicated protagonists of internationalism in the United States, " a man who saw "the world as a whole. "
On August 28, 1901, he married Margaret Harvey, who was also a graduate of the University of Toronto. They had two daughters: Helen and Margaret Grace.
