James Thomson Shotwell

James Thomson Shotwell (August 6, 1874 – July 15, 1965) was a Canadian-born American history professor. He played an instrumental role in the creation of the International Labour Organization (ILO) in 1919, as well as for his influence in promoting inclusion of a declaration of human rights in the UN Charter.

Career Background

Shotwell was born in Strathroy, Ontario, to American Quaker parents.

He obtained a B.A. from the University of Toronto in 1898. He obtained his doctorate from Columbia University in 1903, where he studied under James Harvey Robinson.

All in all, he studied and taught at Columbia for nearly 50 years, where his closest friends were fellow professors Robinson and Charles A. Beard.

Private life Marriage

Shotwell married Margaret Harvey in 1901 and they had two daughters, Helen Harvey and Margaret Grace. In 1937, their daughter Margaret married Llewelyn L. B. Summers, the son of Leland L. Summers and Eve Brodlique Summers.

Woodstock He maintained a home in Woodstock, New York, and was instrumental in getting American artist Anita Miller Smith to become a writer and to publish the service record of all Woodstock people who had fought in the war as part of Smith's 1959 book on the town's official history.

Death Shotwell died of a stroke at his apartment at 257 West 86th Street in Manhattan at age 90.

Legacy The James T. Shotwell Professor of International Relations chair at Columbia University was named in his honor.

In summarizing his career, Lisa Anderson (then dean of Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs) wrote: James T. Shotwell represented the first generation of genuinely cosmopolitan American policy intellectuals. 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." In many respects, this vision was to remain a minority view in the United States, particularly as the Cold War consumed the second half of the twentieth century, and Shotwell was well aware of the obstacles to its realization. Reflecting on the impact of what he called "the great communist controversy" on the United Nations, he wrote that "the full and adequate implementation of the revolutionary concept in the Charter may be long delayed." He was, however, at heart an irredeemable optimist: "The success or failure of that organization is a measure of civilization itself. There can be no surer guarantee of its ultimate success."

Shotwell's combination of scholarly enthusiasm, pragmatic engagement in the world, and abiding optimism, his conviction that social scientists should deploy their learning to public purposes, his faith that human intervention might improve the human condition, and his ability to "see the world as a whole" became hallmarks of Columbia's study of international relations.

Works 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 Economic and Social History of the World War as well as a series of 25 studies on Canadian-American relations, both sponsored by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He also contributed nearly 250 articles to the 11th edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica. He co-authored The Diplomatic History of the Canadian Boundary, 1749-1763 with Max Savelle.

His books include: The Religious Revolution of To-day (1913) An Introduction to the History of History (1922) Plans and Protocols to End War (1925) War as an Instrument of National Policy (1929) The Origins of the International Labor Organization (1934) On the Rim of the Abyss (1936) At the Paris Peace Conference (1937) The Great Decision (1944) The Life of Woodrow Wilson: An Outline for a Course of Study (1944) [Distributed in movie theaters showing Darryl F. Zanuck's movie, Wilson.] The Long Way to Freedom (1960)