Leonard V. Smith

  • Frederick B. Artz Professor of History

Areas of Study

Education

  • BA, Oberlin College, 1980
  • MIA, School of International Affairs, Columbia University, 1982
  • PhD, Columbia University, 1990

Biography

Single-author books by Leonard V. Smith include French Colonialism from the Ancien Régime to the Present (Cambridge University Press, 2023); Sovereignty at the Paris Peace Conference of 1919 (Oxford University Press, 2018); The Embattled Self: French Soldiers’ Testimony of the Great War (Cornell University Press, 2007); and Between Mutiny and Obedience: The Case of the French Fifth Infantry Division During World War I (Princeton University Press, 1994). He is also coauthor of Ils ont fait la paix: le Traité de Versailles vu de France et d’ailleurs (They Made Peace: The Treaty of Versailles Seen from France and Beyond), directed by Serge Berstein (Editions Les Arènes, 2018); and France and the Great War, 1914-1918, with Stéphane Audoin-Rouzeau and Annette Becker (Cambridge University Press, 2003).

Smith’s recent publications include: “De Sèvres à Lausanne: Agents et structures dans le système international,” in Isabelle Davion and Stanislas Jeannesson, eds., Les Traités de paix, 1918-1923: les uns contre les autres (Sorbonne Université Presses, 2023) 157-70; “State Sovereignty,” in Peter Jackson, William Mulligan, and Glenda Sluga, eds., Peacemaking and International Order After the First World War (Cambridge University Press, 2023), 91-113; and “International Law and the Greek-Bulgarian and Greek-Turkish Population Exchanges,” in Jonathan Conlin and Ozan Ozavci, eds., They All Made Peace—What is Peace?: The 1923 Lausanne Treaty and the New Imperial Order (Ginko Library, 2023), 259-76.

Smith was awarded a Fernand Braudel Senior Fellowship at the European University Institute in Florence, Italy for the spring semester 2023. He has also held fellowships from the Rockefeller Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the National Humanities Center. He served as visiting professor at Ohio State University’s Mershon Center in 2015, at École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in 2012, as William F. Podlich Distinguished Fellow at Claremont McKenna College in 2008, and at the Associated Kyoto Program at Doshisha University in Kyoto, Japan, in 2004.

He is currently researching a new project on liberalism, racial exclusion, and the law in Texas and French Algeria in the 19th century.

  • French Colonialism from the Ancien Régime to the Present, Cambridge University Press, 2023
  • Ils ont fait la paix: le Traité de Versailles vu de France et d’ailleurs [They Made Peace: The Treaty of Versailles Seen from France and Beyond], (coauthor), Éditions Les Arènes in Paris, 2018
  • Sovereignty at the Paris Peace Conference of 1919, Oxford University Press, 2018
  • The Embattled Self: French Soldiers’ Testimony of the Great War, Cornell University Press, 2007
  • France and the Great War, 1914-1918, with Stéphane Audoin-Rouzeau and Annette Becker, Cambridge University Press, 2003
  • Between Mutiny and Obedience: The Case of the French Fifth Infantry Division During World War I, Princeton University Press, 1994 

His teaching interests include modern Europe, war and society, and French imperialism.

Fall 2024

The French Revolution and the Making of the Modern World — FYSP 173
WW II — HIST 226
History Senior Projects — HIST 500

Spring 2025

Modern European History — HIST 102
History Senior Projects — HIST 500

Notes

Leonard V. Smith Recent Book Published

September 13, 2023

In July, a book by Frederick B. Artz Professor of History Leonard V. Smith, French Colonialism from the Ancien Régime to the Present, was published in the New Approaches to European History series by Cambridge University Press. It is dedicated to the Oberlin students who took History 282, the course on which the book is based.

Leonard Smith Recent Articles Published

August 23, 2023

Frederick B. Artz Professor of History Leonard V. Smith published two articles continuing his research on the history of international law: “State Sovereignty,” in Peter Jackson, William Mulligan, and Glenda Sluga, eds., Peacemaking and International Order After the First World War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2023), and “International Law and the Greek-Bulgarian and Greek-Turkish Population Exchanges,” in Jonathan Conlin and Ozan Ozavci, eds., They All Made Peace—What is Peace?: The 1923 Lausanne Treaty and the New Imperial Order (London: Ginko Library, 2023).

Leonard V. Smith Articles Published

December 9, 2022

Leonard V. Smith has recently published two articles, “The Armistices of 1918,” Richerche Stroriche 52: 2 (2022): 9-25; and “The Politics of Recognition at the Paris Peace Conference,” in Postwar Continuity and New Challenges in Central Europe, 1918-1923: The War that Never Ended, Tomasz Pudłocki and Kamil Ruszała, eds., (Routledge, 2022), 9-34. Both are extrapolations from his most recent book, Sovereignty at the Paris Peace Conference of 1919 (Oxford, 2018).

Fernand Braudel Senior Fellowship Awarded to Leonard Smith

January 3, 2022

Frederick B. Artz Professor of History Leonard V. Smith has been awarded a three-month, Fernand Braudel Senior Fellowship at the European University Institute. The institute is located in a villa just outside Florence, Italy. He will begin work on a project comparing law, liberalism, and racial exclusion in 19th century Texas and French Algeria.

 

Leonard V. Smith Publishes Article

January 31, 2020

Leonard V. Smith ’80, Frederick B Artz Professor of History, published an article titled: "Sovereignty under the League of Nations Mandates: The Jurists' Debates," in the December 2019 issue of Journal of the History of International Law. The article argues that mandates after World War I were never "colonies" in a traditional legal sense and that jurists were never able to agree on just what they were instead.

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