Jan Klecanda - Havlasa, his life and relation to Brazil

Jan Havlasa was the first Ambassador of Czechoslovakia to Brazil, a distinguished writer and explorer. The purpose of this thesis is to present the explorer's life. Havlasa visited Slovakia after finishing secondary school, and soon after he travelled also to Italy; Saint Louis, Missouri; or the island of Tahiti. After the Paris Peace Conference in 1919, Havlasa served as the Ambassador of Czechoslovakia to Brazil (1920-1924); in 1943, Czechoslovak president Edvard Beneš called him back into diplomatic service, this time as the Ambassador to Chile. Among his most important formative experiences we can find his membership in the Opium Commission of the League of Nations. Despite the fact that Havlasa spent most of his life abroad, he never relinquished his homeland: he took interest in the situation of Czechoslovakia and fought for its independence on the Austro-Hungarian monarchy. His extensive lecturing activities, as well as his treatise Colonial Policy in Relation to the Great War earned him one year of gaol in Vienna. The thesis also takes into account Havlasa's extensive literary work and his lectures, which took place all over Czechoslovakia and during which he presented his books, photographs and travel experience to his readers and listeners