Good sources on the "American Relief Administration/other forms of NGO aid after or during the first world war.

by I_miss_Chris_Hughton

I'm currently working towards a degree in International Development, and ideally would like to work for organisations like Quaker Peace. One of their biggest operations, as far as I can tell, was run alongside the American Relief Administration. However hard sources on it are relatively hard to find. I've found a book called "The Famine in Soviet Russia 1919-1923 the Operations of the American Relief Administration", but that seemed to have been published in the 1920s. Is there anything more recent, more able to judge the long term effects, successes and failures?

Thanks!

Georgy_K_Zhukov

Give a look to Douglas Smith's The Russian Job: The Forgotten Story of How America Saved the Soviet Union From Ruin. Its aimed at a popular history audience, but it came out to very good reviews and provides a nice overview of the topic even if it might not have the depth of a more academic treatment. Worth checking out.

Cobra_D

Yes, there's a few recent works that would be helpful, both for information on American relief and for thinking about the meanings of humanitarianism in wartime in general. The history of humanitarianism during the Great War has grown a lot recently, with many works tracing the origins of our modern conceptions of humanitarianism and NGOs to the wartime period. These three came to mind while reading your question:

  • Bruno Cabanes, The Great War and the Origins of Humanitarianism 1918-1924 (2014) (Argues that modern understandings of human rights come out of the Great War with particular focus on American famine aid to Russia and Fridjtof Nansen's passport for stateless people.)
  • Ian Tyrell, Reforming the World: The Creation of America's Moral Empire (2010) (Looks at work by American missionaries and Christian relief groups abroad from the 1870s to the 1920s, with a lot of focus on Eastern Europe and the Middle East if I remember correctly. At the very least a good place to find further sources.)
  • Melanie S. Tanelien, The Charity of War: Famine, Humanitarian Aid, and World War I in the Middle East (2017) (Examines how humanitarian work is a way of attaining political power by looking at responses to the famine in Lebanon during the war. Less relevant to your interests but helpful for thinking about the purposes of humanitarianism, plus why some groups fail and others succeed. You can read my review of it here.)

Any one of those books could suggest plenty more sources for you to read that might be more specific to your interests. I would recommend starting with Cabanes. You might also be interested in Ilana Feldman's book "The Quaker Way: Ethical Labor and Humanitarian Relief," in Refugees and Im/migrants (2007), which is about Quaker aid to Gaza in 1948-1950 and so well outside the scope of your project but of possible interest in thinking about how the Quakers view relief work.

And finally there is a good discussion of humanitarianism and relief work during the First World War on the Online International Encyclopedia of the First World War which talks about important questions in the field and what researchers are currently focusing on, which you can read here.