Research Exchange workshop

Becky will speak about her new book project, which has a working title of Footsoldiers of Humanitarianism: Reconstructing Europe after WWI, and is conceived as a social history of interwar humanitarianism. This book will focus on the (usually young) American and European men and women who took advantage of the new opportunities the war afforded them to travel and see the world by signing up to humanitarian relief operations. Usually middle-class and college educated, they tended to view the task of reconstructing devastated communities very differently from the missionaries whose province the ‘civilising mission’ had previously been, and they emphasised different forms of education, self-help, and medical and technical training; but neither did they necessarily conform to the modern, science-backed, technocratic ideas the professionalising humanitarian organisations were increasingly pursuing. This research will look at their lifeworlds and understandings of what they were involved in, and explore how they contributed, as agents of change, to the evolution of the overarching goals and ideals of humanitarian organisations.