Abstract
Professor Tammy M. Proctor is a cultural historian of the First World War whose rich scholarship has largely concentrated on noncombatants’ experiences of the conflict. Women, scouts and civilians have been Proctor's primary focus, which has now expanded to include humanitarians, thereby contributing to a growing and lively trend of investigation in the fields of sorties de guerre (the process by which societies and states transition from wartime mobilisation to peacetime) and First World War studies. In this new book, Saving Europe. First World War Relief and American Identity, Proctor considers exactly what the title suggests, exploring how American humanitarians contributed to relieve and rebuild European countries after the First World War, in the process helping to create a new positive image of America as a benevolent nation.
It is a comprehensive study in which chapters are organised around key case studies, such as Belgium, France, Austria, Germany and Poland. But this geographical division in case studies does not lead to covering similar grounds across chapters; each focuses upon a specific type of relief or activity, such as feeding civilians, saving children, health, and dealing with former enemies. Through these themes, Proctor manages to paint a broad landscape of how Americans self-styled themselves as saviours and protectors of Europe both there and at home. Although, of course, European countries largely rebuilt themselves after the conflict, thousands of humanitarians from across the world took part in this process, many of them Americans, supervising local people. Nearly always civilians, Proctor retraces the work of those Americans who worked and volunteered for the American Relief Administration, the American Red Cross, the Quakers, the Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, the YMCA and the Roman Catholic Knights of Columbus, alongside several other organisations which, at times, competed against one another to support European civilians deeply affected by the war. Individuals are important in this book: they embody these organisations and provide an entry point into how some Americans saw themselves and projected or solidified an imagined identity through the ever-grateful Europeans’ gaze.
Although the work of some of these organisations has been an object of study in the past two decades, the heuristic benefit of bringing the latter together in one monograph, and in a comparative way across different European countries, is significant. This approach makes the pattern of American relief and humanitarianism so much more visible: class, race, gender, money, a belief in efficiency, in “scientific” management, hygienism, urban planning and an expectation of gratitude are among these characteristics. While marvelling at old cultures, languages, arts and architecture they knew they did not possess, American humanitarians were nonetheless convinced of America's moral superiority, and of their own, as new experts in all things humanitarian, an attitude at times met with local resistance, sometimes polite, sometimes not so much. Most young American humanitarians experienced a level of comfort and social mobility while in Europe that they could never have accessed in their own society. Diplomatic networks, access to funds, food, accommodation and cars were often discussed in their correspondence with home. Imbued with idealism and sometimes with religious zeal, they were very conscious of their position and roles. In treating Europeans as ‘objects of social reform’ (p. 27), these American humanitarians were also defining or redefining their own personal and national identities. Regardless, American expertise in administering aid agencies during and in the aftermath of the First World War would have a lasting impact on the 20th century. This experience provided a fertile training ground for generations of humanitarians – most of them women – who would assume a leading role in these organisations in the interwar period and the Second World War.
As one would expect, Proctor keeps a healthy critical distance from her subjects. She reminds us how such humanitarian ventures conveniently provided a significant market for large quantities of American goods and primary produces. Saving Europe is steeped in deep and detailed archival research, providing both the bigger picture and the mundane of the personal, making it a very engaging read. This book is both a rich entry point to and a comprehensive survey of the dense networks of humanitarian activities in Europe for anyone interested in the long, lingering aftermath of war.
