Peter Grant - Philanthropy and Voluntary Action in the First World War: Mobilizing Charity

Philanthropy and Voluntary Action in the First World War

This book challenges scholarship which presents charity and voluntary activity during the First World War as marking a downturn from the high point of the late Victorian period. Charitable donations rose to an all-time peak, and the scope and nature of charitable work shifted decisively. Far more working class activists, especially women, became involved, although there were significant differences between the suburban south and industrial north of England and Scotland. The book also corrects the idea that charitably-minded civilians efforts alienated the men at the front, in contrast to the degree of negativity that surrounds much previous work on voluntary action in this period. Far from there being an unbridgeable gap in understanding or empathy between soldiers and civilians, the links were strong, and charitable contributions were enormously important in maintaining troop morale. This bond significantly contributed to the development and maintenance of social capital in Britain, which, in turn, strongly supported the war effort. This work draws on previously unused primary sources, notably those regarding the developing role of the UKs Director General of Voluntary Organizations and the regulatory legislation of the period.

Peter Grant is Senior Fellow in Grantmaking, Philanthropy and Social Investment at the Cass Business School, City University, London.

Routledge Studies in Modern British History

1 Violence and Crime in Nineteenth-Century England
The Shadow of our Refinement
J. Carter Wood

2 Revolutionary Refugees
German Socialism in Britain, 184060
Christine Lattek

3 Marxism in Britain
Dissent, Decline and Re-emergence 1945c.2000
Keith Laybourn

4 The Victorian Reinvention of Race
New Racisms and the Problem of Grouping in the Human Sciences
Edward Beasley

5 Origins of Pan-Africanism
Henry Sylvester Williams, Africa, and the African Diaspora
Marika Sherwood

6 Statistics and the Public Sphere
Numbers and the People in Modern Britain, c. 18002000
Edited by Tom Crook and Glen OHara

7 Public Health in the British Empire
Intermediaries, Subordinates, and the Practice of Public Health, 18501960
Edited by Ryan Johnson and Amna Khalid

8 Disability in Eighteenth-Century England
Imagining Physical Impairment
David M. Turner

9 British Student Activism in the Long Sixties
Caroline M. Hoefferle

10 Philanthropy and Voluntary Action in the First World War
Mobilizing Charity
Peter Grant

Philanthropy and Voluntary Action in the First World War

Mobilizing Charity

Peter Grant

First published 2014

by Routledge

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2014 Taylor & Francis

The right of Peter Grant to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Grant, Peter, 1955 February 21

Philanthropy and voluntary action in the First World War : mobilizing charity / by Peter Grant.

pages cm (Routledge studies in modern British history ; 10)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

1. World War, 19141918Civilian reliefGreat Britain.

2. World War, 19141918War workGreat Britain. 3. World War, 19141918Social aspectsGreat Britain. 4. CharitiesGreat BritainHistory20th century. I. Title.

D638.G7G73 2014

940.3'1dc23

2013038347

ISBN13: 978-0-415-70494-6 (hbk)

ISBN13: 978-1-315-89021-0 (ebk)

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