Emily Baughan - Saving the Children (Berkeley Series in British Studies)

Saving the Children

BERKELEY SERIES IN BRITISH STUDIES

Edited by James Vernon

The Peculiarities of Liberal Modernity in Imperial Britain, edited by Simon Gunn and James Vernon

Dilemmas of Decline: British Intellectuals and World Politics, 19451975, by Ian Hall

The Savage Visit: New World People and Popular Imperial Culture in Britain, 17101795, by Kate Fullagar

The Afterlife of Empire, by Jordanna Bailkin

Smyrnas Ashes: Humanitarianism, Genocide, and the Birth of the Middle East, by Michelle Tusan

Pathological Bodies: Medicine and Political Culture, by Corinna Wagner

A Problem of Great Importance: Population, Race, and Power in the British Empire, 19181973, by Karl Ittmann

Liberalism in Empire: An Alternative History, by Andrew Sartori

Distant Strangers: How Britain Became Modern, by James Vernon

Edmund Burke and the Conservative Logic of Empire, by Daniel I. ONeill

Governing Systems: Modernity and the Making of Public Health in England, 18301910, by Tom Crook

Barbed-Wire Imperialism: Britains Empire of Camps, 19761903, by Aidan Forth

Aging in Twentieth-Century Britain, by Charlotte Greenhalgh

Thinking Black: Britain, 19641985, by Rob Waters

Black Handsworth: Race in 1980s Britain, by Kieran Connell

Last Weapons: Hunger Strikes and Fasts in the British Empire, 18901948, by Kevin Grant

Serving a Wired World: Londons Telecommunications Workers and the Making of an Information Capital, by Katie Hindmarch-Watson

Imperial Encore: The Cultural Project of the Late British Empire, by Caroline Ritter

Saving the Children: Humanitarianism, Internationalism, and Empire, by Emily Baughan

Saving the Children

HUMANITARIANISM, INTERNATIONALISM, AND EMPIRE

Emily Baughan

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS

The publisher and the University of California Press Foundation gratefully acknowledge the generous support of the Ahmanson Foundation Endowment Fund in Humanities.

University of California Press

Oakland, California

2022 by Emily Baughan

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Baughan, Emily, 1988-author.

Title: Saving the children : humanitarianism, internationalism, and empire / Emily Baughan.

Other titles: Berkeley series in British studies ; 19.

Description: Oakland, California : University of California Press, [2022] | Series: Berkeley series in British studies ; 19 | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2021014315 (print) | LCCN 2021014316 (ebook) | ISBN 9780520343719 (cloth) | ISBN 9780520343726 (paperback) | ISBN 9780520975118 (epub)

Subjects: LCSH: Save the Children Fund (Great Britain)History. | HumanitarianismPolitical aspects20th century.

Classification: LCC BJ1475.3.B37 2022 (print) | LCC BJ1475.3 (ebook) | DDC 361.2/6dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021014315

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021014316

Manufactured in the United States of America

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For my mum

Annie Baughan (ne Rutherford)

19582019

A monographespecially one that has taken this longis a scrapbook of formative conversations, intellectual communities, and treasured friendships. Many will recognize their contributions folded into the text and its notes. It is a pleasure to make these, and my gratitude, more visible.

This books series editor, James Vernon, made it a more ambitious project than I had originally imagined and pushed me to say what I meant. I am grateful for everything, especially his kindness and patience when life delayed writing. The very first iteration of this project was forged in conversation with my PhD supervisor, James Thompson. I would never have considered postgraduate study, much less a career in academia, without his encouragement. My co-supervisor, Kirsty Reid, modeled how to live authentically within and beyond the universitya lesson as valuable as her contribution to this projects beginnings. Seth Koven and Robert Bickers, who examined my PhD thesis, raised fresh questions and possibilities.

The Department of History at the University of Bristol made me a historian. I arrived there as an undergraduate and left as a lecturer, having learned so much about the scholar, teacher, and colleague I wanted to be. I am grateful to the entire departmentrare in its commitment to distributing time and resources downwardand especially to Tim Cole, Su Lin Lewis, Josie McLellan, Margery Masterson, and Rob Skinner. Jess Farr-Cox read and edited every word of this book: I could not have finished it without her.

At the University of Sheffield, my enthusiasm for this project was reawakened by the History, Politics and Culture Reading Group, and the Red Deer Writers Collective. Exploring the contours of work, life, politics, and scholarship together was the encouragement I needed to finish this project, and it sparked my excitement to move on to new questions. I am especially grateful for the commentary and camaraderie of Eliza Hartrich, Tom Johnson, Rosie Knight, Erin Maglaque, Chris Millard, Simon Toner, and James Yeoman. During my time at Sheffield I have learned as much standing outside the university as I did inside. I have our local UCU branch and its members to thank for that. I am grateful to Adrian Bingham for his support as head of department and his insight as a reader of this book. Dan Brockington and Amy Ryall made it possible for me to have conversations about this work beyond the department and the university.

Both Bristol and Sheffield were springboards for the international travel and academic fellowships that made writing and researching this kind of history possible. I acknowledge the support of the Fulbright Commission, the Worldwide Universities Network, the Mellon Foundation, the Arts and Humanities Research Council, the British Institute of East Africa, the Max Batley Peace Studies fund, the Economic History Society, and my unearned privilege in benefitting from these awards. I am especially grateful to mentors across the world, and the energy they poured into this project. Vivian Bickford-Smith was a generous host at the University of Cape Town in 2013. It was a dream to study with Susan Pedersen at Columbia University in 201314. I had to pinch myself often during a summer spent on Capitol Hill with the Decolonization Seminar in 2015. I am grateful to all the seminarians and faculty, in particular Philippa Levine and the late Marilyn Young. Many of the arguments that follow were worked out in conversation with Laura Lee Downs during long runs on the banks of the Arno during my year as a Max Weber Fellow at the European University Institute in 201516. I spent two summers, in 2012 and 2018, as a Kluge Fellow at the Library of Congress. The friendship of Bronwen Colquhoun, Oliver Cox, and Hazel Wilkinson is infinitely more precious to me than any of the words written there. It was such luck to share H Street with Sophie Jones twice, six years apart.

Then, there are the mentors and friends whose contributions cannot be tied to a particular moment or place. None of thisthe book or the life lived alongsidewould have made sense without Anna Bocking-Welch, Charlotte Riley, Tehila Sasson and Natasha Wheatley. I treasure their sisterhood and solidarity. Helen McCarthy has supported me and this book from the very start. Jordanna Bailkin and Michelle Tusan were my dream readers: along with an anonymous reviewer, they improved this text enormously. It has been a pleasure to learn from so many historians of development and internationalisms over the years, including Arthur Asseraf, Muriam Haleh Davis, Kim Lowe, Matthew Hilton, Kara Moskowitz, Eva-Maria Muschik and Stephen Wertheim. Conversations with Eleanor Davey about the material conditions and political imperatives of writing histories of aid have been a tonic.