Near East Relief, the League, and French Mandate Syria’s Humanitarian Affairs, 1920–26

In the early 1920s, a group of East Coast American philanthropists formed the Near East Relief Association in response to humanitarian tragedies in the region. Its efforts raised awareness of the situation in the United States and offered its resources to Armenians, Greeks and other tragedy-struck peoples in the form of education, shelter and healthcare. On the other side of the Atlantic the League of Nations housed a humanitarian office, set up by famed Norwegian Fridtjof Nansen in 1921. Finally, the French Mandate Authorities also attempted to respond to humanitarian issues. Yet crucial distinctions emerged with the underfunded Nansen Office being the middle ground between a penny pinching and defensive, perhaps near-paranoid, Mandate administration and the idealistic and well-resourced Near East Relief.

I draw on US, League and French archives to argue that underlying the differences in humanitarian approaches were different conceptions of the Mandate. Humanitarian work, though it could be simply about providing food, could also put to practice ideals that undermined colonial governance and legitimacy. For example, when the Near East Relief found themselves setting up orphanages for Armenian refugees in Syria, they soon came to clash with the French over whether these children would be taught in Armenian or in French. For the Americans, it was clear that a humanitarian response was intended to provide care for the local populace on their own terms, whereas the French administrators preferred the familiar ‘civilizing mission’ as expounded elsewhere in French possessions. Overall, the presence of the League provided the framework for competing voices to be heard on the international stage. This meant that Near East Relief could make itself heard through the sheer financial responsibility it took on, thus undermining a core colonial claim of the ‘civilizing mission’: that the colonial rulers know best.