Scales of French Refugee Relief in the Great War Era

The Great War created humanitarian crises and historiographical enigmas for France. Following the 1914 offensives, over 100,000 northeastern French inhabitants sought refuge in France’s interior. Later Allied assaults and German deportations compelled similar journeys by tens of thousands of destitute French residents. Evacuees quickly exceeded existing and emerging Gallic agencies’ restorative abilities and approaches. To relieve displaced citizens, France needed to expand its national horizons and incorporate transnational philanthropists. A re-scaled relief program was necessary.

In response, thousands of global actors deployed novel scales of relief and reconstruction. Newcomers introduced ideas, items, and institutions into northeastern France to catalyze concurrent Gallic wartime and postwar refugee relief work within 240 war-damaged communities. Patriotism never inspired these expatriates’ labors. Instead, multitudinous motives led Asian and African laborers and American women, Quakers, and Methodists to redress imbalances precipitated by the Great War. American humanitarians reconciled their personal desires and/or international obligations against their agencies’ global supply networks and refugees’ resources and requests. Conversely, Asian and African farmers and laborers generally viewed relief programs as paths for personal advancement within a society that marginalized overseas subjects. For these people refugee relief was a local and transnational, rather than a national, venture.

These inter-scaled restitutions of ruined France were both transformative and ‘hidden’ from monographs on France’s recovery. Foreign aid workers cooperated with Gallic agencies to re-present alien actions and articles within familiar French cultural contexts. By the mid-1920s, their culturally-consonant approaches had helped the 240 service sites recover from war damages a decade before similarly scarred sectors. Yet scholars have portrayed France’s recovery as domestically driven. Overlooking foreign assistance stems largely from the asynchronous transnational and international motives and methods that overseas actors deployed. Overseas agents’ departure from reconstructed France helped remove the main visible symbols of their distinct contribution to reestablishing balance—themselves.