Beyond Hoover. Rewriting the History of the Commission for Relief in Belgium (CRB) through Female Involvement

Abstract

The Commission for Relief in Belgium (CRB) was among the largest and most prominent humanitarian undertakings of the First World War. From October 1914 to mid-1919, the American-led organization provided one billion dollars’ worth of food aid (unadjusted) to Belgium and Northern France, saving about nine million civilians from slow starvation. Though fairly well-known, the history of this remarkable organization and the relief of Belgium more generally is usually told from a near exclusively male and American perspective, focusing on the CRB’s director and later U.S. president, Herbert Hoover, and a small group of American volunteers. This article challenges this conventional narrative by exploring the involvement of women in the CRB’s vast humanitarian operations. It highlights their essential roles as symbolic victims, fundraisers and relief workers. In so doing, it exposes a very different side of the relief of Belgium, raising broader questions about why female involvement was omitted or forgotten in the first place, and about who is assigned the noble epithet of ‘humanitarian’. As the history of humanitarianism—a buzzing field of late—matures, it seems especially important to ponder these issues.