Coping with a post-war world: Protestant student internationalism and humanitarian work in Central and Eastern Europe during the 1920s

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article explores the political and social contexts in which Protestant student internationalism gave rise to a particular vision of students’ basic needs and responsibilities that was closely entwined with the violent disruption of the continental empires in the context of the First World War. To this end, it focuses on European Student Relief (ESR), a branch of the World Student Christian Federation. ESR was founded in 1920 to provide humanitarian assistance to students in Central and Eastern Europe. From 1922 onwards, it gradually transformed into International Student Service, an interconfessional movement with global ambitions. The article focuses on this transformation process during which the denominational aspect of pre-war Protestant student internationalism gave way to an earthly vision of educational mobility that sought to counterbalance the political upheavals of the early post-war years – the violent emergence of the ethnically defined nation state and the continuance of colonial hierarchies and differences. The article makes the case for a global social history of higher education that conceptualises student activism from the perspective of Central and Eastern Europe, that discusses the entanglement of political transformations and social issues in terms of distress, ethnicity and ‘race’, and that connects humanitarianism with educational mobility.