For the sake of the Children: The Lady Muriel Paget’s Mission to the Baltic States (1920–1922)

Abstract

ABSTRACT A private organization created and managed by a devoted founder, Muriel Paget’s Mission to the Baltic States developed a welfare programme merging Paget’s pre-war charity work and the main agenda of post-war humanitarianism. In managing the mission’s activities, Paget distinguished between relief and rehabilitation. While rehabilitation practices were an extension of the pre-war work in which Paget had been involved, child welfare measures reflected the understanding of rehabilitation as a cultural colonization project. Accordingly, Paget envisaged the intervention of the mission as a necessary tool for ‘modernizing’ the attitudes of mothers and knowledge of local medical and paramedical personnel alike, and, therefore, enabling the growth of healthy young generations and the implementation of a new ‘modern’ mothering culture for both mothers and healthcare workers. In this, Paget’s Mission demonstrates significant continuity with analogous British humanitarian practices of that period as a particular intersection of liberal internationalism and imperialism.