THE “MORAL BASIS” OF RECONSTRUCTION? HUMANITARIANISM, INTELLECTUAL RELIEF AND THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS, 1918–1925

Abstract

This article analyses the post-First World War emergence of intellectual relief. This is defined here as aid given to intellectuals and scholarly institutions. Relief included the provision of food and medicines to individuals as well as the supply of relevant scholarly literature and laboratory equipment to academic institutions. After 1918, significant humanitarian interventions targeted Central and Eastern Europe, which had been ravaged by war and its myriad consequences. The article argues that intellectual relief, while frequently using the language of the “crisis of civilization,” was part of the broader effort to safeguard the postwar liberal democratic order against Bolshevism. The article pays particular attention to the League of Nations' Committee on Intellectual Cooperation (CIC) to show how states like Hungary used intellectual deprivation to agitate for treaty revision. It argues that the CIC's development was shaped by the wider dynamics of intellectual relief.