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Starving Children, Scientific Nutrition, and the American Relief Administration's Mission in Central Europe, 1918-1923

Sat, April 2, 3:00 to 4:30pm, Westin Seattle Hotel, Whidbey

Abstract

After the armistice of 11 November, 1918, Herbert Hoover declared that the “curtain was lifted on the greatest famine of all time.” Starvation, disease, war, and death continued to ravage Central Europe, but the misery Hoover dreaded was avoided. To assess how the American Relief Administration (ARA) was able to help stave of the threat of massive starvation, I portray the organization as a nexus of international humanitarianism, national interest, and local knowledge. Examining the ARA's work from the perspectives of Poland and Austria, I argue the relief mission was not simply a tool of American benevolence or an example of cultural imperialism; it relied heavily on indigenous efforts to deal with wartime food shortages and public health concerns. Implemented by the ARA in both Vienna and Łódź, a system of nutrition developed by the Viennese pediatrician, Dr. Clemens Pirquet, integrated his wartime medical study of nutrition into a pragmatic plan to combat hunger and its handmaiden, disease. I argue that the ARA's implementation of Pirquet’s system in Austria and Poland was indicative of the organizatoins logic and logistics; to make use of knowledge at hand to effectively distribute relief to those in need. Furthermore, this study of food scarcity on the liminal boundary of war and its relationship to the incidence of social disease, namely tuberculosis among children, brings civilian populations into a discourse on the ecology of war.

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