American Philanthropy at Home and Abroad

New Directions in the History of Giving

Ben Offiler, Rachel Williams, Ben Offiler, Rachel Williams

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN:
  9781350151956
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9781350151970
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: North American History
• Index: History

American Philanthropy at Home and Abroad explores the different ways in which charities, voluntary associations, religious organisations, philanthropic foundations and other non-state actors have engaged with traditions of giving.

Using examples from the late eighteenth century to the Cold War, the collection addresses a number of major themes in the history of philanthropy in the United States. These examples include the role of religion, the significance of cultural networks, and the interplay between civil diplomacy and international development, as well as individual case studies that challenge the very notion of philanthropy as a social good.
Led by Ben Offiler and Rachel Williams, the authors demonstrate the benefits of embracing a broad definition of philanthropy, examining how American concepts including benevolence and charity have been used and interpreted by different groups and individuals in an effort to shape – and at least nominally to improve – people's lives both within and beyond the United States.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title
• Title
• Contents
• List of figures
• Notes on contributors
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Religion and philanthropy
• 1 Heaping coals of fire on the enemy’s head: The political uses of Christian benevolence in the Civil War
• 2 ‘Ministry of helpfulness’: Near East Relief and Protestant philanthropic secularism, 1915–30
• 3 Philanthropy as exchange: American missionaries and the international religious liberty debate
• Cultural networks
• 4 Transatlantic abolition and the unquiet library: Print culture and the making of a ‘celebrated philanthropist’
• 5 Towards a cultural counter-establishment: Huntington Hartford and his eponymous foundation, 1948–65
• 6 The Ford Foundation’s cultural Cold War in Berlin
• Diplomacy and international development
• 7 Women’s educational philanthropy and civil-society diplomacy: Opposing US legislation prohibiting Japanese immigration while fundraising for a Tokyo women’s college, 1900–29
• 8 Cultivating ‘goodwill’ through rural welfare: The Near East Foundation in Iran, 1943–51
• 9 From books to land rovers: The informal, small philanthropy of the AFL-CIO and the ICFTU in Africa during the early Cold War
• Challenging philanthropy
• 10 Identifying a menace to the national welfare: The final report of the United States Commission on Industrial Relations and the Progressive Era critique of philanthropic foundations
• 11 Klanishness and American fraternalism: Examining charity and philanthropy in the Second Ku Klux Klan
• Select bibliography
• Index
• Copyright