Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
  • Cited by 1
Publisher:
Cambridge University Press
Online publication date:
October 2023
Print publication year:
2023
Online ISBN:
9781009128476

Book description

Feeding the Mind explores how European intellectual life was rebuilt after the cataclysm of the First World War. Learned communities were left in ruins by the conflict and its consequences; cultural and educational sites were destroyed, writers and artists were killed in battle, and tens of thousands of others were displaced. Against the backdrop of an unprecedented post-war humanitarian crisis which threatened millions with starvation and disease, many organisations chose to focus on assisting intellectuals and their institutions, giving them food, medicine and books in order to stabilise European democracies and build a peaceful international order. Drawing on examples from Austria to Russia and Belgium to Serbia, Feeding the Mind analyses the role of humanitarianism in post-conflict reconstruction and explores why ideas and intellectuals were deemed to be worth protecting at a time of widespread crisis. This issue was pertinent in the century that followed and remains so today.

Reviews

‘In the tumultuous aftermath of the Great War, governments, humanitarian organizations, and philanthropists, driven by their preoccupation with civilizational decline, mobilized both to save intellectuals - identified as a category especially deserving of assistance - and to rebuild institutions of knowledge. This neglected history of ‘intellectual relief’ is the great topic of Tomás Irish’s innovative, and powerful book. His new research should be widely read at a time when intellectual life and cultural heritage are constantly threatened by the many crises of the new millennium.’

Bruno Cabanes - Ohio State University

‘This book reveals how humanitarianism after 1918 was inspired as much by the desire to feed minds as hungry bodies. Middle-class youth is at the heart of an exciting history that binds the reconstruction of Europe with the battle to revive faith in the value of learning and international exchange.’

Patricia Clavin - University of Oxford

Refine List

Actions for selected content:

Select all | Deselect all
  • View selected items
  • Export citations
  • Download PDF (zip)
  • Save to Kindle
  • Save to Dropbox
  • Save to Google Drive

Save Search

You can save your searches here and later view and run them again in "My saved searches".

Please provide a title, maximum of 40 characters.
×

Contents

Metrics

Altmetric attention score

Full text views

Total number of HTML views: 0
Total number of PDF views: 0 *
Loading metrics...

Book summary page views

Total views: 0 *
Loading metrics...

* Views captured on Cambridge Core between #date#. This data will be updated every 24 hours.

Usage data cannot currently be displayed.