Great Philanthropists

The philanthropy of wealthy donors is often cast as a decidedly American phenomenon. Great Philanthropists provides a welcome and much-needed corrective to that view. The book is an outgrowth of a project on Jewish philanthropy in Europe, with articles about donors from South Africa, Europe, the United States, and Japan. Both Christian and Jewish donors are included, with figures as diverse as Nathan Mayer Rothschild (England’s first Lord Rothschild) and King Edward VII, Betty de Rothschild in France, such cosmopolites as Moses Montefiore and Calouste Gulbenkian, South Africa’s Sammy Marks, Ei’ichi Shibusawa in Japan, Friedrich Alfred Krupp and other donors in German cities, and Andrew Mellon in the United States.Although the geographical focus is admirably broad, the intellectual framework is surprisingly narrow, emphasizing individualism. The result is that many of the articles offer engaging narratives of individual personalities, careers, and gifts, but far less in the way of theoretical models or cross-national comparisons. William D. Rubenstein attempts some framing in his introductory chapter, but even he focuses primarily on discrete individuals.Two of the strongest articles are by Hideko Katsumata and Frank Prochaska. There is a tendency to think of individual philanthropy in Japan as an anomaly in a highly statist society. Katsumata overthrows this idea by casting Shibusawa as a virtual Benjamin Franklin who spun off hundreds of voluntary associations and invested millions of yen (amounting to millions of dollars) during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. These activities promoted Japan’s modernization by knitting it into a global philanthropic arena and served as a conduit for new ideas to fuel the Meiji Restoration. Prochaska underscores the symbiotic ties between the British monarchy, philanthropy, empire, and new industrial wealth. In the process, both articles move beyond individual narratives to provide intriguing insights into how philanthropy worked in different cultures.Some of the other chapters cry out for deeper comparisons. For example, Gulbenkian and Mellon both created major arts institutions. What can their experiences tell us about the different cultural contexts in which they worked? Gulbenkian and Montefiore were also deeply involved in diaspora and transnational giving, including in the Holy Land. Stronger comparisons might have revealed a far richer portrait of differences in Jewish and Armenian diasporic giving. Abigail Green briefly alludes to differences in Quaker, Jewish, and evangelical Protestant transnational philanthropy, providing tantalizing ideas for future research.One of the volume’s more surprising aspects is its lack of attention to the secondary literature. For example, Stephen Pielhoff, who looks at urban philanthropy in Germany, ignores Thomas Adam (ed.), Philanthropy, Patronage and Civil Society: Experiences from Germany, Great Britain, and North America (Bloomington, 2004), which depicts German and American cities as crucibles for transnational philanthropy and experimentation. Similarly, Claire-Amandine Soulié’s piece about Betty de Rothschild neglects Christine Adams, Poverty, Charity and Motherhood: Maternal Societies in 19thCentury France (Urbana, 2010), which discusses the pervasiveness of French women’s philanthropy and its influential policy roles. This book would have given Soulié a far richer context for assessing Rothschild’s contributions. Some of the items cited as philanthropy are also jarring. For example, why would loans to Boer generals be considered charity and not simply bribes (117)?Criticisms aside, Great Philanthropists is a useful introduction to (primarily male) elite philanthropy in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries around the world. The next step will be to unveil the underlying cultural contexts that ultimately shaped, encouraged, and constrained philanthropic activity

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