Competition of Benefactors

Herbert Hoover, Emile Francqui and the Remodelling of Belgian Higher Education after the First World War

Bibliographic Data

ID7150941
AuthorsKenneth Bertrams (0000-0001-5266-4827, Université Libre de Bruxelles, corresponding author)
Year2025
Volume34
Issue2
Pages232-245
Publication date2025-05-01
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueContemporary European History (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0960-7773 • E-ISSN: 1469-2171
PublisherCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s0960777324000547
OpenAlexW4407186558
LanguageEN
References cited12

The Commission for Relief in Belgium (CRB), established in October 1914 and overseen throughout the war by Herbert Hoover, played a pivotal role in saving millions of Belgians and hundreds of thousands of French from starvation. The proposed article aims to address this gap by examining the phenomenon of an ambivalent, even asymmetrical, diplomacy of gratitude. Herbert Hoover and his Belgian counterpart (and humanitarian rival), the financier Emile Francqui, had initially devised a strategy of remembrance of their wartime collective action, which centred on children, youth and higher education. Nevertheless, while their endeavour to establish a unified Belgian-American foundation ultimately failed due to their diverging postwar agendas, the dominant narrative of US aid encountered mounting opposition within Belgian political and academic circles. In the context of competing national memories and shifting feelings of gratitude, American philanthropy played a seminal role in the co-construction of modern higher education infrastructures in Belgium

Biology · Economic history · Political science · Historical Education and Society · Historical Education Studies Worldwide · Historical Studies on Reproduction, Gender, Health, and Societal Changes · History · Ecology

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