This chapter examines famine and poverty relief in Tudor and early Stuart England, Tokugawa Japan, and Qing China. Relief in subsistence crisis was the most basic obligation of the state to the public interest. The same platform of a public interest-based discourse of state legitimation led to two different directions in state–society interactions in famine relief. Tudor and early Stuart England and Tokugawa Japan had decentralized fiscal systems, and municipal and rural granaries managed by local authorities and social elites were dominant. Yet when a major subsistence crisis occurred, the royal government and shogunate as the highest political authority in each realm had to intervene to protect the welfare of wider regions or even the entire country. In contrast, the Qing state in China had a centrally managed fiscal system that played a significant role in transferring funds and grain across regions in times of major subsistence crisis. The technical difficulties in managing state granaries across the country, however, led the Qing state to encourage local elites' participation in building and managing nonofficial granaries to benefit local inhabitants and to make up for the inadequacies of the state system.

If WWII had brought death and destruction to civilians on a previously unimaginable scale, the postwar peace was seeming scarcely better. Hunger quickly beset Europe, most acutely in the defeated nations. Years of combat had shattered most countries’ ability to produce and transport food. A global food shortage ensued. More than half a billion people in the world were at risk of death by starvation. The challenge was great; the need was immense. Thanks to Stimson’s interventions, America turned for help to Herbert Hoover. Chapter 12 begins an examination of Hoover’s postwar food relief campaign and how average Americans joined in to feed their former foes.

Hoover’s famine relief mission had helped to stave off starvation for millions in Europe and Asia, but Germany posed a special problem. The world food crisis hit Germany especially hard, not simply because the war’s destruction had shattered its ability to produce and transport food to cities. Germany’s situation was compounded by JCS 1067, the directive governing American occupation. Because of Morgenthau’s insistence, the directive prevented American occupiers from revitalizing German industry, which greatly exacerbated already grim conditions. Caloric intake plummeted from an average of 2,445 calories per day to a paltry 860. It was becoming painfully apparent to American policy makers that if something did not change soon, the death toll would be unconscionable. This chapter probes the ways in which Americans came to undo the harshest aspects of German occupation policy and lay the groundwork for the Marshall Plan.

This chapter takes a long view of the evolution of appeals for emergency aid. Our case studies of Ireland, Soviet Russia, and Ethiopia illustrate the trajectory of humanitarian fundraising over time. The chapter provides new empirical research on appeals for aid in each case, while identifying key distinctions as well as striking similarities and continuities in discourse and practice. In each case, transnational aid mobilisation gained momentum when the disaster received media attention after the crisis had escalated. The socio-political context differed, as Soviet Russia and Ethiopia were ruled by regimes hostile to the West, making transnational aid a delicate matter, while Ireland was part of the British Empire. While Irish and Russian representatives appealed directly to donors, Ethiopian victims depended on brokers abroad to make the calls for aid. However, humanitarian actors were also forced to complement their support for distant sufferers with ancillary campaigns for the local charity market.

The Introduction outlines how this book takes a fresh look at humanitarian action over two centuries through the concept of moral economy. The book employs a theoretical outlook that reflects the emerging academic interest in histories of morality, the cross-disciplinary rise of a ‘moral economy’ discourse beyond the confines of E. P. Thompson’s framing, and the growing field of humanitarian studies. The integrated moral economy perspective draws on philosophical, humanitarian, and medical ethics, especially the problems of triage. We present three empirical studies which provide insights into the history of three humanitarian causes.

Chapter 8 investigates the evacuation of approximately 40,000 Dutch children out of the famine-affected areas. In the 1940s, the Netherlands enjoyed an extensive health- and family care system and had a strong civil society. Many networks were therefore in place to efficiently organise relief. These child evacuations were only one aspect of relief efforts but, similar to the child-feeding initiatives, they highlight the active role of ordinary people and grassroots initiatives in taking emergency measures. Shared ideas on the importance of the continuation of family life, even under extreme circumstances, and protecting the future of Dutch society were key to this communal response to the famine conditions.

Chapter 7 provides a detailed account of social self-organisation at the local level, the constitution of the main NGO during the famine, local child-feeding initiatives, as well as women’s food protests. This chapter demonstrates that the final months of war presented a period of declining legitimacy of state authority in the food system, which led to the rise of new types of organisations: local self-organised relief and self-help entities. Emerging from existing networks, these civil society organisations occupied a central position between the household and state levels and effectively took over care and relief responsibilities. These community efforts can be qualified as a great success and are crucial to explaining why certain groups – children in particular – fared better during the famine than others.

The Conclusion argues that the historical parallels we identify in Irish, Russian, and Ethiopian famine relief are neither incidental nor trivial. Their understanding may be improved if one views humanitarian efforts as an outcome of moral economic considerations, and this approach is consistent with the recent recognition of the links between humanitarianism and capitalism. Our moral economy approach sees practice as central to humanitarian history. This should be a transdisciplinary endeavour, informed by a wide range of debates and observations, including donor psychology, humanitarian logistics, and critical accounting. Our perspective, with a focus on fundraising appeals, allocation, and accounting, is of relevance to current humanitarian policy and practice, which is briefly sketched, and we hope it will inspire future research and practice.