The domestic uses of Belgian–American ‘mutual understanding’: the Commission for Relief in Belgium Educational Foundation, 1920–1940

An offspring of a precocious large-scale humanitarian enterprise to save occupied Belgium from starvation during the FirstWorldWar, the Commission for Relief in Belgium (CRB) Educational Foundation was established in 1919 as an exchange programme for Belgian and American university students. The CRB Educational Foundation was originally designed as a commemoration monument celebrating the relief drive and its main architects – the businessman and future president of the USA, Herbert Hoover, and its counterpart on the Belgian territory, the financier Emile Francqui. In a few years’ time, the pr... Mehr ...