The plight of children became symbolic of the disintegration of European society during the First World War and the conflagrations that bookended it: the Armenian Genocide and the Russian Civil War. Breaking free from the laws of war presumed to undergird conflict in ‘civilised’ European societies, the violence of the early twentieth century directly targeted civilians. In this context, children’s suffering took on a broader symbolic meaning, and ‘rescued’ children became a powerful metaphor for European reconstruction and hopes for a peaceful, prosperous future. Children – the workers and citizens of tomorrow – were deemed essential for the future prosperity of their own nations, and, by extension, for the international order. This article examines the centrality of children to the ‘new internationalism’ of the years following the First World War, as expressed by a host of prominent British and American humanitarian organisations. While international adoption and child sponsorship programmes seem, on the surface, to exemplify the spirit of progressive internationalism, the ‘new world order’ that internationalist humanitarians sought to create was not new at all. Helping children was, most often, an attempt on the part of aid organizations to reinscribe ethnic and class-based hierarchies in a chaotic post-war world. Yet, positing the sponsorship and adoption of children as the prime means to alleviate their suffering, interwar humanitarians created the orphans they described. In the aftermath of the First World War child relief fundamentally disrupted the very communities and families that humanitarians sought to save.

中文翻译：

---

国际收养和英美国际主义，c.1918–1925*

儿童的困境成为第一次世界大战期间欧洲社会解体的象征，以及导致它结束的大火：亚美尼亚种族灭绝和俄罗斯内战。20 世纪初期的暴力行为被认为是在“文明的”欧洲社会中加剧冲突，摆脱了战争法的束缚，直接针对平民。在此背景下，儿童的苦难具有更广泛的象征意义，“获救”儿童成为欧洲重建和和平繁荣未来的有力隐喻。儿童——明天的工人和公民——被认为对本国未来的繁荣以及国际秩序至关重要。本文考察了儿童在第一次世界大战后几年“新国际主义”中的中心地位，正如许多著名的英国和美国人道主义组织所表达的那样。虽然从表面上看，国际收养和儿童资助计划似乎是进步国际主义精神的体现，但国际人道主义者试图建立的“新世界秩序”根本不是新的。在大多数情况下，帮助儿童是援助组织试图在混乱的战后世界中重新确定基于种族和阶级的等级制度。然而，将资助和收养儿童作为减轻他们痛苦的主要手段，两次世界大战之间的人道主义者创造了他们所描述的孤儿。在第一次世界大战之后，儿童救济从根本上扰乱了人道主义者试图拯救的社区和家庭。