Andrea Griffante, Children, Poverty and Nationalism in Lithuania, 1900–1940, Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Pivot, 2019. 148 p. ISBN 978-3-030-30870-4 (eBook)

Abstract

This monograph explores the development of care for orphaned, destitute and poor children in Lithuania in the first half of the 20th century. It looks particularly at how nationbuilding agendas influenced the discourse and practices of private associations for children’s welfare. Andrea Griffante emphasises the ways nationalist elites influenced the emergence of private networks of care and the intrinsic ethno-national character of child rehabilitation efforts. In this, he argues that it was the competition between Lithuanian and Polish efforts that augmented the nationalist dimension of child rehabilitation in this period. Griffante engages with a wide array of documents, with a focus on Lithuanian and Polish material. He investigates state sources, organisational documents, private papers and newspapers, as he explores the development of a civil society working towards the rehabilitation of children, and the ways nationalist elites contributed to these efforts. The monograph is relatively short, and it is divided into four core chronological and thematic chapters (besides the introduction and final remarks). Chapter 2 is the first section that delves into the main theme of the book, as it contextualises the emergence of children’s care within a framework of nation-building in Lithuania at the turn of the 20th century. Here, Griffante argues that the social changes of the late 19th and early 20th centuries saw the growing attention of assistance towards poor and orphaned children in Lithuania. Chapter 3 highlights the relevance of the humanitarian crisis of the First World War, and the crystallisation of the ethno-national profile of private initiatives to rehabilitate children. Chapter 4 describes the negotiations, tension and collaboration between national child care associations and foreign (i.e. American and British) humanitarian organisations in the aftermath of the First World War. Lastly, Chapter 5 points to the change in method and discourse regarding child care; here, Griffante argues that the interwar period saw the waning of attention paid by associations to foundlings and poor and destitute children, and a growing focus on preventive health and hygiene measures and the education of indigent mothers.