Thomas Percival, John Coakley Lettsom, Jeremy Belknap, Benjamin Rush, John Crawford, and Benjamin Thompson do not have the name recognition of many of their contemporaries. Nevertheless, these activists redefined humanitarian practices during the second half of the eighteenth century. They came of age in an interconnected Atlantic World, collaborated in benevolent efforts with compatriots throughout the British Empire, and, after the American Revolution, remade ties strained by war. The story of this generation of activists has not been told before because “the history of the era’s charitable and voluntary activity has typically been studied within the parameters of distinct nations or particular movements” (3). However, humanitarians lived cosmopolitan lives that did not stop at the borders of nations or philanthropic movements. Philanthropists corresponded with each other, disseminated new ideas, and created a web of connections that stretched throughout the Atlantic World. The American Revolution made Britons and Americans strangers and tested the strength of the web of connections. Some strands snapped, but others grew stronger as philanthropists reconstituted philanthropic networks. In sum, “the culture of aid to strangers in the Anglo-American world developed as former fellow nationals wrestled with how to be a community without being compatriots” (11).
Philanthropists came of age in a transnational world in which benevolent activities played an important role. Religious charities anticipated transatlantic philanthropy by seeking to incorporate marginal people into the embrace of religion. Thomas Coram and others understood that philanthropy promoted cooperation throughout the empire and strengthened connections between the colonies and the metropole. Within the broader charitable world philanthropists created, people exchanged ideas across borders and created a sense of community among people thousands of miles apart. Britons throughout the world, also, donated money to help compatriots, often in far-away places. However, philanthropists engaged in heated debates about charitable obligation. Universal benevolence did not strike many people as desirable because they believed charity should benefit the needy in one’s neighbourhood, not people an ocean away. Even as transatlantic charity became commonplace, “contemporaries were torn about their responsibility to help faraway members of the British Atlantic community” (36).
Activists born during the 1730s, 1740s, and 1750s, grew up before the British Atlantic community fractured. Their charitable work as “benefactors of mankind” was “based on their experiences coming of age in a world of mobility and interconnectedness” (37). Indeed, one should not understate the dynamic nature of the eighteenth century Atlantic World. “Parades of goods from distant places, celebrity preachers, and a world of print introduced future philanthropists to a transatlantic community” (39). Furthermore, their travels throughout the empire reinforced their cosmopolitan outlook. Philanthropists on both sides of the Atlantic made concerted efforts to build connections across the ocean.
Moreover, activists in the Thirteen Colonies enjoyed opportunities to be full partners in metropolitan ventures. The American Revolution, however, drove a wedge between the colonies and the metropole. Still, to the people who grew up in the interconnected British Atlantic World, the conflict did not cause an abrupt break with fellow philanthropists. Importantly Britons sent charitable funds during the war to the Americas. Thus, “with money, rather than words, they announced that the boundaries of community and therefore of charitable obligation were at issue” (64).
In the aftermath of the American Revolution, activists dramatically altered their ideas about philanthropy. Although philanthropists in the United States and Great Britain continued to cooperate, they did so not to strengthen the British Empire, but to “aid suffering humanity” and to “forge peaceable relations in the revamped Atlantic world” (79). Activists of all stripes participated in discussions about benevolence, but celebrity philanthropists played an outsized role. Reformer John Howard travelled tens of thousands of miles to tour prisons and authored reports about his travels and ideas for reform. Philanthropists in the United States saw Howard not as a distinct model of British benevolence, but as a paragon of a shared philanthropic sensibility.
Similarly, the efforts of British celebrity Henry Moyes on behalf of resuscitation “assured citizens of the new nation that their former compatriots welcomed the participation of American organizations in the cause” (130). Some U.S. societies and activists expected British groups to lead, but older models of transatlantic philanthropic partnership no longer applied. In any case, Thomas Russell and other U.S. citizens forcefully insisted on a shared culture of universal benevolence. Even after a traumatic civil war, philanthropists sustained connections as they worked to build a better, if decidedly different, world.
By 1800, a decade of revolutionary upheaval in the Atlantic World took a toll on “the cosmopolitan connections and worldwide aspirations Americans and Britons had used to rebuild their ties after the American Revolution” (157). Some activists echoed Edmund Burke’s denunciation of universal benevolence and abandoned cosmopolitanism in favour of focusing on their nation or empire. Still, even during a period when people moved away from cosmopolitanism, some activists did not abandon their faith in universal philanthropy. Nevertheless, their cosmopolitanism was, at best, ambivalent. In sum, activists continued to pursue programs for improving humanity, but their feelings were often insular.
From Empire to Humanity offers an excellent overview of how a generation of cosmopolitan activists and philanthropists transformed philanthropy. What began as a practical strategy to strengthen the British Empire, changed drastically in the aftermath of the American Revolution. People who used to belong to the same community had to navigate a new world. Many sustained the connections they formed before the war and cooperated to effect reconciliation and improve the suffering humanity. In the years following this formative period, new generations of reformers and philanthropists continued the work and created “an ever more variegated eleemosynary infrastructure of local, national, and global charities and, increasingly, of local and state social welfare programs” (171–172). This book is highly recommended for anyone interested in the history of the Atlantic World, empire, and philanthropy and will work well in graduate seminars on these topics.
