Women’s Transnational Networks of Humanitarian Support in Europe in the 1930s and 1940s: Commission d’Aide aux Enfants Espagnols Réfugiés en France (CAEERF)

This article contends that the humanitarianism that developed in Europe in the 1930s and 1940s and, in particular, because of the Spanish Civil War, was shaped by a transnational network that was fundamentally female. Within this network, women with diverse political experiences converged; however, suffragism, pacifism and anti-fascism occupied a central place. Humanitarianism became for them a favourable space from which to intervene politically. To demonstrate this, we focus on the CAEERF, an aid organisation formed in 1939 in response to the arrival of Spanish refugees in France. It was created, led by and composed mainly of women from different backgrounds. The first part of this article concerns anti-fascist and humanitarian women’s networks that emerged during the Spanish Civil War. The second traces the journey of the British Quaker Edith Mary Pye, the driving force behind the CAEERF. The third and fourth parts discuss its creation and the work that it carried out on the ground.