I would like to announce the publication of my new book, Embroidering History: An Englishwoman?s Experience as a Humanitarian Aid Volunteer in Post-War Poland, 1924-1925. The book provides a glimpse inside the inner workings of an early humanitarian aid project through the lively letters of a middle class English woman who steps out of her depth into rural village life in post-war Poland of 1925. Margaret Tregear left teaching to volunteer with a Quaker project providing income generating work for refugee peasant women. The project involved importing English embroidery cotton into Poland, buying local linen, and then paying peasant women and girls to embroider items which were sold in England and America. The English and American project staff worked with middle-class Polish women to reach out to the Belarusian peasants. The “Women’s Industries” project was managed and run by women in the field, and overseen by a committee of men and women in London. Along the way, Treager encountered recalcitrant Belarusian peasants, manipulative local government officials, excitable bourgeois Poles, and altruistic American Quakers. And few of them really meet her British expectations of how things ought to be done. In one letter she lets out her frustration about a field visit from the London office representatives:
….on Friday the great trio arrived …. They came partly to look into the housing situation; Jane had urged it on them so that they should be convinced of the necessity of advancing money in London to build a house. In reality that question has been settled already in London, but the letter that had been written had been misleading. So what really happened was that they spent the whole day trotting round, inspecting premises, and after great deliberation feeling prepared to recommend to the Committee that we should take a little house on the green for our loom room instead of the two we now have, – a conclusion which would be obvious to almost anyone! I am afraid I spent the day being either thoroughly aggressive or flippant. In some ways they so utterly fail to grasp the realities of this work and these people.
After six month working on the project Margaret questions the economics of the industry. She can see the weakness of an aid project that purports to take advantage of a peasant women’s ‘spare time’ and she questions whether the project can generate enough income for the peasant women through a home-based craft industry. And she is frustrated that the project doesn’t generate enough money to cover the costs of the overworked local staff either.
… Edmund Harvey, their spokesman is that terrible kind of person who gushes in a soapy manner over everything, and simply oozes brother love, without considering in the least the personality of the persons round him; we had a few furious arguments, – one when he suggested housing in a house on the green and suggesting that two workers could perfectly well share a room at the back, – a room which would give them a space of about eight square feet with a big corner eaten out by the stove; he seemed to think that because he roughed it once while doing emergency work in France that workers here should be glad to put up with any corner that is found for them.
He seems to have not the slightest feeling that this is a new thing being built up, where it is possible for us to set at least a decent standard of living for the workers. It’s true there is no money for it … and that we have possibly over produced this year, but … if the Industry were not going to support the workers in decent conditions, and moreover soon be capable of paying bigger wages to the peasants, it would in my opinion be better to chuck it altogether. …
We argued this point too; – but E. H. thinks that we are conferring a benefit on the dear peasants simply by giving them something to do, – so nice for them to enjoy a little gossip the day they come to the distribution, – a sort of holiday for them, – yes waiting for hours huddled together in the snow or cold or the rain, – or lying about on the ground dozing when the weather is finer!! wasting a whole day to get about four and six [shillings] for a week’s work!
Margaret Tregear’s prose remains crisp and immediate, and her frank letters take the reader into a world where her frustrations are balanced with an intense curiosity, and a desire to explain her experiences to her friends across Europe. A carefully researched introduction places the project in the wider context of humanitarian aid provision in the aftermath of WWI, and explores how the different motives and expectations of the men and women involved – international staff, local staff, project beneficiaries, and local power brokers – shape the projects outcomes, and reveal conflicts rooted in culture and power that will resonate with anyone interested in the history of humanitarian aid, and women’s role in it as both donors and beneficiaries.
Further reading
Jane Cooper, Embroidering History: An Englishwoman’s Experience as an International Aid Volunteer in Post-war Poland, 1924-25 (Kindle, 2011).
Jane Cooper is a free lance researcher who lives in rural eastern Ontario. Having worked in international development on and off for 25 years, she is interested in how the history of humanitarian aid can help explain what happens in the field today.
