New histories of foreign aid

This article claims a space for cultural approaches to histories of foreign aid in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. It begins by tracing the historiographies of humanitarianism and international development, arguing that historians can best approach the plans and projects of humanitarian NGOs and international development agencies as a shared project of foreign aid. It then outlines various forms of culture that impacted on twentieth-century foreign aid, including political, bureaucratic and organisational cultures, national cultures, popular cultures and emotional or affective regimes, and introduces the nine articles comprising this special issue on New Histories of Foreign Aid.