Story of Near East Relief, 1915–1930 (Barton, 1930)

Item Detail

James L. Barton’s 1930 institutional history of Near East Relief, the standard primary account of the organization from its 1915 founding to the 1930 transition to the Near East Foundation.

Context

James Levi Barton (1855–1936) served as chairman of Near East Relief from its founding in 1915 until the organization's transition to the Near East Foundation in 1930. A Congregationalist minister and longtime secretary of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, Barton was among the group of New York civic leaders who responded to Ambassador Henry Morgenthau's 1915 reports of mass atrocities against Ottoman Armenians by forming the American Committee for Armenian and Syrian Relief. He led the organization through fifteen years of emergency relief, orphan care, and institutional transformation, overseeing operations that raised over $116 million and cared for more than 132,000 orphans across Turkey, the Caucasus, Greece, Syria, and Persia.

Published by Macmillan in 1930, Story of Near East Relief is Barton's firsthand institutional history of the organization he helped create and led. The book covers the full arc from the 1915 founding through the incorporation of NEF, drawing on internal records, field correspondence, and Barton's own involvement in policy decisions. It remains the standard primary source on NER's organizational history.