The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace: Its Founding and Research Cooperation

On 14 December 1910, Andrew Carnegie explained his gift to trustees in Washington, establishing the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. The property delivered consisted of first-mortgage bonds with a face value of $10 million and an annual interest rate of five percent. Income from the capital would support the institution’s long-term work. The trustees immediately adopted resolutions accepting the trust.

Carnegie hoped that arbitration and other peaceful methods would settle disputes between states, leaving the trustees to determine the specific measures. His gift letter also empowered them to invest and reinvest, employ staff and appoint additional trustees. The founding therefore combined an antiwar aspiration with an organization able to sustain funding, choose research directions and meet operating costs.

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An organizational meeting on 9 March 1911 further established working arrangements. Elihu Root became president and James Brown Scott secretary. Three divisions took shape: economics and history under John Bates Clark, international law under Scott, and intercourse and education under Nicholas Murray Butler.

Their tasks differed. Economics and history investigated the causes and consequences of war. International law studied rules, arbitration and the rights and duties of states. Intercourse and education promoted the circulation of knowledge and international contact. Administrators in Washington and researchers in New York also needed to maintain connections with European scholars. Funding allowed this work across regions to extend beyond occasional peace conferences.

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The Division of Economics and History convened a conference in Berne in August 1911 to prepare inquiries into the causes and effects of war. Afterwards, the division contacted authors and organized the investigations. Clark reported that many participants first needed to return home and find people able to conduct research and write before committing to an area. Different members consequently often approached authors working on the same question.

To sustain the cooperation, the Executive Committee organized the original conference participants into a Committee of Research on 25 March 1912. Members supervised subjects, selected collaborators, represented the endowment in making contracts and edited submitted manuscripts, receiving an annual honorarium of $1,000 each. Standard contracts defined the relationship between researchers and their funder, while selection, investigation, writing and editing became separately manageable stages.

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Faced with duplicated subjects, Clark sought help from Reinsch, who was then teaching in Berlin, rather than simply canceling a scholar’s plan. The New York office informed Reinsch and the relevant members of the conflicts. Through correspondence and especially face-to-face conversations, they coordinated the scope of studies and reduced delays caused by letters crossing the Atlantic.

Some inquiries needed statistics from several countries and could be divided geographically; others could be divided by question. For example, one author examined the technical side of expanding armaments in Austria-Hungary, while another investigated its financial side. International cooperation required specific arrangements for materials and the scope of analysis, or additional funding could produce duplicated effort.

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The endowment’s Executive Committee report for 1912 listed thirty-eight formally contracted studies, sixty-three awaiting contracts and fifty in preliminary arrangements. Two manuscripts had been received. The difference showed how a new research network needed sustained coordination and writing time to move from contacting authors and assigning work to delivering results.

The geographical coverage was uneven. Most arranged projects concerned Europe. A local committee was still being organized in Japan, while work in the United States examined trade unions’ attitudes toward war and peace. The institution’s international aims were shaped in practice by available people, materials, communication and local cooperation.

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Early work also affected relations between donors and existing peace organizations. Drawing on international archives, Daniel Hucker showed that the International Peace Bureau in Berne feared a loss of standing after the Paris European Centre took over some subsidy allocations in 1912. American funders emphasized efficiency and oversight, while European organizations stressed local experience and autonomy. A shared commitment to peace did not automatically bring agreement.

The endowment supplied continuing resources for investigation, editing and international contact. Its early practice also showed that research cooperation required someone to coordinate specific responsibilities, while international funding had to accommodate differing understandings of agendas, oversight and autonomy. These arrangements together influenced how the research network operated.

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