At the beginning of the 20th Century, Andrew Carnegie renewed his long-standing interest in world peace. “I am drawn more to this cause than to any,” he wrote in 1907. Like other leading internationalists of his day, Carnegie believed that war could be eliminated by stronger international laws and organizations. Between 1900 and 1914, he gave generously in support of this belief, including $1.5 million in 1903 for the construction of the Peace Palace at The Hague. Carnegie’s single largest commitment to this field, however, was his creation of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

On his seventy-fifth birthday, November 25, 1910, Carnegie announced the establishment of the Endowment with a gift of $10 million. He selected 28 trustees who were leaders in American business and public life; among them Harvard University president Charles W. Eliot; philanthropist Robert S. Brookings; former Ambassador to the United Kingdom Joseph H. Choate; former Secretary of State John W. Foster; former president of MIT and then-president of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching Henry S. Pritchett; and Carnegie Institution president Robert S. Woodward.

In his deed of gift, presented in Washington on December 14, 1910, Carnegie charged trustees to use the fund to “hasten the abolition of international war, the foulest blot upon our civilization,” and he gave his trustees “the widest discretion as to the measures and policy they shall from time to time adopt” in carrying out the purpose of the fund.

Carnegie chose longtime adviser Elihu Root, Senator from New York and former Secretary of War and of State, to be the Endowment’s first president. Awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1912, Root served until 1925.

The Endowment was initially organized into three divisions: one to aid in the development of international law and dispute settlement, another to study the causes and impact of war and a third to promote international understanding and cooperation. A European Center and advisory board was set up in Paris.

Although World War I shattered the high expectations of turn-of-the-century internationalists, the Endowment persevered with its international conciliation efforts. During the interwar period, the Endowment revitalized efforts to promote international conciliation, financed reconstruction projects in Europe, supported the work of other organizations and founded the Academy of International Law at The Hague. Endowment publications include the unprecedented 22-volume Classics of International Law and the seminal 150-volume Economic and Social History of the World War.

In 1925, Nicholas Murray Butler succeeded Elihu Root as president. For the next 20 years that flamboyant and energetic figure—who also won the Nobel Peace Prize—promoted his vision on international cooperation in business and politics. Among other accomplishments, he was instrumental in fashioning the Kellogg-Briand no-war pact of 1928.

Following World War II and Butler’s retirement, the Endowment’s three divisions were consolidated under the direction of President Joseph E. Johnson. John Foster Dulles led the board.

For the next two decades, the Endowment conducted research and public education programs on a range of issues, particularly relating to the newly created United Nations and on the future of the postwar international legal system. The Endowment provided diplomatic training for some 250 foreign service officers from emerging nations and published International Conciliation, a leading journal in the field. The European Center moved to Geneva for closer contact with UN agencies and became a focal point for European and American dialogue on international issues.

The 1971 inauguration of a new president, Thomas L. Hughes, came at a time of deepening interdependence among nations, new challenges to world security and intensified debate within the United States about the country’s course. The Endowment’s board was chaired by Milton Katz, and then John W. Douglas. Programs were consolidated and designed to be more relevant to U.S. policy. The Endowment moved its headquarters back to Washington, D.C., and by 1983 had closed both the New York and Geneva offices. In 1971, the Endowment inaugurated “Face-to Face,” a forum facilitating dialogue among governmental and nongovernmental participants on major international issues. In the early 1970s, the Endowment also acquired ownership of Foreign Policy magazine.

Once virtually alone in conducting international affairs research, the Endowment now found itself among a growing array of think tanks and nongovernmental organizations concerned with foreign relations in one form or another, a trend that continues to the present. The Endowment contributed to this proliferation by “incubating” new organizations—among them the German Marshall Fund of the United States, the Institute for International Economics, and the Arms Control Association. On the Endowment’s seventy-fifth anniversary in 1985, it published Estrangement: America and the World, an examination of the position of the United States in the postwar period.

In 1991, Morton I. Abramowitz became president, leading the Endowment during five eventful post-Cold War years under the chairmanships of Charles J. Zwick and Robert Carswell. In keeping with Carnegie’s tradition, they saw new opportunities in the rapidly shifting international landscape.

A distinguished group of senior associates tackled such timely issues as democracy promotion, the political economy of market reforms, and the use of force and peacekeeping. In 1992, the Endowment generated the first comprehensive studies of the new foreign policy environment, including Changing Our Ways: America and the New World and Memorandum to the President-Elect: Harnessing Process to Purpose, a bipartisan assessment of the executive branch.

The Endowment also committed a sizable amount of its own funds to founding the Carnegie Moscow Center. Established in 1993, the Center has become one of the leading public policy institutions operating in the region. Also during Abramowitz’s tenure, the Endowment built its new, permanent headquarters at 1779 Massachusetts Avenue in Washington, D.C.

Jessica T. Mathews took over as president in May 1997. Under Mathews’ leadership, the Endowment has experienced rapid growth, partly fueled through increased support from outside funders.

Mathews transformed a group of small research projects into a field-defining, interdisciplinary study of globalization, called the Global Policy Program. The program addresses the policy challenges arising from the simultaneous processes of economic, political, and technological change. The effort has made the Endowment an important worldwide policy center for understanding this phenomenon.

Also during Mathew’s tenure, the Carnegie Endowment transformed Foreign Policy from a quarterly journal into a vibrant, accessible bimonthly magazine. Relaunched on its 30th anniversary, the magazine has won growing readership and recognition in a time when traditional media are cutting back coverage of international affairs.

Following its century-long practice of adapting to changed circumstances, the Carnegie Endowment launched in 2007 an ambitious new vision to transform itself from a think tank on international issues to the first truly global international think tank. This new initiative seeks to: develop improved understanding in the United States on the local and regional perspectives of those in other countries and regions; formulate actionable and practical policy prescriptions for United States foreign policy and international relations; and provide a model of how to do first-rate, independent policy research. This new vision expanded the Carnegie Endowment geographically from Washington, D.C. and Moscow to a new presence in Beijing and offices in Beirut and Brussels.