This special issue calls for a global perspective on the history of social policy. It suggests that, from the middle of the nineteenth century, diverse forms of connection brought new understandings of 'social problems' across local, regional, and national borders. New economic networks, the acceleration of communication and transportation, and the efflorescence of new groups within civil society, including various 'expert' organizations as well as social reform associations, facilitated the transfer of both social problems and solutions to those problems. As Emily Rosenberg and others have shown, 'flows' of various kinds became 'denser' during this period, and these currents were especially significant in shaping what were seen as social issues. 1 Some scholars have gone as far as tracing global convergence in social policy since the late nineteenth century. Many have linked this convergence to a universal process of modernization, while some have cited the power of international bodies in encouraging common standards. Others have claimed that the rise of the welfare state was a 'transnational event' that resulted from simultaneous discovery, on the one hand, and mutual observation, on the other. 2 Following recent work in global history, we argue instead that ideas about social policy flowed at different speeds -both between points of contact and over time -and with different effects, between the middle of the nineteenth and the middle of the twentieth century.