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The history of relief work is in its infancy. This book draws on new archival research to reveal the priorities of nineteenth-century relief workers, and the legacies of their preoccupations for relief work today. It first explores the inauguration of the British National Society for Aid to the Sick and Wounded in War (NAS) at the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War in 1870 under the figurehead of Loyd Lindsay. Then, the book sees the revival of the NAS for work in the Balkans during a period of nationalist violence and Ottoman counter-insurgency which culminated in the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-1878. It also follows the staff of relief committees as they dispensed aid in British colonial wars. The book examines the critiques of British policy in the Boer War (1899-1902) emanating from intersecting circles of Quakers, New Liberals and ethicists, and considers these groups' offer of aid to Boer civilians. Further, the book concentrates on the methodologies of relief for Boer inmates of British concentration camps in South Africa and on the implications of this relief for its intended recipients during and after the war. It concentrates on aid to British soldiers. The book closes by tracing continuities in vocational practices and dispositions to emerging areas of concern in the post-war period, in particular child welfare, and briefly considers their implication for relief work today.
] and then some documents from the United States’ National Archives and Records Administration. I also conducted oral interviews in Nigeria and Canada. In fact, my fieldwork was an opportunity to meet some people who were directly involved in the relief work in Biafra. I interviewed some of the humanitarian workers from Canada and that helped a lot in my research. I also interviewed people in Nigeria. I worked on the Joint Church Aid, a consortium of Catholic and Protestant
restricted ( BOND, 2003 ). At the same time, despite agency growth and extensive efforts to professionalise relief work, there was little commensurate increase in effectiveness ( Fiori et al ., 2016 ). Growing risk aversion and recourse to remote management, moreover, created problems of distancing and loss of familiarity ( Healy and Tiller, 2014 ). Distracted by debt-fuelled uncertainty, rather than an indignant citizenry, Western publics now present as so many disillusioned, ironic spectators ( Chouliaraki, 2013 ). Diplomatic influence has also
edn ). Vaux , T. ( 2001 ), The Selfish Altruist: Relief Work in Famine and War ( Abingdon : Taylor and Francis ). Weigand , F. and Andersson , R. ( 2019 ), ‘ Institutionalized Intervention: The “Bunker Politics” of
with and value refugees as dignified humanitarian subjects. Hine and the ARC were doing this at a time in the war when the refugee figure was increasingly being disparaged within Europe. Not long after these photographs were created the armistice was signed, thus putting an end to ARC war relief work. The reconfiguration of the humanitarian landscape that followed armistice provided Hine with ample professional and artistic opportunity to further specify the refugee subject whose conditions would still take years to improve. Hine worked to continue to frame the
’s political participation. 15 In retrospect, she also made a similar claim for her work in the South African War, something she had not pressed at the time. These examples of voluntary work at home and in the colonies provided a model of women’s active citizenship now that the vote had been secured. Indeed, as this book has repeatedly shown, relief work was a prominent arena for promoting national
9 Preserving the peace: mediation, relief work and political activism The previous chapters have looked at explicitly ‘partisan’ clerical responses to political violence: the ways in which priests either condemned or supported the IRA or the crown forces. Only a minority of priests are on record as having expressed such a partisan response. While giving due regard to the limitations of the sources used, it is not an improbable supposition that a majority of the clergy simply tried to avoid becoming involved at all.1 This was an unremarkable course of action in
. They provided care, sustenance, help for orphans and protection of those suffering from the violence. Several authors have described the politics and humanitarianism of organisations that flew nightly shipments of food and medicines to a starving population in the southeast region during the war.2 As these accounts are told, the relief work was essentially a European and American enterprise. Yet examination of healthcare activities at the local level reveals both Irish Catholic missionaries and Nigerians themselves working collaboratively to care for the ill and
and women to join the missions spread over other continents corresponded to the emergence of a transnational network of philanthropic activity which developed in close interaction with the relief work carried out at home. This interaction is clear both if we look at the type of initiatives (and the ways in which they were carried out) ‘in the field’ and if we take into consideration the origins and set-up of the associations that were being founded to support the missionaries’ work. In the archaeology of international humanitarianism we therefore also have to
, including that of Mabel St Clair Stobart, continued its work into the 1920s. It was picking up on a well-established tradition of relief work in the East, organised and carried out by British women. For example, the Quaker-run Friends’ Mission in Constantinople had been in operation since the 1880s and, under the direction of Ann Mary Burgess, had built an entire self-help/relief industry, enabling Armenian women to manufacture and sell their ‘ethnic’ arts and crafts across Britain. Burgess’ network was reliant on women philanthropists as well as the Friends of Armenia