Session Abstract

Humanitarianism, International Relief and the Problem of Humanity in the Wake of the Great War

The juxtaposition of the evident inhumanity of war, civil conflict, and genocide during the period 1914-1922 on the one hand with the creation of forms of aid for the victims of violence, the establishment of institutions to resettle displaced peoples, and the elaboration of novel, international legal régimes for refugees on the other, frames the questions raised by this panel.  It traces the origins of Modern Humanitarianism, as both practice and ideology, and connects it to the dominant ideologies of the interwar period — nationalism and colonialism — explores humanitarianism’s role in the history of human rights and addresses how the concept of humanity informed bureaucratic, social and legal humanitarian practices.  These varied case studies also demonstrate the tensions that emerged in defining "aid" and "victims" during conflict and its aftermath, and how these definitions shaped understandings of humanitarian aid as the 20th century unfolded.  The papers also represent the leading edge in the new historical field of the study of humanitarianism.

The several papers of this panel engage with the broad range of international humanitarian action that emerged following, and as a result of the Great War.  Julia Irwin examines how the war-as-disaster helped formulate international institutional responses to “natural” disasters.  Her paper is especially useful in contrasting the way wartime humanitarianism was at once a blueprint for peacetime humanitarianism, but when that same aid took place in peacetime it often carried with it very different ethical and social meanings.  Similarly, Kimberley Lowe’s work interrogates the broader edifice of humanitarianism in the form of the International Red Cross and national Red Cross societies as they collaborated with international organizations to reconstitute in the post-war a mission to aid  “victims.”  Her work brings to surface evolving interwar ideas about the “deserving” victim, whose relief was valued, as opposed to those who were deemed less so. Keith David Watenpaugh’s paper follows the massive interwar humanitarian project to address the interwar-era suffering of Armenian Genocide survivors, arguing that the efforts, which included the elaboration of the Nansen Passport scheme, constituted failures of practice which created a field within humanitarianism where human rights talk could take place.  Finally, Tammy Proctor’s paper examines the ways in which Americans, primarily throught the work of Hoover’s American Relief Administration sought to use that aid to reshape European social divisions with their food aid policies.