Abstract
When, scarcely five years after its advent, the movement of aid societies for the relief of soldiers wounded in battle in international wars, set out to examine what should their activities be in peacetime, many debates were opened up as to the feasibility of broadening their field of action to other warlike settings and disasters. The following is an examination of how these debates developed, providing evidence that (a) the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) defended its position not to incorporate civil aims into the humanitarian purposes of the Red Cross international movement until after the First World War; and (b) different national societies and committees of the Red Cross, disagreeing with this position, defended, within the framework of emergent paradigms in hygiene and public health, the care of the sick poor, and were involved as early as the 1870s and 1880s in first-aid to the sick and wounded in everyday life as well as in relief of disasters both natural and caused by famine.
Highlights
It was not until after the First World War that the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) agreed to extend its original relief activities –aid to wounded soldiers in international wars– to other causes, related to violent conflict or even beyond them
The high point of these debates was the occasion of the second International Conference of National Aid Societies held in Berlin in 1869 (Boissier 1985, pp. 229-238; Hutchinson, 1996, pp. 92-102)
By following the trail of these debates up to the third International Conference of National Aid Societies held in Geneva in 1884, we have detected their eventual convergence with other contemporary debates concerning the search for a general social protection for the systemic victims of modern industrial society, where scientific technology was, paradoxically, the origin of an increasing number of risks and disasters, as well as being an instrument to reduce the former and to prevent the latter
Summary
It was not until after the First World War that the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) agreed to extend its original relief activities –aid to wounded soldiers in international wars– to other causes, related to violent conflict or even beyond them. Moynier was aware of how much interest had been raised among other international associations with reformist concerns in medicine, public health and welfare, around the potential role of aid societies in peacetime to help populations affected by epidemics, floods, and so on He was worried, on the one hand, that these activities would reduce the societies’ preparedness to act in case of war; and on the other, that the proliferation of local committees and their eventual drift would mean that the Geneva Committee lost its control of the societies subscribing to the Geneva Convention and their national committees, and that their future would be at risk. The Prussian committee took as a starting point, the fourth resolution of the Conference held at Geneva in October 1863, by which aid societies would always behave in consonance with the motto “in pace para bellum” In peacetime they would devote themselves to developing for the most part, two kinds of activities, namely, the preparation of material aid of every kind, and to train voluntary nurses.. That was the perception of the Geneva Committee at its meeting on 10 April 1869 –twelve days before the beginning of the Berlin Conference– in which, having read the report, General Dufour, Maunoir and Moynier himself openly manifested their disapproval (not a word is heard from Louis Appia), they eventually decided to maintain a diplomatic silence, due largely to the strong patronage of the Berlin central committee by the Queen of Prussia (Pitteloud, 1999, pp. 75-76)
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