Resilient Humanitarianism

Melanie Oppenheimer is Honorary Professor of History at The Australian National University and Emeritus Professor at Flinders University and author of All Work, No Pay: Australian Civilian Volunteers in War. Her research covers voluntary work, gender and war and she is the centenary historian of the Australian Red Cross. Neville Wylie is Professor of International History at the University of Stirling and author of Barbed Wire Diplomacy: Britain, Germany, and the Politics of Prisoners of War 1939–1945. He was one of the first independent scholars to consult the ICRC archives in the early 1990s. Susanne Schech is Emeritus Professor of Geography at Flinders University and author of Culture and Development: A Critical Introduction (2000). Her research contributes to critical development geographies on race and whiteness, humanitarian migration and resettlement, and the politics of international volunteering. Romain Fathi is Senior Lecturer in History at the Australian National University and an affiliated researcher at the Centre d'Histoire de Sciences Po. He is author of The Red Cross's Public Health Turn. His research focusses on the First World War, the history of public health, and the treatment of human remains in conflicts. Jordan Evans is an early career researcher in the College of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences at Flinders University. His research investigates the history of blood transfusion in the 20th century and its intersections with humanitarianism, technology, and decolonisation.

• Introduction: the league of red cross societies: per humanitatem ad pacem; Part I. Disruption of the Red Cross Ecosystem: 1. 1919 – Rebirth; 2. 1946 – Recalibration; 3. 1975 – Reflection; Part II. Global Health Initiatives: 4. Coordinating global action against venereal diseases in the interwar period; 5. The league's international nursing programme in the 1920s and 30s; 6. The junior red cross, youth and disability; 7. The promotion of voluntary blood donation; 8. The league and the WHO in global public health; Part III. A Peacetime Organisation in War: 9. The league at war; 10. Latin America, regionalism and strategies for survival, 1939–45; 11. The nursing bureau missions to Latin America in the 1940s; Part IV. Providing Relief and Building Capacity: 12. Development in the Global South; 13. The league in South-East Asia during the cold war, 1950s–1970s; 14. Re-evaluating red cross relationships and famines in Africa, 1970s and 1980s; 15. Turning the red cross green: the league and environment in the 1970s; Conclusion; Bibliography; Index.

'A topical, much-needed monograph, authored by a group of brilliant, competent, knowledgeable historians. This is the first broad, critical history of the League of Red Cross Societies (LRCS), from its inception to the end of the Twentieth Century. Of all the components of the Red Cross movement, it was, so far, the one that had gone unnoticed, often overlooked, and sometimes ignored. The book rectifies the situation; it provides a comprehensive, accessible historical analysis of an organisation that, according to the authors, 'deliberately operated as an enabler, a co-ordinator, providing a space for convening different agents rather than as an actor in its own right'.' Davide Rodogno, Geneva Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies