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This paper offers a history of fortified blended foods, a humanitarian product that first emerged in the middle of the twentieth century. Tracing its emergence and development, the paper argues that this food was the product of four key historical trends: (i) the search for a compact and efficient diet in the wake of the Second World War; (ii) the high modernist movement that saw science and technology...
This paper contains a systematic exploration of local and national archives and sources relevant to charities and humanitarian fund appeals of the late Victorian and Edwardian eras (1870–1912) in Great Britain. It shows that the charitable world and humanitarian work share the same matrix and originate from the same roots, with considerable overlap between fundraising for domestic charity and overseas...
Once afflicted by frequent episodes of famine, China—particularly the Chinese state—is growing in importance as a player in the overseas aid and development sector. This paper examines four famines in modern China—defined as the period since the First Opium War of 1839–42—to shed light on the changing nature of state involvement in disaster relief in the country, while also demonstrating the breadth...
This paper reflects on the foundational years of Save the Children, one of the oldest and largest Western humanitarian agencies and a mainstay of the humanitarian project. In doing so, it considers how and why, at an early stage, the organisation depoliticised its activities, centring its narrative on the innocent, pre‐political child—the image of unsullied humanity. In addition, it seeks to recover...
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) is today a staunch proponent of the need for humanitarian organisations to remain independent of state interests, yet it deliberately solicited intergovernmental intervention in international relief after the First World War of 1914–18. This paper examines why an organisation committed to upholding the independence and impartiality of humanitarian...
Much of the flood risk faced by coastal and riparian populations worldwide is manufactured rather than strictly natural—the outcome of human development projects involving municipal growth machines. This paper details the impacts of the hurricane of September 1947 on New Orleans, Louisiana, United States, and its relationship with the urban development and expansion efforts undertaken during and after...
Contemporary academic debates on the history of the colonial Famine Codes in India—also considered to be the first coded and institutionalised normative frameworks for natural disaster response on the continent—generally are based on one of two perspectives. The first focuses on their economic rationale, whereas the second underlines that they constitute an anti‐famine contract between the colonial...
How might historical perspectives assist the goal of improving humanitarian responses? This introduction to a special issue of Disasters on the history of humanitarian action explores this question and outlines how the other submissions to the edition, each with its own approach and focus area from the nineteenth‐century to the present today, make different contributions to understanding of humanitarian...
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