Handbook on Humanitarianism and Inequality - Chapter 02 - Humanitarianism and colonialism

Every two weeks I am going to feature one of the chapters of our Handbook on Humanitarianism and Inequality which was published in spring 2024.
This week we are taking a closer look at Chapter 02 - Humanitarianism andcolonialism - contributed by Aoife O’Leary McNeice.

From the introduction
There are many moments that have been identified as the birth of modern humanitarianism: the popular anti-slavery movement of the late-eighteenth century; the foundation of the Red Cross in 1863; the emergence of professional NGOs in the twentieth century (Barnett, 2011: 1–5; Haskell, 1985a; 1985b). However, scholarship has largely moved away from traditional narratives that identify a single episode marking the birth of Western humanitarianism. Rather, Western humanitarianism is conceived as having emerged incrementally as part of modern European colonialism; the two projects were co-dependent (Baughan and Everill, 2012: 727; Skinner and Lester, 2012: 732). Early-modern humanitarianism is markedly different from modern humanitarianism in countless ways. It was less formal, did not experience popular support in an era before print and widespread literacy in which public opinion was hard to gauge, and it was not called humanitarianism by contemporaries. However, this chapter will trace a pattern in which humanitarian interventions throughout the modern period have sought to protect or improve the lives of those living under colonial rule. These attempts served to consolidate colonial rule and set the parameters for colonial violence, exploitation, and ultimately modern north-south global inequality. The nuances that exist within the humanitarian relationship will also be considered, by exploring anti-colonial humanitarianism and the role played by colonised groups in Western humanitarianism.
The chapter will begin by exploring humanitarianism in the early-modern Atlantic world, focusing on laws of protection and anti-slavery campaigns. It will then discuss nineteenth-century humanitarianism in the British settler colonies (see also Chapter 27 by Gurr on Humanitarianism and Native America and Chapter 28 by Sobocinska on Australia, New Zealand, and the Pacific Region in this volume) and Africa (see also Chapter 31 by Boateng on Africa in this volume), interrogating the relationship between state and voluntary humanitarianism.
The third section will explore the relationship between Western humanitarianism in post-colonial regions with the development of the welfare state and the way in which Western nations use humanitarianism to obscure their role in prolonging humanitarian crises. The chapter will conclude with an analysis of anti-colonial humanitarianism. This chapter covers several centuries of history, and includes case studies from regions across the globe. There are, of course, elements of this long history that will not be included, and groups of people whose voices are not represented in this chapter, but who played an important role in the history of humanitarianism and colonialism.

Note on contributor
Aoife O’Leary McNeice is a social historian. Her research interests encompass humanitarianism, empire, gender, archives and inequality. She recently completed a PhD on imperial humanitarianism and the Great Irish Famine at the University of Cambridge and previously worked on digitisation projects at the National Library of Scotland and the University of Edinburgh. She is currently a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Exeter, working on the Imagining Futures through Un/Archived Pasts project.

Overviews are already available for the following chapters:
Introduction: humanitarianism and inequality – are-orientation