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- Title
Anti-slavery, refugee relief, and the missionary origins of humanitarian photography ca. 1900-1960.
- Authors
Grant, Kevin
- Abstract
This essay examines the era in which international humanitarianism shifted from the imperial principles of Christianity and commerce to the liberal internationalist principles of human rights and development. It argues that the privileged humanitarian subjects of the first era, slaves, were superseded in the second era by refugees due to a new conception of rights to culture and the threat of refugees to collective security. It examines this transitional era through humanitarian responses to crises involving peoples of the Congo Free State, Australia, Armenia, and Western Europe. It focuses particularly on humanitarian photography, demonstrating that the visual tropes that missionaries established in the first humanitarian era continued to structure the photographs of the so-called new humanitarianism. The essay finally questions whether missionary tropes were effectively redefined in liberal internationalist terms by the mid-twentieth century, and it invites scholars to revisit the role of religion in the new humanitarian era.
- Subjects
HUMANITARIANISM; 20TH century photography; ANTISLAVERY movements; HUMANITARIAN assistance; HISTORY of liberalism; AUSTRALIAN history; HISTORY of the Congo (Democratic Republic); ARMENIAN history; TWENTIETH century; HISTORY
- Publication
History Compass, 2017, Vol 15, Issue 5, pn/a
- ISSN
1478-0542
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1111/hic3.12383