AHA Conference Panel
The Red Cross and the Cold War, decolonisation and development
Australian Historical Association Annual Conference
29 Nov – 02 Dec 2021
UNSW Sydney & State Library of NSW
On the eve of its 40th anniversary, the Australian Historical Association Conference returns to the University of New South Wales where it held its first conference in 1982. Members of the Resilient Humanitarianism team will present a series of papers exploring the role of the Red Cross during the Cold War, a time of decolonisation and development. The session will be chaired by Professor Melanie Oppenheimer, and will feature papers by Professor Susanne Schech, Jordan Evans, and Anna Wilkinson.
Chair – Melanie Oppenheimer
In the mounting research on the history of humanitarianism, the Red Cross movement stands out as the most enduring humanitarian assemblage to have somehow successfully navigated the many twists and turns of the modern era. Made up of the International Red Cross Committee and the International Federation of Red Cross Red Crescent (both based in Geneva, Switzerland) and the 192 (at last count) national Red Cross and Red Crescent societies, the Red Cross movement is surprisingly resilient as it represents the local, national and international humanitarian aspirations of the Red Cross ideal. This panel is composed of members of the ARC funded Discovery Project, “Resilient Humanitarianism”, that seeks to explore the history of the League of Red Cross Societies from its inception in 1919 through to 1991 when its name changed to the International Federation of Red Cross Red Crescent. The 4-year project explores the little known history of the League’s internationalism and humanitarian projects, its personalities and the political, spacial and cultural narratives that underpin it, through a series of case studies. This panel focuses on the post-1945 period with three papers where the contestations and complexities of the humanitarianism of the Red Cross, decolonisation and development, intersect.
Jordan Evans:
The League of Red Cross Societies and the development of blood transfusion policies during the Cold War 1946-1961
During the decolonisation period post 1945, new nation states emerged with different levels of medical infrastructure and technological development. One of the ways the League of Red Cross Societies (LRCS) sought to support these new countries and their national Red Cross/Crescent societies was through the expansion of blood transfusion services, a new and complex technology. The LRCS’s blood programme developed through a series of resolutions, conferences and seminars and placed it as one of the leading authorities on blood transfusion at the time. Using the results of a blood transfusion questionnaire distributed by the LRCS to its member Red Cross and Red Crescent national societies in 1961, this paper examines how blood, humanitarianism and decolonisation intersected during the Cold War.
Anna Wilkinson:
Speaking but not heard: The League of Red Cross Societies and its Development Programme, a case study of the 1964 South East Asian Forum
This paper examines the little known League of Red Cross Societies’ (LRCS) Development Programme established in the late 1950s as a way to create self-sustaining humanitarian practices during a period of decolonisation in the Global South. Part of the so-called ‘Development Decade’ of the 1960s, the LRCS’s Development Programme sought to support new and emerging national Red Cross and Red Crescent societies in areas of public health, disaster management and the like. The paper focuses on the South East Asian Forum, funded by the LRCS and hosted by the Australian Red Cross at the University of Sydney from 20 May to 3 June 1964. The Forum was attended by delegates from thirteen Red Cross societies across Asia and was held during a period of regional conflict including the Malayan Emergency. The analysis reveals a complex narrative of the interplay between humanitarianism and the use of soft power played out against the backdrop of the Cold War.
Susanne Schech:
Navigating decolonisation and Cold War in the 1960s: The Red Cross in the Cuba Crisis
This paper analyses a specific moment and site in the turbulent 20th century in which the politics of decolonisation and the Cold War intersected. Cuba became a hotspot of decolonisation when the 1959 Revolution began the dismantlement of a century of United States domination of Cuban politics, economy, and culture. The US administration attempted to overthrow new communist regime in the failed invasion at the Bay of Pigs in one of America’s most disastrous military interventions, and the US – Cuban conflict brought the world to the brink of nuclear war in the October 1962 Cuban missile crisis. Yet, on Christmas eve that same year, 1113 Bay of Pigs prisoners that had been captured by the Cuban defence forces were released and returned to the US. This paper examines archival material to track the changing role of the Red Cross in the Cuba crisis. It shows why the transnational organisations of the Red Cross – the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and the League of Red Cross Societies (FRCS) took a back seat while the American and Cuban Red Cross societies accomplished the exchange of prisoners for food and medicines. Understanding the Red Cross as a flat assemblage composed of a multitude helps to explain this complex and unusual operation in the absence of diplomatic relations, and the pliability of the Red Cross movement.
