Humanitarianism, Empire and Transnationalism, 1760-1995

This is the first book to examine the shifting relationship between humanitarianism and the expansion, consolidation and postcolonial transformation of the Anglophone world across three centuries. Together, the collection teases out various issues, such as the relationship between British humanitarian concerns and the uneven imagination and application of emancipation; the fluctuating tensions between ameliorative humanitarianism based around the assumption that British civilisation should be the standard for any policy initiatives and assertive human rights; the specifics of humanitarian governance and practice; the fluid locales of humanitarian donors, practitioners and recipients as decolonisation reconfigured imperial relationships and the overarching question of who Anglo humanitarianism is for and what it is about.

This volume utilises detailed case studies over the longue durée of some three hundred years of Anglophone history, covering the eighteenth to the twenty-first centuries, with especial attention paid to Australia as the settler colony par excellence. The collection showcases an array of methodologies and sources, ranging from the biography of material objects to interviews as well as more conventional archival enquiry.