Gendering Global Humanitarianism in the Twentieth Century: Practice, Politics and the Power of Representation [1st ed.] 9783030446291, 9783030446307

Table of contents :
Front Matter ....Pages i-xiii
Gendering Twentieth-Century Humanitarianism: An Introduction (Esther Möller, Johannes Paulmann, Katharina Stornig)....Pages 1-32
Front Matter ....Pages 33-33
Humanitarian Masculinity: Desire, Character and Heroics, 1876–2018 (Bertrand Taithe)....Pages 35-59
Protestant Missionaries, Armenian Refugees and Local Relief: Gendered Humanitarianism in Aleppo, 1920–1939 (Inger Marie Okkenhaug)....Pages 61-84
Maternalism and Feminism in Medical Aid: The American Women’s Hospitals in the United States and in Greece, 1917–1941 (Francesca Piana)....Pages 85-114
Front Matter ....Pages 115-115
The Orphan Nation: Gendered Humanitarianism for Armenian Survivor Children in Istanbul, 1919–1922 (Nazan Maksudyan)....Pages 117-142
The Politics of Gender and Community: Non-Governmental Relief in Late Colonial and Early Postcolonial India (Maria Framke)....Pages 143-166
Humanitarian Service in the Name of Social Development: The Historic Origins of Women’s Welfare Associations in Saudi Arabia (Nora Derbal)....Pages 167-192
Front Matter ....Pages 193-193
Perilous Beginnings: Infant Mortality, Public Health and the State in Egypt (Beth Baron)....Pages 195-219
Parenthood as Aid: “Fathers”, “Mothers” and International Child Welfare from the Late 1940s to the 1970s (Katharina Stornig, Katharina Wolf)....Pages 221-254
In/Visible Girls: “Girl Soldiers”, Gender and Humanitarianism in African Conflicts, c. 1955–2005 (Stacey Hynd)....Pages 255-279
Gender Histories of Humanitarianism: Concepts and Perspectives (Esther Möller, Johannes Paulmann, Katharina Stornig)....Pages 281-300
Back Matter ....Pages 301-331

Citation preview

PALGRAVE MACMILLAN TRANSNATIONAL HISTORY SERIES

Gendering Global Humanitarianism in the Twentieth Century Practice, Politics and the Power of Representation Edited by  Esther Möller Johannes Paulmann · Katharina Stornig

Palgrave Macmillan Transnational History Series Series Editors Akira Iriye Harvard University Cambridge, USA Rana Mitter Department of History University of Oxford Oxford, UK

This distinguished series seeks to develop scholarship on the transnational connections of societies and peoples in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries; provide a forum in which work on transnational history from different periods, subjects, and regions of the world can be brought together in fruitful connection; and explore the theoretical and methodological links between transnational and other related approaches such as comparative history and world history. Editorial board Thomas Bender, University Professor of the Humanities, Professor of History, and Director of the International Center for Advanced Studies, New York University Jane Carruthers, Professor of History, University of South Africa Mariano Plotkin, Professor, Universidad Nacional de Tres de Febrero, Buenos Aires, and member of the National Council of Scientific and Technological Research, Argentina Pierre-Yves Saunier, Researcher at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, France Ian Tyrrell, Professor of History, University of New South Wales More information about this series at http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14675

Esther Möller Johannes Paulmann  •  Katharina Stornig Editors

Gendering Global Humanitarianism in the Twentieth Century Practice, Politics and the Power of Representation

Editors Esther Möller Leibniz Institute of European History Mainz, Germany

Johannes Paulmann Leibniz Institute of European History Mainz, Germany

Katharina Stornig University of Giessen Giessen, Germany

Palgrave Macmillan Transnational History Series ISBN 978-3-030-44629-1    ISBN 978-3-030-44630-7 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-44630-7 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG. The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Acknowledgements

This volume is the product of a collective effort, and we wish particularly to thank the authors for their cooperation, commitment and support. In addition, we are indebted to a range of people and institutions whose assistance has enabled this project to come to fruition. The participants of the conference “Gender and Humanitarianism. (Dis-)Empowering Women and Men in the Twentieth Century”, hosted by the Leibniz Institute of European History in Mainz and generously funded by the Fritz Thyssen Foundation in June 2017, substantially shaped the initiative. In particular, John Carter Wood has been a thorough and most valuable collaborator, not only during the conference but also in refining the manuscripts for publication. Furthermore, we are indebted to the anonymous reviewers for critical feedback and helpful comments. Last but not least, we also wish to thank Sabrina Stuenkel, Martin Kupp, Hannah Heuper and Barbara Kunkel for their invaluable assistance in producing the index and finalizing the manuscript. Mainz and Giessen September 2019

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Contents

1 Gendering Twentieth-Century Humanitarianism: An Introduction  1 Esther Möller, Johannes Paulmann and Katharina Stornig Part I Masculinities and Femininities in Humanitarian Practice and Discourse  33 2 Humanitarian Masculinity: Desire, Character and Heroics, 1876–2018 35 Bertrand Taithe 3 Protestant Missionaries, Armenian Refugees and Local Relief: Gendered Humanitarianism in Aleppo, 1920–1939 61 Inger Marie Okkenhaug 4 Maternalism and Feminism in Medical Aid: The American Women’s Hospitals in the United States and in Greece, 1917–1941 85 Francesca Piana

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Contents

Part II Gender and the Politics of Humanitarianism 115 5 The Orphan Nation: Gendered Humanitarianism for Armenian Survivor Children in Istanbul, 1919–1922117 Nazan Maksudyan 6 The Politics of Gender and Community: NonGovernmental Relief in Late Colonial and Early Postcolonial India143 Maria Framke 7 Humanitarian Service in the Name of Social Development: The Historic Origins of Women’s Welfare Associations in Saudi Arabia167 Nora Derbal Part III The Power of Gendered Representations 193 8 Perilous Beginnings: Infant Mortality, Public Health and the State in Egypt195 Beth Baron 9 Parenthood as Aid: “Fathers”, “Mothers” and International Child Welfare from the Late 1940s to the 1970s221 Katharina Stornig and Katharina Wolf 10 In/Visible Girls: “Girl Soldiers”, Gender and Humanitarianism in African Conflicts, c. 1955–2005255 Stacey Hynd 11 Gender Histories of Humanitarianism: Concepts and Perspectives281 Esther Möller, Johannes Paulmann and Katharina Stornig Bibliography301 Index

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Notes on Contributors

Beth Baron  is Distinguished Professor of History at the City College and Graduate Center of the City University of New  York (CUNY) and Director of the Middle East and Middle Eastern American Center at the CUNY Graduate Center. Her research interests include the history of Egypt, gender and social history, and the history of medicine. She is the author of The Orphan Scandal: Christian Missionaries and the Rise of the Muslim Brotherhood (2014). Nora  Derbal is a visiting assistant professor at the Department of Sociology, Anthropology and Egyptology at The American University in Cairo (AUC), Egypt. Her research interests include philanthropy and associational life in contemporary Saudi Arabia, and gender in the Arab states of the Gulf. She recently published “Saudi Arabia, Humanitarian Aid and Knowledge Production: What Do We Really Know?,” Muslim Humanitarianism #MUHU, Allegra Lab, 5 July 2019, available at http://allegralaboratory.net. Maria Framke  is a postdoctoral researcher at the Chair for European and Contemporary History at the University of Rostock, Germany. Her research interests include the history of international organizations, imperial and nationalist politics, humanitarianism, and international relations and ideologies in the twentieth century. She has recently published “‘We Must Send a Gift Worthy of India and the Congress!’ War and Political Humanitarianism in Late Colonial South Asia,” Modern Asian Studies 51, no. 6 (2017), 1969–1998. ix

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Stacey Hynd  is Senior Lecturer in African History at the Department of History at the University of Exeter, United Kingdom. Her research interests include histories of humanitarianism and human rights in twentieth-­ century East and West Africa, as well as African gender and childhood histories, law and violence, and warfare. Among her recent publications is “Pickpockets, Pilot Boys and Prostitutes: The Construction of Juvenile Delinquency in the Gold Coast [Colonial Ghana], 1929–57,” Journal of West African History 4, no 2 (2018), 47–74. Nazan  Maksudyan  is Einstein Guest Professor of History at the Freie Universität Berlin and a research associate at the Centre Marc Bloch, Germany. Her research focuses on the history of children and youth in the Ottoman Empire during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, with special interest in gender, sexuality, education, humanitarianism and non-­ Muslims. She has recently published Ottoman Children and Youth During World War I (2019). Esther Möller  is a senior researcher at the Leibniz Institute of European History (IEG) in Mainz, Germany. Her research interests include the history of humanitarian aid, transnational history and global history with a focus on the Arab world, and the history of colonial education. She is the author of “The Suez Crisis 1956 as a Moment of Transnational Humanitarian Engagement,” European Review of History 23, no. 1–2 (2016), 136–153. Inger  Marie  Okkenhaug  is Professor of History at Volda University College, Norway. Her research interests include the history of Christian missions, humanitarianism, relief and welfare in the Middle East, as well as the history of Scandinavian transatlantic migration. Among her most recent publications is “Orphans, Refugees and Relief in the Armenian Republic, 1922–1925,” in Jo Laycock and Francesca Piana, eds., Aid to Armenia: Humanitarian Aid, Relief, and Interventions from the 1890s to the Present (forthcoming 2020). Johannes  Paulmann  is Director of the Leibniz Institute of European History (IEG) at Mainz, Germany. His research interests cover the history of Europe, international history and German history in a transnational perspective. He has edited Humanitarianism and Media: 1900 to the Present (2019) and Dilemmas of Humanitarian Aid in the Twentieth Century (2016).

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Francesca  Piana  is a visiting lecturer at the Global Studies Institute of the University of Geneva. Her research includes internationalism, humanitarian aid and the missionary, migrations, women and gender in twentieth-­ century European and international history. A volume that she co-edited with Jo Laycock, Aid to Armenia: Humanitarian Aid, Relief, and Interventions from the 1890s to the Present, is under contract with Manchester University Press. Katharina  Stornig is Junior Professor of Cultural History at the University of Giessen, Germany. Her research interests include gender history, the history of child welfare in transnational contexts and the cultural history of aid and philanthropy. She has recently published “Promoting Distant Children in Need: Christian Imagery in the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries,” in Johannes Paulmann, ed., Humanitarianism and Media: 1900 to the Present (2019), 41–66. Bertrand  Taithe  is Professor of Cultural History and Director of the Humanitarian and Conflict Response Institute at the University of Manchester, United Kingdom. His main research interests focus on the history of humanitarian medicine and relief, conflicts and humanitarianism. Together with Julie-Marie Strange and Sarah Roddy, he has recently published The Charity Market and Humanitarianism in Britain, 1870–1912 (2018). His most recent article is “Demotic Humanitarians: Historical Perspectives on the Global Reach of Local Initiatives,” in Third World Quarterly 40, no. 10 (2019), 1781–1798. Katharina  Wolf is a research assistant at the International Graduate Centre for the Study of Culture (GCSC) and PhD candidate in Modern History at the University of Giessen, Germany. Her research interests include the history of international child welfare, women’s and gender studies, visual culture and constructions of memory in contemporary literature.

List of Figures

Fig. 3.1 Fig. 3.2 Fig. 3.3 Fig. 9.1 Fig. 9.2

Interior of an Armenian refugee camp close to Aleppo. Courtesy of National Archives of Norway 73 Armenian Bible Woman reading with female refugees, Aleppo. Courtesy of National Archives of Norway 77 Bodil Biørn and Armenian women attending the KMA evening school, Aleppo c. 1930. Courtesy of National Archives of Norway 83 Der Kinderdorfbote 5, no. 2 (1953), front page. Courtesy of Hermann-Gmeiner-Akademie244 Der Kinderdorfbote 6, no. 3 (1953), 2. Courtesy of HermannGmeiner-Akademie246

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CHAPTER 1

Gendering Twentieth-Century Humanitarianism: An Introduction Esther Möller, Johannes Paulmann and Katharina Stornig

During the Second World War, the American Red Cross produced a poster entitled “Volunteer for Victory”. Showing a woman in uniform posing in front of two Red Cross flags, the poster was aimed at mobilizing American women to volunteer for humanitarian war service. We have chosen a detail of this poster for the cover of our book because it concisely expresses its subject: the multiple, complex and at times paradoxical influence of gender on the history of twentieth-century humanitarianism. Indeed, the poster addresses precisely the three themes that guide this volume’s conceptual approach. On one level, it promoted humanitarian war service in the 1940s by playing upon contemporary notions of femininity and masculinity. While the poster confirmed (or even exaggerated) modern, white and middle-class standards of femininity, dress (including gloves, heels, trendy blond hair and makeup) and beauty, it also flirted with the idea of E. Möller (*) • J. Paulmann Leibniz Institute of European History, Mainz, Germany e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected] K. Stornig University of Giessen, Giessen, Germany e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 E. Möller et al. (eds.), Gendering Global Humanitarianism in the Twentieth Century, Palgrave Macmillan Transnational History Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-44630-7_1

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transgressing gender boundaries by embarking on a national military— and thus masculine—adventure. On a second level, the poster alluded to the intersecting politics of gender and humanitarianism that can be traced through historical instances across the twentieth century. Promoting the American Red Cross as a patriotic enterprise and suggesting the promise of female heroism, the poster indicated the progressive (or even empowering) potential of humanitarian war service by providing women access to the military and to the European frontlines; it depicted white American women volunteers as not only integral to but also active parts of a national “we” represented by the American military forces that were defending Western liberalism. And yet, the imagery remains highly stereotypical and does not question women’s roles as subordinate partners and complementary forces of men, confined to delivering aid in armed conflict. Thus, on a third level, the poster points to the power of gendered representations in the context of humanitarian narratives and media communication: the volunteer depicted is young, beautiful, healthy and athletic yet delicate and in motion, signalling that she is ready to take action on behalf of her needy compatriots and to complement male combat activities. In sum, the poster demonstrates the deep entanglement of notions of gender and aid service in humanitarian discourse and practice at a specific moment in history. This volume discusses the relationship between gender and humanitarian discourses and practices in the twentieth century. Humanitarianism is understood here, in accordance with recent scholarship, as a field that covers a broad range of activities, including emergency relief, longer-term development and active response to famine, ill-health and poverty.1 The volume reminds us that gender mattered not only to different phenomena of conflict and crisis but also to the various humanitarian responses to them. Humanitarianism, we argue, is fruitfully approached as a gendered enterprise, for, at specific times and in particular places, its discourses and practices were profoundly affected by gendered norms, hierarchies between men and women and cultural ideas of what it meant to be male 1  See for instance Matthew Hilton et al., “History and Humanitarianism: A Conversation,” Past & Present 242, no. 1 (2018), 1–38; Johannes Paulmann, “Conjunctures in the History of International Humanitarian Aid during the Twentieth Century,” Humanity: An International Journal of Human Rights, Humanitarianism, and Development 4, no. 2 (2013), 215–238; Michael Barnett and Janice Gross Stein, “Introduction: The Secularization and Sanctification of Humanitarianism,” in Michael Barnett and Janice Gross Stein, eds., Sacred Aid: Faith and Humanitarianism (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), 3–36, here 11–12.

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or female. Understanding gender as a relational category that includes both femininity and masculinity allows us not only to challenge essentialist approaches but also to explore the ways in which gender difference functioned in the formation of cultural and social relations and worked as an axis along which inequalities of power were established, maintained and, in some cases, changed.2 The chapters in this volume present a gender perspective on issues such as post-genocide relief and rehabilitation, humanitarian careers and subjectivities, medical assistance, community aid, child welfare and child soldiering. They further give prominence to the beneficiaries of aid and their use of humanitarian resources, organizations and structures by investigating the effects of humanitarian activities on gender relations in the respective societies that are examined. Approaching humanitarianism as a global phenomenon, the volume considers historical actors and theoretical positions from both the global North and South (from Europe to the Middle East, sub-Saharan Africa, South and South East Asia as well as North America). It combines Western and non-Western perspectives as well as state and non-state humanitarian initiatives, and it scrutinizes their gendered dimensions on local, regional, national and global scales. Finally, some of the chapters illuminate the impact of feminism on both the development of global humanitarianism in the twentieth century and its rapidly growing historiography. This is especially important given that the volume concentrates on the period between the late nineteenth century and the post-Cold War era, which not only witnessed a major expansion of humanitarian action worldwide but also saw fundamental changes in gender relations and the gradual emergence of gender-sensitive policies in humanitarian organizations in many Western and non-Western settings. Although the history of humanitarianism has recently attracted a great deal of scholarly attention, surprisingly little has been said about the workings of gender in this globalizing enterprise. So far, the few scholars of humanitarianism who have addressed gender have largely limited themselves to either pointing out the many ways in which women contributed to humanitarian movements or to problematizing the depictions of men and women that have featured in humanitarian representations and 2  See Joan W. Scott, “Gender: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis,” The American Historical Review 91, no. 5 (1986), 1053–1075, here 1054; Kathleen Canning, Gender History in Practice: Historical Perspectives on Bodies, Class, and Citizenship (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2006), 4–5.

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narratives. In the first part of this introduction, we will discuss these important trends in the recent history of humanitarianism and then introduce two well-established topics in the field of gender history that are crucial to the study of humanitarianism but that have, so far, been little recognized: gender histories of care, and studies of the gendered dimensions of war, violence and armed conflict. We not only suggest that the histories of humanitarianism and of gender would benefit from an intensified dialogue but also seek to steer this dialogue towards a rigorous exploration of the relationship between gender and humanitarianism. In the second part of this introduction, we outline our conceptual approach, which also provides the structure of this volume. While introducing the chapters, we develop three conceptual fields that we consider of upmost importance for systematically tracing the intersections between gender and twentieth-­century humanitarianism: masculinities and femininities in humanitarian discourse and practice, gender and the politics of humanitarianism and the power of gendered representations. In our view, a conceptual (rather than a chronological or geographical) approach is necessary to achieve the volume’s goals, which have two main aspects. It aims to investigate how constructions and relations of gender shaped and were shaped by humanitarian encounters, practices, programs and subjectivities throughout the twentieth century. And by engaging with a topic that necessarily transcends local or national frameworks of analysis, the volume also strives to contribute to the larger current debate about the place of gender in transnational or global history.3 Consequently, we conclude the 3  The introduction of women and gender into transnational and global history is being debated among historians. See for instance, Peter N.  Stearns, Gender in World History (London and New  York: Routledge, 2001); Merry Wiesner-Hanks, “Crossing Borders in Transnational History,” Journal of Global History 6, no. 3 (2011), 357–379; Mary Louise Roberts, “The Transnationalization of Gender History,” History and Theory 44, no. 3 (2005), 456–468; Angelika Epple and Angelika Schaser, eds., Gendering Historiography: Beyond National Canons (Frankfurt am Main: Campus, 2009); Almut Höfert, Claudia Opitz-Belakhal and Claudia Ulbrich, eds., Geschlechtergeschichte global, Special Issue of L’Homme: Europäische Zeitschrift für Feministische Geschichtswissenschaft 23, no. 2 (2012); Clare Midgley, Alison Twells and Julie Carlier, eds., Women in Transnational History: Connecting the Local and the Global (London and New  York: Routledge, 2016); Merry Wiesner-Hanks, ed., Mapping Gendered Routes and Spaces in the Early Modern World (London and New York: Routledge, 2015). For the specific context of the Middle East, see Liat Kozma, “Going Transnational: On Mainstreaming Middle Eastern Gender Studies,” International Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 48, no. 3 (2016), 574–577.

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volume with a chapter that goes beyond summarizing the results of the individual contributions and lays out an agenda for future research into the gender histories of humanitarianism.

Introducing Gender as an Analytical Category: Review and Prospects In a recent article, historian Abigail Green, reviewing the large body of new literature published on humanitarianism by historians and social scientists, argues that the role of women in this enterprise since the nineteenth century still remains to be fully explored and added to the story.4 According to Green, the historical study of humanitarianism is to a great extent about the study of people who were moved to action by “their identification with the suffering of distant others” in historically specific situations and contexts.5 Many of these people happened to be women, yet their contributions, ideas, reflections and voices have often remained unheard by scholars who have failed to reflect upon gender-biased structures, divisions of labour and power relations in humanitarian encounters, organizations and archives. Other than women’s roles in the British and international antislavery movements (which have received considerable scholarly attention over the last two decades6), their contributions to nineteenth- and 4   See Abigail Green, “Humanitarianism in Nineteenth-Century Context: Religious, Gendered, National,” The Historical Journal 57, no. 4 (2014), 1157–1175. Other scholars have likewise argued that the activities of women in relief operations have so far been largely neglected by scholarship. See Melanie Tanielian, “Politics of Wartime Relief in Beirut (1914–1918),” First World War Studies 5, no. 1 (2014), 69–82. 5  Green, “Humanitarianism,” 1160. 6  Much of this scholarship was inspired by the pioneering work of historian Clare Midgley. See Clare Midgley, Women against Slavery: The British Campaigns, 1780–1870 (London and New York: Routledge, 1995). For a more recent volume tracing the links between female antislavery activism and the movement for women’s rights, see Kathryn Kish Sklar and James Brewer Stewart, eds., Women’s Rights and Transatlantic Antislavery in the Era of Emancipation (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2007). Other recent works have addressed the multiple intersections between feminism and abolitionism as two emancipatory reform movements that were central to late-nineteenth-century discourses on sexuality and nationalism. See Petra de Vries, “Josephine Butler and the Making of Feminism: International Abolitionism in the Netherlands (1870–1914),” Women’s History Review 17, no. 2 (2008), 257–277. For the engagement of German women with (international) abolitionism, see Sarah Lentz, “Abolitionists in the German Hinterland? Therese Huber and the Spread of Anti-slavery Sentiment in the early Nineteenth Century,” in Felix Brahm and Eve Rosenhaft, eds., Slavery in the Hinterland: Transatlantic Slavery and Continental Europe,

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twentieth-century humanitarianism remain understudied. This is particularly the case for those numerous women who were not in the forefront of the social or humanitarian reform movements of their time. Instead, some well-known figures such as Josephine Butler (1828–1906),7 Florence Nightingale (1820–1910)8 or Eglantyne Jebb (1876–1828),9 have become veritable humanitarian icons and even made it into mainstream histories of humanitarianism.10 Yet, some recent research has started to broaden this focus on individual women activists (who have often been constructed as remarkable or exceptional women) by concentrating on female-centred archives as well as by studying the ways in which organized groups of female aid workers (e.g. nurses), feminists or development experts drew greater attention to the needs and life situations of women and men in crisis, disaster and war.11 This research has particularly highlighted the large number of women who were actively engaged in the various national Red Cross and Christian missionary societies as, for instance, wartime nurses, doctors and health workers.12 Historian Inger Marie Okkenhaug, for example, has 1680–1850 (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2016), 187–211; Pia Wiegmink, “Antislavery Discourses in Nineteenth-Century German American Women’s Fiction,” Atlantic Studies: Global Currents 14, no. 4 (2017), 476–496. 7  Anne Summers has edited a special issue on the multiple engagements of Josephine Butler in various reform movements and humanitarian campaigns. See Anne Summers, ed., Gender, Religion and Politics: Josephine Butler’s Campaigns in International Perspective (1785–1959), Special Issue of Women’s History Review 17, no. 2 (2008). 8  See Monica E. Baly, Florence Nightingale and the Nursing Legacy: Building the Foundations of Modern Nursing and Midwifery (London: Croom Helm, 1986). 9  Several articles and books have been published on Jebb and the beginnings of her Save the Children Fund. For instance, see Linda Mahood, Feminism and Voluntary Action: Eglantyne Jebb and Save the Children, 1876–1928 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009). 10  Even though his widely received monograph on the history of humanitarianism does not consider gender as a category of analysis, Michael Barnett has assigned some importance to prominent female figures such as Nightingale and Jebb. See Michael Barnett, Empire of Humanity: A History of Humanitarianism (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2011), 79 and 83–86. 11  For instance, see Christa Hämmerle, “‘Mentally broken, physically a wreck…’: Violence in War Accounts of Nurses in Austro-Hungarian Service,” in Christa Hämmerle et al., eds., Gender and the First World War (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), 89–107; Jean H.  Quataert, “A Knowledge Revolution: Transnational Feminist Contributions to International Development Agendas and Policies, 1965–1995,” Global Social Policy 14, no. 2 (2014), 209–227. 12  See for instance Daniela Angetter, “‘Durch die Kraft der Menschlichkeit das Schicksal der Verwundeten und Erkrankten zu lindern’: Die Frauenhilfsvereine des Roten Kreuzes in

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studied the encounter between a Norwegian missionary, nurse and midwife and female Armenian refugees in Mandate Syria with the goal of shedding light on the often-neglected experiences, activities and perceptions of women during and after the genocide.13 By taking into account the large numbers of women present among religious aid workers after 1918, scholars have examined the key roles that women played in gradually transforming missionary work into humanitarian service, development aid, welfare work and later development cooperation.14 Taken together, these “additive” studies that have deliberately focused on female activism certainly suggest that women’s efforts were constitutive to modern humanitarianism, contributing huge amounts of voluntary work and ­providing a basic prerequisite for the emergence of humanitarian movements and institutions. Green and others thus rightly plead for more studies focusing on the engagement of “ordinary” women in humanitarian campaigns with the aim of getting a better understanding of female motivations and modes of humanitarian action in a time when structures and ideologies of gender largely excluded them from (or at least discriminated Österreich,” in Wolfgang U.  Eckart and Philipp Osten, eds., Schlachtenschrecken  – Konventionen: Das Rote Kreuz und die Erfindung der Menschlichkeit im Kriege (Freiburg: Centaurus Verlag & Media UG, 2011), 129–151; Barbara Mann Wall, “Beyond the Imperial Narrative: Catholic Missionary Nursing, Medicine and Knowledge Translation in SubSaharan Africa, 1945–1980,” in Ellen Fleischmann et al., eds., Transnational and Historical Perspectives on Global Health, Welfare and Humanitarianism (Kristiansand: Portal Books, 2013), 90–109. Astrid Stölzle’s study on German voluntary war nursing during the First World War has likewise referred to the participation of men and women: See Astrid Stölzle, Kriegskrankenpflege im Ersten Weltkrieg (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 2013). For a study of female doctors during and after the First World War, see the chapter by Francesca Piana in this volume. 13  See Inger Marie Okkenhaug, “Religion, Relief and Humanitarian Work among Armenian Women Refugees in Mandatory Syria, 1927–1934,” Scandinavian Journal of History 40, no. 3 (2015), 432–454. 14  See Seija Jalagin, Inger Marie Okkenhaug and Maria Småberg, “Introduction: Nordic Missions, Gender and Humanitarian Practices: From Evangelizing to Development,” Scandinavian Journal of History 40, no. 3 (2015), 285–297; Ellen Fleischmann et al., eds., Transnational and Historical Perspectives on Global Health, Welfare and Humanitarianism (Kristiansand: Portal Books, 2013); Nefissa Naguib and Inger Marie Okkenhaug, eds., Interpreting Welfare and Relief in the Middle East (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2008); for a focus on male missionaries, but without referring explicitly to gender, see Bertrand Taithe, “Pyrrhic Victories? French Catholic Missionaries, Modern Expertise, and Secularizing Technologies,” in Michael Barnett and Janice Gross Stein, eds., Sacred Aid: Faith and Humanitarianism (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), 166–181.

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against them in) the sphere of politics.15 This approach involves considering the ways in which women used humanitarian and human-rights issues in order to make political claims in the context of a rapidly expanding international sphere.16 And yet, a gender history of humanitarianism cannot, of course, stop at simply adding women to its list of empirical interests. Instead, it should strive to rethink major themes, concepts and narratives in light of the multiple material, social, cultural and symbolic meanings assigned to or derived from sexual difference. A second topic in which scholars of humanitarianism have already started to fruitfully apply gender as a category of research concerns the workings of narratives and representations in the humanitarian politics of compassion. In a recent special issue of the scholarly journal “Humanity”, Samuel Martinez and Kathryn Libal have tackled the issue and posed the question of how the humanitarian narrative was gendered.17 The editors have introduced the gendered body into the study of humanitarianism by inquiring into the narrative and representational consequences that follow when the subject of humanitarian action or intervention was classed as male or female.18 This volume extends their approach, inasmuch as we are not only interested in studying how humanitarianism affected men and women, but also in learning more about the ways in which gender-specific interpretations and ideologies shaped humanitarian discourses and narratives in the twentieth century. Recent research has revealed that humanitarian organizations have often represented women as passive or innocent and as victims in order to trigger empathy and engagement by donors, because representations of men were reported to provoke rather negative reactions from potential

 See Green, “Humanitarianism,” 1169.  See Glenda Sluga, “‘Spectacular Feminism’: The International History of Women, World Citizenship and Human Rights,” in Francisca de Haan et al., eds., Women’s Activism: Global Perspectives from the 1890s to the Present (London and New  York: Routledge, 2013), 44–58. 17  See Samuel Martínez and Kathryn Libal, “Introduction: The Gender of Humanitarian Narrative,” Humanity: An International Journal of Human Rights, Humanitarianism, and Development 2, no. 2 (2011), 161–170. 18  While Thomas W.  Laqueur and others have already explored the body as object of humanitarian narratives in formats such as novels or scientific reports that were supposed to initiate humanitarian action, gender did not play a central role at that time. See Thomas W.  Laqueur, “Bodies, Details, and the Humanitarian Narrative,” in Lynn Hunt, ed., The New Cultural History (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989), 176–204. 15 16

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donors.19 These narratives can be traced back to the colonial era when gender differences intersected with racial and class differences to present European men as saviours of indigenous women who were endangered by indigenous men,20 while European women were regarded as both capable and weak at the same time.21 Unequal representation of the sexes has persisted until today and provoked criticism, which has led organizations such as the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies22 to develop codes of conduct that avoid stereotyped representations. As a consequence, there have indeed been more narratives showing the empowerment of women and girls through humanitarianism, yet, as Kalima Suchomel has underlined, even today “mostly female subjects—women and girls—are utilized to generate giving and compassionate action”.23 Gendered narratives have not only been part of humanitarian action but have also had political repercussions, in the sense that they have

19  See Miriam Ticktin, Casualties of Care: Immigration and the Politics of Humanitarianism in France (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011), 98; Roland Bleiker, “The Visual Dehumanisation of Refugees,” Australian Journal of Political Sciences 48, no. 4 (2013), 398–416, here 408. 20  See Zine Magubane, “The Body of the Savage: Humanitarian Narratives, 1800–1827,” Social Dynamics 23, no. 1 (1997), 1–22. 21  For the colonial context in Egypt, see the contribution by Beth Baron to this volume; for the continuities between colonial and current time periods, see the contribution by Stacey Hynd for this volume. For other colonial contexts, see Rita Smith Kipp, “Emancipating Each Other: Dutch Colonial Missionaries’ Encounter with Karo Women in Sumatra, 1900–1942,” in Julia Clancy-Smith and Frances Gouda, eds., Domesticating the Empire: Gender and Family Life in French and Dutch Colonialism (Charlottesville and London: University of Virginia Press, 1998), 211–235; Julia Clancy-Smith, “L’éducation des jeunes filles musulmanes en Tunisie: Missionnaires religieux et laïques,” in Florence Rochefort, ed., Le pouvoir du genre: Laïcités et religions, 1905–2005 (Toulouse: Presses Universitaires du Mirail, 2007), 127–143; for the relationship between colonialism and sexuality, see Laura Stoler, Carnal Knowledge and Imperial Power: Race and the Intimate in Colonial Rule (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005). 22  For the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement, see, for example, The Code of Conduct for the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement and NGOs in Disaster Relief from 1995 which, in its second paragraph, recognizes “the crucial role played by women in disaster-prone communities”. http://www.ifrc.org/Docs/idrl/I259EN.pdf (last accessed 26.10.2018). 23   Kamila Suchomel, “Gender in Humanitarian Imaginary: The Case of CARE International,” Center for Feminist Foreign Policy, 05.09.2018, https://centreforfeministforeignpolicy.org/journal/2018/9/4/gender-in-humanitarian-imagery-the-case-of-careinternational (last accessed 25.10.2018).

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intersected with racial, class and age differences24 and been linked to discourses about safety, dignity and rights.25 Scholars have worked, for example, on the gender-related categorization of “pathetic victim” and “heroic victim” paradigms in the case of sex workers and death-row prisoners26 or on the masculinist politics of contemporary antislavery discourses in the Dominican Republic, which contrast the benevolent male rescuer with local, weakened men and women who are in peril.27 They all call for a more prominent focus on the agency of both men and women and how their perspectives as victims can lead to alternative narratives.28 Alongside the representation of gender by humanitarian organizations themselves, writing on the relationship between gender and humanitarianism also concerns the humanitarian narrative more broadly. The “power of the writer”,29 put forward by Martinez and Libal, becomes obvious when looking at fictional literature and other texts such as reports or documentary films on humanitarianism and gender. Since, at the latest, Lynn Hunt’s study of the emergence of a human rights discourse in the eighteenth century,30 the impact of novels and other forms of literary production on social and political engagement for other social groups is well recognized. Fictional literature, and especially novels, have often featured female characters and mainly addressed female readers, and such patterns call for more research in the context of humanitarian action.31 Yet, the link 24  The narrative of children as innocent is critically explored by Liisa Malkki, “Children, Humanity and the Infantilization of Peace,” in Ilana Feldman and Miriam Ticktin, eds., In the Name of Humanity: The Government of Threat and Care (Durham: Duke University Press, 2010), 58–85. 25   Martínez and Libal, “Introduction,” 165. 26  See Diana Tietjens Meyers, “Two Victim Paradigms and the Problem of ‘Impure’ Victims,” Humanity: An International Journal of Human Rights, Humanitarianism, and Development 2, no. 2 (2011), 255–275. 27  See Samuel Martínez, “Taking Better Account: Contemporary Slavery, Gendered Narratives, and the Feminization of Struggle,” Humanity: An International Journal of Human Rights, Humanitarianism, and Development 2, no. 2 (2011), 277–303. 28  See Diana Tietjens Meyers, Victims’ Stories and the Advancement of Human Rights (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016). 29  Martínez and Libal, “Introduction,” 161. 30  Lynn Hunt, Inventing Human Rights: A History (London: Norton & Company, 2007). 31  For women as consumers in the context of eighteenth-century abolitionism, see Mimi Scheller, “Bleeding Humanity and Gendered Embodiments: From Antislavery Sugar Boycotts to Ethical Consumers,” Humanity: An International Journal of Human Rights, Humanitarianism, and Development 2, no. 2 (2011), 171–192; for a more contemporary example of transnational feminist fictional witnessing, see Elizabeth Swanson Goldberg and

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between gender and fictional humanitarian narratives is even more complex, because fictional reworkings of one’s own humanitarian experiences have far more often been produced by men than by women.32 The same is the case for other popular and influential genres like journalism or documentary films that have shaped our understanding of femininity and masculinity in humanitarian contexts. Scholars have explored the linguistic and representational strategies used to claim certainty and objectivity in cases such as the phenomenon of trafficking and forced prostitution (which is often claimed to be widespread).33 While these studies have introduced the question of gender into the study of humanitarian narratives, it remains challenging for historians of humanitarianism to deconstruct these representational patterns in their own narratives. In this context, we think that a fruitful dialogue with gender history is most helpful. For the purpose of research on humanitarian aid, we particularly see potential for a fruitful exchange with studies in the fields of the history of care and the gender dimensions of wars and armed conflict. In the last few decades, gender historians, alongside social scientists, have discussed the field of care, care roles and care work from a gender perspective. Taking the emergence of increasingly polarized gender roles and the feminization of emotions like sympathy, sensibility and softness in early nineteenth-century Europe as a starting point,34 historians have Alexandra Schultheis Moore, “Old Questions in New Boxes: Mia Kirshner’s I Live Here and the Problematics of Transnational Witnessing,” Humanity: An International Journal of Human Rights, Humanitarianism, and Development 2, no. 2 (2011), 233–253. 32  See the chapter by Bertrand Taithe in this volume. For an example of female fictional literature, see Helen Fielding, Cause Celeb (London: Picador, 1994). 33  For the perspective of journalism, see Gretchen Soderlund, “The Rhetoric of Revelation: Sex Trafficking and the Journalistic Exposé,” Humanity: An International Journal of Human Rights, Humanitarianism, and Development 2, no. 2 (2011), 193–211; Jana Hashamova, Screening Trafficking: Prudent and Perilous (Budapest: Central European University Press, 2018); for the relationship between prostitution and human rights, see Sonja Dolinsek, “Menschenrechte und die ‘Prostituierte’ im 20. Jahrhundert,” in Carola Sachse and Roman Birke, eds., Menschenrechte und Geschlecht im 20. Jahrhundert (Göttingen: Wallstein Verlag, 2018), 185–206. 34  See Karin Hausen, “Family and Role Division: The Polarization of Sexual Stereotypes in the Nineteenth Century: An Aspect of Dissociation of Work and Family Life,” in Richard Evans and W. R. Lee, eds., The German Family: Essays on the Social History of the Family in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Germany (London: Croom Helm, 1981), 51–83; Ute Frevert, Emotions in History – Lost and Found (Budapest and New York: Central European University Press, 2011), i.e. 105–111.

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explored the social effects of these naturalizing gender discourses on lived experiences and on men’s and women’s capacities for social agency. Focusing on the expansion of social work and the commitment to strangers since the nineteenth century, Annemieke van Drenth and Francisca de Haan have argued that women and popular ideas connected to femininity contributed considerably to the development and dissemination of what they call caring power. This refers to a fundamental change in the workings of power, which moved from an emphasis on criminalizing and disciplining deserving people to a strong notion of care, understood as the commitment to the well-being of others as human beings.35 Applied to international contexts such as wars or imperial projects, nursing has thus not only been discussed as a humanitarian act but also as an agent of power.36 In the eyes of Van Drenth and De Haan, caring power was generally accessible to men and women alike, yet its emergence was crucial to instituting the latter as modern social subjects.37 Numerous studies have pointed to the central importance of philanthropic service and voluntary work in the long-term histories of women’s emancipation.38 Other ­scholars, in turn, have expressed more scepticism with regard to the empowering effects of care in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, pointing to 35  See Annemieke van Drenth and Francisca de Haan, The Rise of Caring Power: Elizabeth Fry and Josephine Butler in Britain and the Netherlands (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 1999), 11. 36  See Kara Dixon Vuic, “Wartime Nursing and Power,” in Patricia d’Antonio et al., eds., Routledge Handbook on the Global History of Nursing (London and New York: Routledge, 2015), 22–34, here 27; Rebecca Gill, Calculating Compassion: Humanity and Relief in War, Britain 1870–1914 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2013), 168–196. 37  Van Drenth and de Haan, The Rise, 11. While, in Europe, nursing became quickly associated with women, in the Islamic world it long remained a male domain, which is why Egyptian feminists, for example, sought the opening of this profession to women. See Margot Badran, Feminists, Islam and Nation: Gender and the Making of Modern Egypt (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995), 181. 38  For the German context, see Edith Saurer and Margarete Grandner, Geschlecht, Religion und Engagement: Die jüdischen Frauenbewegungen im deutschsprachigen Raum (Wien: Böhlau, 2005); for the Middle East and North Africa in general, see Guity Nashat and Judith E.  Tucker, Women in the Middle East and North Africa: Restoring Women to History (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1998); for the quite well studied case of Egypt, see Beth Baron, “Women’s Voluntary Social Welfare Organizations in Egypt,” in Inger Marie Okkenhaug and Ingvild Flaskerud, eds., Gender, Religion and Change in the Middle East: Two Hundred Years of History (Oxford: Berg Publishers, 2005), 85–102; Nancy Gallagher, Egypt’s Other Wars: Epidemics and the Politics of Public Health (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1990).

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the fact that activities such as war nursing potentially fuelled not only progressive but mostly conservative ideas of gender.39 This could even lead to the representation of female humanitarian engagement as occurring at a great distance from combat, as Rebecca Gill has shown for the feminization of British aid work during the First World War: “Fund raising, recruitment and fictional images styled the Red Cross as the feminine counterpoint to battle-scarred masculinity.”40 Histories of care thus point to a highly fruitful point of contact between well-established topics in gender history and the history of humanitarianism, which Michael Barnett has characterized as “nothing less than a revolution in the ethics of care”.41 At the same time, they immediately raise the important and more general question of gendered implications of concepts such as care or humanitarianism since the nineteenth century. If there emerged a strong belief in some sort of natural and thus powerful link between Western notions of women, their nurturing qualities and (voluntary) care work since the nineteenth century, we may reasonably ask whether a similar link was being established in imagined connections between men and humanitarianism, understood as the delocalized, non-­ domestic, internationalized and politicized version of a commitment to others’ well-being. Research on the relationship between women and care is also relevant for the study of humanitarianism in the particular situation of war. This brings us to the second field of gender studies and history that we would like to introduce, related to the gendered dimensions of military conflicts. Recently, scholars—predominantly social scientists—have systematically introduced women to the study of war and violent conflict, focusing particularly on how girls and women were and are affected.42 On the one 39  See Dixon Vuic, “Wartime Nursing”; Anne Summers, Angels and Citizens: British Women as Military Nurses, 1854–1914 (London and New York: Routledge, 1988); Annett Büttner, “Geschlechterhierarchien in der konfessionellen Kriegskrankenpflege des 19. Jahrhunderts,” in Wolfgang U.  Eckart and Philipp Osten, eds., Schlachtenschrecken  – Konventionen: Das Rote Kreuz und die Erfindung der Menschlichkeit im Kriege (Freiburg: Centaurus Verlag & Media UG, 2011), 107–126; Kara Dixon Vuic, Officer, Nurse, Woman: The Army Nurse Corps in the Vietnam War (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010). 40  Gill, Calculating Compassion, 15. 41  Barnett, A History of Humanitarianism, 18. 42  See for instance Joyce P.  Kaufman and Kristen P.  Williams, Women and War: Gender Identity and Activism in Times of Conflict (Sterling, VA: Kumarian Press, 2010); Laura Sjoberg, Gendering Global Conflict: Toward a Feminist Theory of War (New York: Columbia

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hand, historians of women and gender have inquired into the ways in which gender functioned as an ordering principle in modern warfare, examining whether and how wars altered existing gender relations and fuelled the reconfiguration of cultural constructions of masculinity and femininity.43 A much discussed case in this context is the First World War, in which women were not only active close to the front lines as nurses, doctors and military assistants but also committed themselves to total war and made substantial contributions to the war economies in what was then called the “home front”. Yet, while the impact of both World Wars on the political aspects of gender relations constitutes a much-debated topic, scholarship now emphasizes that, in contrast to the temporary advances and expanded social roles for women in the war-time societies, the long-­ term impact of war on gender relations was instead conservative.44 On the other hand, and even more important for this collection, historians and social scientists have addressed the gendered uses and experiences of violence and thereby established rape and sexual violence as important topics in research on war, conflict and military occupation in the twentieth century.45 Studies on both World Wars as well as on a range of other wars and atrocities (such as the Armenian genocide, the Bangladesh War or the Yugoslav Wars) have not only highlighted the extent to which sexual violence constituted an integral part of war but also analysed how victims, whose bodies often became (and remained) associated with the University Press, 2013); Sandra Ponzanesi, ed., Gender, Globalization and Violence: Postcolonial Conflict Zones (London and New  York: Routledge, 2014). In 2001, the International Committee of the Red Cross also presented its first study dedicated to the specific roles and experiences of women during and after war and armed conflict. See Charlotte Lindsey, Women Facing War: ICRC Study on the Impact of Armed Conflict on Women (Geneva: ICRC, 2001). 43  See, for instance, Karen Hagemann and Stefanie Schüler-Springorum, eds., Home/Front: The Military, War and Gender in Twentieth-Century Germany (Oxford and New York: Berg Publishers, 2002). For a comprehensive discussion of recent scholarship of gender in wars and post-war reconstruction, see Canning, Gender History, 41–59; for a general overview, see Irène Herrman and Daniel Palmieri, “Between Amazons and Sabines: A historical Approach to Women and War,” International Review of the Red Cross 92, no. 877 (2010), 19–30. 44  For an overview, see Christa Hämmerle et  al., “Introduction: Women’s and Gender History of the First World War: Topics, Concepts, Perspectives,” in Christa Hämmerle et al., eds., Gender and the First World War (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), 1–15. 45  See ibid., 7–9; Jean H. Quataert and Leigh A. Wheeler, eds., Gender, War, and Sexuality: Convergences of Past and Present, Special Issue of Journal of Women’s History 26, no. 3 (2014).

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enemy, were treated and commemorated by post-war communities and propaganda and entered national memories.46 Anthropological studies have also explored the impact of Western humanitarian interventions in countries such as Afghanistan on the bodies of women (and men) as sites of resistance.47 Currently, a European research network is analysing the experiences of children born in war in various conflict and post-conflict situations throughout the twentieth century.48 In sum, scholars and activists inspired by feminist theory have maintained that the wide-ranging influence of patterns in gender relations and of social and cultural constructions of masculinity and femininity mean that even seemingly gender-­ neutral notions (such as, for instance, “victimhood” or “poverty”) have to be understood situationally and in the light of a gendered analysis.49 This approach necessarily demands also looking at the ways in which gender intersected with other markers of human difference such as ethnicity, race, class or age. In this sense, postcolonial feminist studies caution against the “gender essentialism” that can inform Western humanitarian initiatives in the so-called Global South, expressed for example through a “violence against women”-discourse that insufficiently accounts for the diverse gender roles and norms in different cultural and social settings.50 46  See for instance Nicoletta F.  Gullace, “Sexual Violence and Family Honor: British Propaganda and International Law during the First World War,” The American Historical Review 102, no. 3 (1997), 714–747; Insa Eschebach and Regina Mühlhäuser, eds., Krieg und Geschlecht: Sexuelle Gewalt im Krieg und Sex-Zwangsarbeit in NS-Konzentrationslagern (Berlin: Metropol Verlag, 2008); David Raub Snyder, Sex Crimes Under the Wehrmacht (Lincoln: Nebraska University Press, 2007); Dagmar Herzog, ed., Brutality and Desire: War and Sexuality in Europe’s Twentieth Century (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009); Alexandra Stiglmayer, Mass Rape: The War Against Women in Bosnia Herzegovina (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1994); Nayanika Mookherjee, The Spectral Wound: Sexual Violence, Public Memories, and the Bangladesh War of 1971 (Durham: Duke University Press, 2015). 47  See for example Julie Billaud, Kabul Carnival: Gender Politics in Postwar Afghanistan (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015). 48  See the H2020 Marie Curie Innovative Training Network (ITN) Children Born of War (CHIBOW), https://www.chibow.org/ (last accessed 28.11.2018). 49  Some of these discussions take the tension between the universal notion of humanity and the particularities of gender-specific experiences as a starting point. See for instance Miriam Ticktin, “The Gendered Human of Humanitarianism: Medicalising and Politicising Sexual Violence,” Gender & History 23, no. 2 (2011), 250–265; Joanna Bourke, What it Means to be Human: Reflections from 1791 to the Present (London: Virago, 2011). 50  Ratna Kapur, Erotic Justice: Law and the New Politics of Postcolonialism (London and New York: Routledge, 2004), 106.

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This volume takes the above-mentioned fields of research as valuable starting points and contends that women’s and gender history and the historical study of humanitarianism have much to offer each other. By introducing gender as a relational category of research, we aim to go beyond simply promoting the inclusion of women as aid workers and beneficiaries to the story, and we seek to address the workings of gender in humanitarian contexts more generally. This, first, involves avoiding a gender-­blind analysis of historical constellations of humanitarian crises and action by systematically addressing the meaning of gendered attributions and the differentiation of humanitarian activists and beneficiaries into men and women. Second, however, it also means critically scrutinizing key notions, concepts and tropes in the history of humanitarianism that are often treated by scholars as gender-neutral categories, such as, to name but a few examples, humanity, civilization, modernity, vulnerability, innocence, mobility, need, virility/strength, victimhood, relief or humanitarian professionalism. By questioning the gendered implications of these notions and their usage in concrete historical situations, we analyse the various ways in which constructions, norms and ideologies of gender affected humanitarian practices, interactions, ideas, narratives and bodies.

Systematizing the Intersections Between Gender and Twentieth-Century Humanitarianism The chapters in this volume present a variety of case studies from different historical, political, social, cultural and geographic contexts. What they all share is an intense interest in how gender worked in twentieth-century humanitarian contexts on various levels. They, first, ask how specific humanitarian crises affected men and women (of certain ages, classes, races and religions) and, thus, inquire into the gender-specific aspects of the humanitarian situation or encounter examined in each chapter. Special attention is thereby given to differences between Western and non-Western contexts and to the impact of gender in transnational encounters, for example in (post)colonial situations, transnational organizations or missionary contexts. The chapters, second, explore the ways in which gender relations were challenged, confirmed or redefined through humanitarian aid and discuss the links between gendered practices and representations in humanitarian work. Third, focusing on individuals and groups, the chapters ask how ideas and ideologies of gender affected humanitarian

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motivations, careers and biographies on the one hand and the strategies used by beneficiaries of humanitarian aid on the other. Fourth, the contributions in this volume discuss when and how gendered constructions of bodies, need, vulnerability, violence and agency were referenced to explain, refuse or legitimize humanitarian aid. Arranged in three conceptually framed sections, they thus systematically discuss how social and cultural constructions of masculinity and femininity, the politics of gender and humanitarianism, and the power of gendered representation played out in twentieth-century humanitarianism. Masculinities and Femininities in Humanitarian Discourse and Practice The first conceptual section of this volume analyses cultural constructions and practices of gender that were present in specific humanitarian contexts. The chapters make clear that humanitarian work was affected by long-term gendered narratives and tropes, among which colonial masculinities, missionary femininities and their intersections with non-Western gender models played particularly prominent roles. As chapter 2 by Bertrand Taithe on leading Western humanitarians from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries shows, powerful ideas of humanitarian masculinity can be identified that extend back into the colonial era. These men represented themselves as pioneers, explorers and adventurers, often in exclusively all-male surroundings with many parallels to the military sphere. This has led, Taithe argues, to the emergence of a “toxic masculinity” that has encouraged aggressive male attitudes and sexual abuse in humanitarian contexts, whether towards female or male co-­ workers or beneficiaries.51 In contrast, early twentieth-century humanitarian femininity was constructed around the tropes of care and motherhood. As chapter  3 by Inger Marie Okkenhaug on the refugee work of Scandinavian women missionaries in inter-war Aleppo and chapter  4 by Francesca Piana on female American doctors in Greece illuminate, humanitarian femininity developed in close relation to missionary discourse. 51  As Alan Lester and Fae Dussart have shown, different ideas of humanitarian masculinity in British colonial contexts in the nineteenth century were debated: while humanitarians claimed that male care should include both the family and the indigenous people, settler men wanted to restrict it to their own family. See Alan Lester and Fae Dussart, “Masculinity, ‘Race’, and Family in the Colonies: Protecting Aborigines in the Early Nineteenth Century,” Gender, Place & Culture 16, no. 1 (2009), 63–75.

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Christianity functioned as an important source of inspiration, driving women to engage actively in transnational humanitarian contexts. Scandinavian women missionaries, as Okkenhaug shows, wanted to react to the suffering of refugee women and children in the aftermath of the Armenian genocide, and they set up a mission that combined missionary work and humanitarian relief. Yet, as Okkenhaug shows, religion was both a motor of and an obstacle to female engagement. It was the major reason why female Scandinavian missionaries wanted to provide relief for victims of the Armenian genocide, and missionary societies recognized that there were exclusively female spaces in  local societies abroad to which only female missionaries would have access. However, Scandinavian Christian women had only limited power in transnational aid or missionary organizations and therefore founded their own, female-headed organizations to undertake humanitarian action abroad. The same applied to the women doctors of the American Women’s Hospitals (AWH) studied by Francesca Piana: as she points out, American women doctors, striving for professional recognition and political participation, aimed at actively contributing to the American war effort. To maintain their independence, they founded an exclusively female organization in 1917. After supporting American troops in France, the AWH expanded its activities to Greece, where, as Piana argues, its workers adopted imperialist attitudes and logics. Despite the many differences in the constructions of femininity and masculinity in the three Western contexts mentioned above, there were overlapping elements in the construction of non-Western men and women. Ideas of gender, class and race intersected when Western male and female humanitarian actors asserted a superior level of civilization to that of their beneficiaries. For early British humanitarians, imperial Britishness and gentlemanly behaviour became defining features of humanitarian masculinity, which they, in turn, used as a marker to distinguish themselves from other men and women from the lower classes in Britain and the colonies. All three chapters repeatedly reference stereotypical representations of “oriental” masculinity and femininity, depicting men as violent and barbarous and women as their helpless victims. Yet, there were nuances and tensions. First, Scandinavian female missionaries also included Turkish women in the group of perpetrators since they held Armenian girls and women in Turkish households.52 Second, boundaries between humanitarians and beneficiaries of aid could also become blurred, because, as Taithe  See the chapters by Inger Marie Okkenhaug and Nazan Maksudyan in this volume.

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makes clear, sexual desire and intimate relationships (hetero- and homosexual) were also part of humanitarian encounters. And it was precisely in the encounter with beneficiaries on the ground that the self-­representations of Western humanitarians, whether male or female, could be questioned and revealed their latent tensions. Piana argues that female American doctors, who were fighting for their own professional and social independence, tended to stress ideas of traditional motherhood for the Greek women they encountered. Similarly, Scandinavian female missionaries— while underlining their admiration for Armenian women as survivors of the genocide—also maintained the aim of evangelization. The narratives and tropes of masculinity and femininity became particularly apparent or were even reinvigorated in states of emergency, when social norms and rules were weakened in a context of extreme violence. As Okkenhaug shows, Armenian patriarchs defended their ideal of a patriarchal society even during and after the genocide and in the refugee camps. And the female Scandinavian missionaries, although focusing their attention on the Armenian women, often did not give them a voice in their writings. In addition, Taithe points to the question of emergency situations when humanitarianism mixed with sexual desire and acts, as well as with boredom, alcohol and a male majority in the humanitarian group, situations that could lead to aggressive behaviour. Thus, masculinities and femininities in humanitarianism were linked to cultural constructions as well as to structural conditions of humanitarian practice in the specific (hierarchical) relations and interactions between human beings as men and women. While this to some extent reinforced hierarchies between men and women, it also opened up opportunities for emancipatory endeavours and social mobility as well as the blurring of heterosexual binaries. As Okkenhaug reveals, the balance between men and women changed after the genocide, and many newly female-headed households emerged. Another example for new opportunities were the Armenian Bible Women who experienced new forms of femininity that possessed a public social and religious role that was more usually reserved to men. In the case of the American Women’s Hospital in Greece, investigated by Piana, the female American doctors were able to act as medical professionals in Greece because of the emergency situation and acute need for personnel. The Greek women and men, although seen by the American female doctors as having little agency, constituted an important base of support in terms of personnel and linguistic knowledge.

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Gender and the Politics of Humanitarianism The second conceptual section addresses the political context of twentieth-­ century humanitarian discourse and practice from a gender perspective. Here, historical attempts at nation-building in periods of crises and amid modernizing efforts in the framework of “development” move into focus. According to our understanding, humanitarian activities developed in the twentieth century as a highly politicized field that not only involved or affected humans as embodied subjects (and thus as men or women) but also impacted (or claimed to impact) gender relations in multiple ways in the societies involved, particularly those that were in a state of crisis. One much discussed case for the deliberate use of a feminist rhetoric of women’s liberation in order to legitimize military intervention is the United States’ wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Feminist scholarship has particularly pointed to the ways in which the Bush administration put forward what Iris Young has called a “gendered logic of protection” in order to legitimize war.53 This logic, according to Young, produced an understanding of the war according to which it was up to the US military to save Afghan women from Muslim men. The focus on women, Young and others conclude, aided the US government to package the intervention in Afghanistan “as a humanitarian war”, while still operating within a gendered structure of superiority and subordination.54 Recognizing the importance of both the politics of humanitarianism and the politics of gender, this section of the volume scrutinizes the complex ways in which both intersected. In so doing, we stress the need to apply a gender-sensitive analysis to the history of humanitarian politics and practice: only then will we be able to grasp the basic assumptions, meanings, logics and ideologies that enabled activists to understand, explain and communicate humanitarian crises, need and rationales for action. The chapters in this section thus provide insight into how states, (political) groups, organizations and individual activists have made use of or even exploited a gendered interpretation of human suffering and assistance in order to further specific political goals.

53  See Iris M.  Young, “The Logic of Masculine Protection: Reflection on the Current Security State,” in Michaele L. Ferguson and Lori Jo Marso, eds., W Stands for Women: How the George W. Bush Presidency Shaped a New Politics of Gender (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2007), 115–139, here 117. 54  See ibid., 133 and 135. Moreover, see Ann J. Tickner, “Feminist Perspectives on 9/11,” International Studies Perspectives 3, no. 4 (2002), 333–350.

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The humanitarian activities examined in this section were related to broader attempts at nation-building and/or state formation during and after periods of severe political and social crisis. In the eyes of the aid organizations studied, these crises not only seemed to create urgent humanitarian needs but also provided promising starting points for advancing political projects by (re-)defining the gendered parameters of belonging. This was, for instance, the case in Istanbul after the First World War, where aid workers responded to the violent Ottoman politics of enforced Turkification after the genocide by concentrating their efforts on rescuing Armenian women and children with the goal of saving them not only as individuals but also as members (or bodies) of the Armenian nation. This biopolitics of rescue thus emerged as both the flip side of the gendered Turkish genocidal politics and as the desire to rebuild the community and the nation. As Nazan Maksudyan shows in chapter  5 on relief work in Istanbul during the early 1920s, Armenian, Turkish and international groups almost competed with one another over caring for orphaned children, whom they saw as a key resource for post-genocidal rehabilitation and the (re)production of either the Turkish (Muslim) or the Armenian (Christian) nation.55 Hence, child welfare in post-war Istanbul was not only guided by the rationale of providing relief and shelter to children who had survived the horrors of the massacres but also by demographic concerns and each side’s desire to assimilate the rescued children into its own community. Armenian women and children thus came to function as, in a sense, community bodies that were considered important resources to social, political and religious resilience and reproduction. Interestingly, a similar biopolitics of rescue can be traced in late colonial and early postcolonial India. As we learn from chapter 6 by Maria Framke on two aid 55  See the contribution by Nazan Maksudyan in this volume. The political dimension of (gendered) child welfare since the nineteenth century and its close relationship to nationbuilding has been emphasized by much recent scholarship. For instance, see Edward R.  Dickens, The Politics of German Child Welfare from the Empire to the Federal Republic (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1996); Lydia Murdoch, Imagined Orphans: Poor Families, Child Welfare, and Contested Citizenship in London (New Brunswick et al.: Rutgers University Press, 2006); Tara Zahra, The Lost Children: Reconstructing Europe’s Families after World War II (Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press, 2011); Ellen Boucher, Empire’s Children: Child Emigration, Welfare, and the Decline of the British World, 1869–1967 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2016). For a specific focus on the gender bias in relief work and rehabilitation strategies, see Tara Zahra, “The Psychological Marshall Plan: Displacement, Gender, and Human Rights after World War II,” Central European History 44 (2011), 37–62.

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organizations in mid-twentieth-century India, the outbreaks of violence between Hindus, Sikhs and Muslims that accompanied the partition in 1947 not only entailed gender-based violence and the massive abduction of women from the “other” communities but also inspired systematic efforts towards their rescue as demonstrations of community (or national) honour. Women, as Framke shows, had become a key concern for nationalist organizations during this violent phase of decolonization, which saw the emergence of a strong masculinist logic of the protection of women. This logic centred on a powerful notion of community honour that was represented by the female body and defended (or, alternatively, restored) by men. Other examples from twentieth-century historical contexts show that gender-based violence (i.e. mass rape) during times of war could also lead to social stigma as well as the long-term disintegration, exclusion and rejection of victims on the part of families, communities and nations. This was, for instance, the case during and after the Bangladesh War of 1971, which also saw the exclusion of these women’s war experiences from national commemorations, a step that in the end forestalled their integration into the national community.56 For Hindu nationalist organizations in mid-twentieth-century India, women obviously played an important role. While the relief activities of the All India Hindu Mahasabha, the political party of Hindu nationalists, exclusively engaged in community-oriented aid to fellow Hindus, it was particularly concerned with rescuing women, who were seen to embody the honour of the family and the community and who often become the primary targets of political and community violence. This, in turn, indicates that, in mid-twentieth-century India, both the (violent) politics of decolonization and the humanitarian responses to them had an underlying gender dimension, for both related to values that were assigned to women and their reproductive bodies according to a nationalist logic. At the same time, however, Framke shows that other organizations engaged in a very different kind of aid work that was not community-bound but constructed with reference to a gendered notion of women as healers and bringers of peace. Contrary to the Hindu Mahasabha, the all-female All India Women’s Conference (AIWC) provided relief to the members of all communities and, moreover, connected relief and peace work to emancipatory claims and activities. The essentially different ways in which two private aid organizations responded to community violence in India during the  See Mookherjee, The Spectral Wound.

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partition show how deeply ideas and ideologies of gender (and, with them, firm beliefs about the “nature” of men and women and their specific function in and value to the community) shaped both the interpretation of crisis and the type of action that specific humanitarian organizations generated. Framke’s chapter suggests that the very question of whether or not women and gendered forms of victimization became a focus of activists was related to the ideological assumption and larger political aims of aid organizations. Without a doubt, specific ideas (and ideologies) of gender, visions of gender relations, gender-specific interpretations of crisis and expectations towards beneficiaries (as men or women) often lay at the very heart of humanitarian actors’ efforts. Gender was not only crucial to the ways in which humanitarians understood and framed their activities but also guided their very conception of human need and the strategies they pursued. As the chapters by Maksudyan and Framke show, women and their gendered bodies were most likely to emerge as a theme when the social order and social relations were weakened due to political crisis and when the survival of the respective community was (or was perceived to be) at risk. However, attempts at nation-building and campaigns for national progress through development also provided socio-political frameworks that facilitated the foundation of the first voluntary women’s organizations in Saudi Arabia in the 1960s. These associations engaged in the overlapping fields of charity, humanitarian action and development that the Arabic term insāniyya denotes as “humanitarian work”, and they emerged under the specific circumstances created by the gendered politics of modernization in Saudi Arabia.57 Royal politics, inspired by economic developments and the new wealth created by the oil boom, radically redefined what it meant to be a man or a woman in Saudi society from the 1950s. For Saudi women, the new program of social development, on the one hand, had dramatic implications, for the new wealth devalued their economic contributions and the government increasingly confined their roles to the household. Women (just like non-Saudi residents) were not only excluded from full political citizenship but, in some cases (e.g. when they lacked a male guardian or were considered immigrants), also from social citizenship, for instance when it came to access to state welfare. On the other hand, however, Saudi women also used the new state program of social development and its gendered exclusionism to argue for a specific female contribution to national progress through women’s active  See the chapter by Nora Derbal in this volume.

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participation in education and welfare. As Nora Derbal argues in chapter 7 on the beginnings of women’s welfare organizations in Saudi Arabia, women activists, rather than relating their voluntary engagement to a long-­standing, gendered Islamic tradition of charity, promoted welfare work precisely in the new terms of national development and progress. By studying these associations closely, Derbal thus detects a certain emancipatory potential in women’s welfare work: while the activists affirmed the official discourse on gender and gender roles—which assigned women to the “private” spaces of the home and to roles as mothers and housewives— their engagement in welfare points to a remarkable scope for “public” action. According to Derbal, the aid work of women’s organizations went beyond governmental social policy, for it was aimed precisely at those groups that were excluded from (and denied access to) state welfare programs, such as non-Saudi citizens or Saudi women without legal guardians. Hence, in the case of Saudi Arabia, the gendered and racialized state politics of exclusion ultimately created both the need and the space for humanitarian action. In the end, it was the ambivalent status of Saudi women as citizens—simultaneously privileged (in terms of their economic and political status as Saudis) and discriminated against (due to their gender)—that facilitated their voluntary work. At the same time, the restrictive citizenship policy and exclusionary social politics of the kingdom produced social groups that were dependent on voluntary aid. Finally, in addressing the links between humanitarianism and gender in political discourse and practice it becomes clear that both notions became central to political projects that were associated by contemporaries with the notion of modernity. This was just as much the case in the post-­ genocide rehabilitation in a Turkish state that saw itself as modern and that strove for national homogeneity as it was in the Saudi efforts at national development and progress since the 1950s. However, notions of modernity and programmes of modernization also played roles in political discourse in mid-twentieth-century India, where different organizations and political groups produced divergent visions of what a modern, postcolonial nation should look like, who belonged to it and who was to benefit from community services. In the context of this volume it is important to note that all these understandings of modernity and their uses were deeply gendered. The appeal to modernize certainly required the participation of both men and women (and partly involved the rejection of “traditional” ways of organizing gender relations); however, the nature of their respective forms of participation diverged. Thus, while the humanitarian

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enterprises indeed assigned multiple roles to women and partly enabled their active participation, they also contributed to the naturalization of gender difference and to the introduction of new hierarchies between men and women within a national(ist) framework. Aiming to bring women into the “public sphere” of the state as mothers, care workers, activists or carriers of community values, humanitarian organizations themselves became—if sometimes unwillingly—political actors. While the notion of modernity as it developed in twentieth-century Western thought became increasingly connected to the idea of gender equality, it is important to take a closer look at the specific definitions and uses of the terms “modernity” and the “modern”, for, as political scientist Anne Phillips has argued, “the ways in which these terms are employed are always themselves political rather than simply definitional”.58 The Power of Gendered Representations The third conceptual section of this volume considers the multiple implications of gendered representations in twentieth-century humanitarianism and the communicative contexts it created. The chapters focus on the hidden ideas, assumptions and political framings underlying certain ways of talking about and campaigning on issues such as health crises, international child welfare, violence and child combatants. They argue that both the representation of the individuals and groups at the centre of humanitarian crises as well as the humanitarian responses to these crises were often gendered, even if they appeared in seemingly neutral or even ostensibly objective forms, such as statistics or activity reports by expert bodies. The chapters show that the power of representations sometimes had a different impact on women, men, boys and girls, for they had real effects on the humanitarian responses and the actual treatment of beneficiaries, some of which facilitated either their empowerment or disempowerment. The case studies on (international) humanitarian campaigning from early twentieth-century Egypt, from mid-twentieth-century Europe and South East Asia as well as from late twentieth-century Central Africa reveal how gendered representations were crucial to the ways in which humanitarians made sense of health crises, child suffering and violent conflicts, and how they intersected with representations of class, race and age. 58  Anne Phillips, “Gender Equality: Core Principle of Modern Society?,” Journal of the British Academy 6 (2018), 169–185, here 175.

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The contribution (chapter 8) by Beth Baron starts from the fact that child mortality was very high in Egypt around 1900. Pointing to the production of statistics on children’s health in response, she shows that British colonial officials, Egyptian doctors and feminists as well as Western missionaries all agreed upon the central role of women as mothers in this crisis, though with varying degrees of appreciation. These actors responded differently to what all perceived to be alarming death rates: while British colonial officials reproached Egyptian mothers for being backward and lethargic, Egyptian doctors and women’s groups stressed the lack of female education and the deficient medico-social conditions in the country. Western missionaries—among them many women—agreed with this analysis, yet they also argued for the importance of spiritual conversion to bring about an improvement in the situation. This firm link established by the missionaries between physical and spiritual health marks a frequent feature that can be observed at several instances of early faith-based humanitarian activism.59 Gendered representations also had multiple functions in the provision of aid for orphaned and destitute boys and girls as developed, promoted and internationalized by SOS Children’s Villages, an international non-­ governmental aid and development organization established in Tyrol, Austria, in 1949. As chapter 9 by Katharina Stornig and Katharina Wolf shows, post-war Christian conservative notions of family and gendered parenthood were not only constitutive to the definition of infantile need as applied by the SOS Children’s Villages (i.e. as lacking “proper” mothers and/or fathers and thus parental care) but also lay at the very heart of the aid programme that was developed. This specific, gendered notion of parenthood functioned as a central trope in the legitimization, promotion and explanation of aid for orphaned or destitute children between 1949 and the late 1970s. Notwithstanding the organization’s cross-cultural expansion and activity in areas marked by the tensions created by decolonization and Cold War politics, motherhood and fatherhood were promoted as self-evident, simple, naturalized and thus universal, apolitical and non-ideological concepts. As Stornig and Wolf argue, they also came to 59  See the chapter by Inger Marie Okkenhaug in this volume. For the tensions in missionary approaches to mother and child health care, see Katharina Stornig, “Cultural Conceptions of Purity and Pollution: Childbirth and Midwifery in a New Guinean Catholic Mission, 1896–c. 1930,” in Judith Becker, ed., European Missions in Contact Zones: Transformation through Interaction in a (Post-)Colonial World (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2015), 107–123.

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function as stable and powerful arguments in communications with donors, supporting groups and even political decision-makers. Similarly, chapter 10 by Stacey Hynd on international rehabilitation programmes for child soldiers shows that representations of the postcolonial wars in sub-­ Saharan Africa were distinctly gendered in many regards. Hynd points out that, from the 1950s to the 1990s, both Western NGOs and African communities failed to recognize the active participation and specific roles of African girls in armed conflicts. These girls, she holds, had become invisible to local and international observers due to their age, gender and race. Only the confluence of human rights, child rights and feminist activism around 2000 created awareness about the roles of African girls in armed conflicts. And yet, Western NGOs again represented these girls in a gendered way by stressing their role as victims. Represented as ideal victims, African girls turned out to be more effective in convincing international donors to contribute to aid efforts. The power of gendered representations also had practical effects, for they could significantly influence the type of humanitarian response that resulted. At times, depictions and assessments of the particular roles of men, women, boys and girls in crisis and conflict turned out to be informed by stereotypes and therefore failed to capture the needs of individuals and social groups. In the three case studies presented  in this volume, social conditions of inequality were only partly recognized by humanitarian actors as a major reason for the suffering of women and children; these actors, in turn, also developed strategies based on cultural and racial stereotypes. For instance, as indicated above, British colonial administrators in early twentieth-century Egypt blamed mothers for the deaths of their own infants while they maintained an ambivalent attitude towards the need for improving women’s and children’s health care. Generally speaking, they tended to encourage private rather than public initiatives. In the early twentieth century, public organizations promoted the erection of clinics and dispensaries across Egypt. There, women (including illiterate women) could go with their children in order to get medical and treatment and advice. In addition, private health initiatives instructed mothers and Egyptian midwives on the feeding and nutrition of infants. As Beth Baron shows, these private dispensaries, which were often run by (missionary) women, were indeed very well attended, and, while it is difficult to establish the extent to which information lowered death rates, it is clear that many mothers made use of it, seeking out medical treatment and trying to enhance their children’s survival chances.

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Stereotypical representations and normative understandings of both the specific needs and capacities of men, women, boys and girls not only shaped the work of SOS Children’s Villages but even served as a base for the pedagogic programs it developed. Taking the family and particularly maternal love as a resource of rehabilitation and as a biological constant, the organization claimed to act in accordance with the laws of God and nature by launching and promoting four “simple” pedagogical principles that defined the needy child’s relations to the organization and society at large: the mother, brotherliness (“Geschwisterlichkeit”), the house and the village.60 The simplicity, authenticity and universality that were claimed for these principles obviously appealed to many people in Austria, Germany and other European countries, who donated to the organization and facilitated its expansion beyond Europe, ultimately turning SOS Children’s Villages into one of the world’s largest organizations focusing on children without parental care. On the other hand, however, Katharina Stornig and Katharina Wolf also point to the many problems, ambivalences and critiques from various sides which emerged when these principles—which, despite all claims to universality, were derived from a particular Catholic culture and society in post-war rural areas—were put to use in non-­ Western cultural and political contexts. In Central Africa, the humanitarian responses to the involvement of children in violent conflicts were gendered as well. Since the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, Western NGOs have come to consider girls increasingly important as catalysts for social change and have thus given them growing attention. Yet, at the same time, the NGOs tended to deprive African girls of agency, by seeing them predominantly as victims of sexual assault and focusing almost exclusively on the sexual dimension of their traumas. As Stacey Hynd shows, boy soldiers received considerably more attention for their traumatic experience of the violence of the war itself. This, in turn, enabled former boy soldiers to reintegrate into the communities more easily than their female counterparts, who at times remained alien to communities that had difficulties accepting the girls’ newly achieved agency and self-reliance during the war. In the gendered process of demobilization and rehabilitation, the training provided by NGOs also focused more on practical training for boys and emotional training for girls, leaving the latter still dependant on others for their 60  Hermann Gmeiner, Das SOS-Kinderdorf: Eine moderne Erziehungsstätte für verlassene Kinder (Innsbruck and Wien: SOS-Kinderdorf-Verlag, 1954), 25–53.

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livelihood. As a consequence, Hynd argues, girls were moralized rather than securitized. Taken together, the case studies in this section reveal that humanitarianism could provide a space for both empowerment and disempowerment. They show that the power of representation has to be taken into account by scholars inquiring into the ways in which gender-specific need and suffering was addressed by humanitarian activism. Gendered representations were so powerful because they were often derived from religious or naturalised assumptions and explained “what went without saying” about distant communities and relations. They matter to historical scholarship crucially, however, for gendered representations and related interpretations of humanitarian need and activity not only made their ways into promotional material and communication with donors but also informed humanitarian politics, works, advocacy and ways of understanding need and crises. As the chapters suggest, in several cases, gendered assumptions run the risk to conceal or fail to address structural conditions of inequality producing issues such as poverty, lack of care and welfare, medical infrastructure and violence. The responses and their failures themselves triggered new responses, not only by the beneficiaries but also by the humanitarian organizations and the respective state authorities involved, and led to both the empowerment and disempowerment of the individuals and groups concerned. First of all, women and girls were never the passive victims that they were represented as by certain groups, whether the women’s own communities, state representatives or humanitarian organizations. On the contrary, they emerge in these chapters as social agents who also refuted the representations associated with them. African girls served as soldiers just as boys did and made use of the offers of humanitarian organizations to rehabilitate their lives and the ones of their children, sometimes going beyond the intended aims of the programmes they joined. In a similar manner, lowerclass Egyptian women made use of the dispensaries established by private organizations, often by undertaking great individual (physical and psychological) efforts in order to ensure the well-being of their children. Finally, the chapters demonstrate that, at times, even gender-aware humanitarian activity led only to partial empowerment. When Western NGOs realized that former African girl soldiers had hitherto been neglected, they put more effort into their rehabilitation. Yet, these initiatives paradoxically tended to push the girls into the roles of mothers and wives, whereas they had experienced more freedom and self-­determination

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before. In the SOS Children’s Villages, notions of female emancipation and professionalization were in the end only somewhat effective, for they were embedded in social structures of inequality and subjected women or so-called mothers to male authority. In Egypt, the instruction of poor mothers in health issues was indeed welcome but could not replace clean water, which turned out to be the most important element in improving the local children’s chances of survival. Beth Baron, moreover, shows that the introduction of animal milk—which was intended to be given to babies once their mothers had stopped breastfeeding and to avoid the children eating food not appropriate to their age—also made the women dependent on foreign aid. In effect, this measure had the potential to produce new health problems. Ultimately social and humanitarian activism in early twentieth-century Egypt also had ambivalent effects on women aid workers. While they were able to acquire new agency and gain professional experience outside the family, the mainstream representation of their activities assigned them to the so-called private sphere, for many leaders aimed to prevent women’s new activism from calling established and public gender structures into question.61

Towards New Gender Histories of Humanitarianism If we, by way of conclusion, were to extend this call for a systematic reflection on gendered representations in humanitarian contexts to the poster discussed at the beginning of this introduction, we would immediately note that a whole set of perspectives should be added to the interpretation already provided. The poster, representing American aid as a patriotic undertaking and promoting white women as an integral part of it, keeps the beneficiaries of aid—along with their complex perspectives, aims and subjectivities—out of the picture. Indeed, the model of humanitarian femininity advertised here spoke to the contemporary American cultural context without engaging with alternative constructions of gender, such as those that could be found in the social and geographical arenas in which Red Cross women acted, worked and delivered aid. Non-white women in America and beyond are likewise absent from the poster as are the long-­ term narratives and tropes that have produced and stabilized 61  For the ambivalent roles assigned to women in the Egyptian nationalist movement, see Beth Baron, Egypt as a Women: Nationalism, Gender and Politics (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005), 2–12.

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constructions of masculinity and femininity in the humanitarian field since the colonial period. We see no war, blood, violence or human suffering, nor are there any visible conflicts or doubts about the empowering mission of the female volunteer on her way to victory. Yet, if we follow the conceptual lines developed by this introduction and investigate masculinities and femininities and the politics and representations in humanitarian contexts also with regard to non-Western actors and beneficiaries, we discover not only the ambiguity of modernity as a concept, but also the ambivalence of its promise of emancipation. Furthermore, we immediately note that, while humanitarian activity could indeed open a space for female advancement and enlarge agency and political empowerment, it could also have the opposite effect and bring about (new) patterns of subordination, relations of dependency and even forms of suffering. The poster like many of its kind conceals the whole set of gendered social relations and cultural conditions that shaped many of the humanitarian encounters between Western and non-Western humanitarians and beneficiaries in the twentieth century. While viewers might sense the strategic aims and political goals that some groups and organizations attached to humanitarian activity, they neither see the limits that were often imposed on the engagement of women and men nor do they get a glimpse of the numerous, complex ambiguities inherent to a historical project that claimed universality yet often avoided reflecting on its own inherent biases and failed to genuinely promote equality. The present volume traces the gender tensions and dilemmas that have characterized the humanitarian field from its foundation in the nineteenth century up to the present day. The chapters show how humanitarianism, in various forms and in specific times and places, produced gendered representations, (re)shaped the identities of individual women and men (as well as the organizations for which they worked) and redefined social relations more broadly. Chapter 11 concludes the volume not only summarizing and systematizing its findings, but also pointing towards future directions for gender histories of humanitarianism. It particularly argues that the introduction of gender and sexuality to the study of humanitarianism opens new perspectives for future research in at least three regards: the historical study of humanitarian practice, the systematic deconstruction of gendered representations in different types of historical records and archives and the critical reflection of key terms and concepts in both humanitarian history and historiography. In order to realize this, Chap. 11

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suggests taking the human body as an analytical point of departure that allows us to question the dynamic relationship between the workings of representations and social reality. Questing this relationship seems essential, in turn, for it means learning more about the workings of power in the humanitarian enterprise and to understand, how humanitarianism—as a historically situated phenomenon—fostered or altered the socials roles of men, women, girls and boys of different background and thus intersected with the promotion of social (in)equality across time and space.

PART I

Masculinities and Femininities in Humanitarian Practice and Discourse

CHAPTER 2

Humanitarian Masculinity: Desire, Character and Heroics, 1876–2018 Bertrand Taithe

Since the mid-1980s non-governmental organisations (NGOs), whether national or international, have been using gender categories to understand situations of inequality between men and women, promote equality before the law and address the consequences of violence. Gender “mainstreaming” became a policy priority from the 1990s onwards, in particular after the UN Beijing declaration of 1995, as can be noted, for instance, in postgenocide Cambodia.1 This gendering of humanitarian work soon focused on “toxic” masculinity, which psychologists started to describe in terms of “hypermasculinity” from 1984 onwards.2 The notion of hypermasculinity, 1  Rekha Mehra and Geeta Rao Gupta, “Gender Mainstreaming: Making it Happen,” International Center for Research on Women (ICRW), (2006). 2  Hypermasculinity is defined by callous sexual attitudes, the perception of violence as manly and of danger as exciting. This framework was the basis of an index defined by Mosher and Sirkin in 1984 and revised since. Donald L.  Mosher and Mark Sirkin, “Measuring a Macho Personality Constellation,” Journal of Research in Personality 18, no. 2 (1984),

B. Taithe (*) Humanitarian and Conclift Response Institute, University of Manchester, Manchester, UK e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 E. Möller et al. (eds.), Gendering Global Humanitarianism in the Twentieth Century, Palgrave Macmillan Transnational History Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-44630-7_2

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with its excessive deployment of sexual and physical aggressiveness, was originally defined in relation to prison settings, but it was soon applied to the residents of enclosed refugee camps, to post-conflict societies in which traditional gender roles had been brutally reversed and to suddenly demobilised young soldiers. International NGOs (INGOs) started to focus specifically on the problems that such masculinity—sometimes trivialised as a mere expression of macho culture—might present for development work or emergency relief. The Brazilian INGO Promundo, founded in 1997, thus claims that their “research, programs, and advocacy efforts show that promoting healthy masculinity (or positive notions of ‘what it means to be a man’) and femininity (or ‘what is means to be a woman’) leads to improvements in men’s own lives, and in the lives of women and girls”.3 The South African NGO Sonke—a “gender justice NGO” created in 2006—takes the militant viewpoint that to prevent violence against women requires humanitarian engagement with men and boys.4 Both organisations belong to larger networks or “alliances” such as the Menengage Alliance which brings together many international development and humanitarian NGOs as well as UN agencies such as WHO. Sonke and Promundo also teamed up in 2011 to launch a campaign entitled “MenCare” in order to promote “healthier” fatherhood globally.5 This work on the part of NGOs towards gender equality and justice has been associated with a broader intellectual endeavour to “politicise” masculinity and to debunk the underlying causes of “patriarchy”.6 After nearly 40 years of concerns about the historical legacy of “patriarchy” in the societies in which humanitarians intervene, it is thus not entirely surprising that a scandal should have arisen in relation to gender politics within the context of humanitarian work. Some have even queried why it has taken quite so long for gender issues regarding humanitarians 150–163; Jay Peters et  al., “Development and Testing of a New Version of the Hypermasculinity Index,” Social Work Research 31, no. 3 (2007), 171–182. 3  https://promundoglobal.org/about/ (last accessed 17.08.2018). 4  Sonke Gender Justice, “How Do We Prevent Violence Against Women? 5 Prevention+ Case Studies Show Engaging Men and Boys is Key,” http://genderjustice.org.za/article/ how-do-we-prevent-violence-against-women-5-prevention-case-studies-show-engagingmen-and-boys-is-key/ (last accessed 17.08.2018). 5  https://men-care.org/about-mencare/ (last accessed 17.08.2018). 6  See for instance the 2007 conference in Dakar and the proceedings published in 2012: Andrea Cornwall et  al., Men and Development: Politicizing Masculinities (London: Zed Books, 2011).

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themselves to be raised more openly. This recent self-awareness that there are “masculinity problems” within humanitarian work, which took off with scandals aired in the spring of 2018, is the starting point of this chapter. The scandal of sexual abuse in humanitarian contexts, within NGOs as well as towards the “beneficiaries” of humanitarian aid, had a “historical” dimension in the sense that many of the activities reported were nearly a decade old. Beyond a sequence of unrelated incidents, however, it was the culture of humanitarian work itself that many critics have set out to denounce. In particular, they have highlighted how “toxic” masculinity has permeated the structures and culture of humanitarian work. As the recent critiques of sexual scandals have been keen to argue, the transmission of codes and forms of masculinity has been structural within NGOs—for instance through the lack of gender considerations in human resource policies or through the silencing of whistleblowers who have denounced abuses—but it is also even more broadly cultural. This chapter argues that there is a less tangible heritage of masculinity encoded through forms of literature that goes beyond the institutional history of NGOs. Masculine narratives underpin a large part of humanitarian culture, and they have played a significant role in maintaining the appeal of humanitarian work to men. This chapter seeks to push this analysis further back into history by exploring the construction of masculine humanitarian identities through humanitarian narratives such as memoirs, reports and correspondence. Already since the 1860s, masculine identities in humanitarian work have been defined through rhetorical devices and narrative tropes centred on risk-taking, on exposure to danger and even on sacrifice, which have played down more complex issues of desire and sexuality that were nevertheless always present. This cultural perspective on masculinity reveals elements of continuity in an ever-changing and highly mobile field of activity. Arguably, this continuity must be framed in relation to the specific dimensions of humanitarian work that portray it as taking place in a “time of exception”. According to the lawyer Fionnuala Ni Aolain, “particular forms of masculine behaviour tend to be unleashed during crises, specifically pathways of hegemonic masculinity that are evident in the actions of both locals and internationals”.7 Humanitarian emergencies 7  Since 2017 Ni Aolain has been appointed United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms while Countering Terrorism. On time of exception, see Fionnuala Ni Aolain, “Women, Vulnerability and Humanitarian Emergencies,” Michigan Journal of Gender and Law 18, no. 1 (2011), 1–23, here 15.

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also frame a temporality outside normative social attitudes, which might present opportunities for transgression but also the recurrence of longextant cultural tropes.8 Humanitarian men were shaping humanitarian work in their own image at its origins, even though humanitarian work was also testing the boundaries of the cultural stereotypes that they themselves established or perpetuated. Two prominent examples analysed in this chapter demonstrate this well. For the Victorian period, the tropes of “character”9 were most significantly part of the writings and posturing of early professional humanitarians such as Vincent Barrington Kennett (1844–1903). A generation later Roger Casement (1864–1916) expressed more ambiguously what gentlemanly character might stand for. In his diaries he mingled his sexual desires with his own engagement with humanitarian causes. Casement’s controversial diaries open up an intimate portrayal of a humanitarian whose private life challenged notions of Edwardian masculinity but also enable a re-examination of the role of desire in what Liisa Malkki has named the “need to help”.10 What all humanitarians of the Victorian and Edwardian period shared was their willingness to stand firm in the face of danger and to conform to contemporary notions of heroism. Arguably, this association of masculinity with risk-taking in the service of humanitarian work has become one of the most enduring legacies of the early humanitarians. Masculine mythologies of humanitarian heroics have sustained a relational cultural space which lends itself to the expression of hypermasculinity particularly “when men fail to conform to unachievable masculine imperatives”.11 As Michael Neumann argues, 8  This is a theme that has been explored in relation to wartime brutality and the theory of brutalisation inspired by George Mosse. See Antoine Prost, “Les limites de la brutalisation. Tuer sur le front occidental, 1914–1918,” Vingtième Siècle. Revue d’histoire 81, no. 1 (2004), 5–20. 9  There is a very considerable literature on character in Victorian Britain and Europe. Much of the literature builds on Stefan Collini, “The Idea of ‘Character’ in Victorian Political Thought,” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 35 (1985), 29–50. 10  Though characteristically Liisa Malkki’s work tends to be gender biased towards women. See Liisa H. Malkki, The Need to Help: The Domestic Arts of International Humanitarianism (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2015). 11  Jamie R.  Abrams, “Debunking the Myth of Universal Male Privilege,” University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform 49 (2016), 303–333, here 311. The concept of hypermasculinity is taken here as a critical concept which needs contextualising.

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humanitarian heroics remain and still encode part of humanitarian masculine behaviour.12 To return to the “problem” that humanitarians are facing with masculinity today, this chapter argues that it will therefore take considerably more than reforming human-resource policies to address what is fundamentally part of the cultural make-up and history of an entire industry.

Humanitarian Hypermasculinity? The debates on “hypermasculinity”, the exaggerated features of which are associated with sexual crime in the legal literature, drive many of the current controversies on the gendering of humanitarianism.13 Jamie R. Abrams points out the “limitations of formal equality feminist approaches alone within heavily masculinized institutions”, and he also encourages the debunking of masculinity myths—particularly those regarding the confronting of risk—in deeply gendered contexts such as the military and, arguably, in humanitarian endeavours.14 For critiques originating from legal theory, the study of masculinity highlights the profound contrast between group entitlement and power on the one hand and individual powerlessness in meeting behavioural norm expectations on the other. Of course, the definition of hypermasculinity as a deviant form of masculinity is itself a recent medico-legal pathologisation of predatory sexuality; nevertheless, it can serve as a shorthand to describe sexuality’s transgressive potential in relation to masculinity.15 The role of the myth, to pick up Abrams’s analysis again, was to define heroic masculinity as the bedrock of genuine and effective humanitarianism—and to establish an

12  See on this, Michael Neuman, “Dying for Humanitarian Ideas: Using Images and Statistics to Manufacture Humanitarian Martyrdom,” 15.02.2017, https://www.msf-crash. org/en/publications/humanitarian-actors-and-practices/dying-humanitarian-ideas-usingimages-and-statistics (last accessed 10.10.2018) and Bertrand Taithe, “Mourir pour des Idées Humanitaires: Sacrifice, Témoignage et Travail Humanitaire, 1870–1990,” in Caroline Cazanave and France Marchal-Ninosque, eds., Mourir pour des Idées (Besançon: Presses Universitaire de Franche-Comté, 2009), 239–254. 13  Meghan O’Malley, “All is not Fair in Love and War: An Exploration of the Military Masculinity Myth,” DePaul Journal of Women, Gender & Law (2015), http://via.1ibrary. depaul.edu/jwgl/vol5/iss1/4 (last accessed 10.10.2018), 3–5. 14  Abrams, “Debunking the Myth,” 308. 15  Rosemary Jaji, “Masculinity on Unstable Ground: Young Refugee Men in Nairobi, Kenya,” Journal of Refugee Studies 22, no. 1 (2009), 177–194.

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explicit cultural parallel with the military personnel with whom humanitarians constantly interacted.16 The issue of masculine behaviour within humanitarian organisations has long been the object of academic debates, but it emerged as a concern for donors, governments and the wider public only very recently. A report issued in May 2017 by the Feinstein Institute made for grim reading.17 It was based upon a groundswell of investigations into the scale and significance of sexual assaults in the humanitarian sector. The report, entitled “Stop the Sexual Assault against Humanitarian and Development Aid Workers”, built on websites dedicated to exposing sexual harassment, assault and rape—such as that maintained by the NGO Report the Abuse, led by the rape survivor Megan Norbert—as well as sustained reporting from IRIN, the “Secret Aid Worker” blog on the Guardian website and other news media of the humanitarian sector.18 The report was largely based on this secondary grey literature but also on developed case studies, and it drew from a significant sample of interviews. While devoted primarily to sexual assaults and violence by humanitarians on humanitarians, the report dwelt at length on the origins and structural deficiencies of the humanitarian workplace. It pointed out familiar issues of gender imbalance at decisional levels, opaque reporting and complaint processes, a victim-blaming culture and so on. But it also squarely addressed cultural issues around the ideal of “machismo”, “cowboy” practices, “boys will be boys” excuses and a “boys club” ethos compounded by the increasingly bunkerised lifestyle imposed by security measures in the post-9/11 humanitarian sector.19 It also highlighted that isolated humanitarians often partook in a culture of drinking and drug-­taking that favoured predators. Much of the report was shocking, yet it was also unsurprising (if, still, dispiriting). It represented the most systematic 16  Abrams, “Debunking the Myth,” 314. Abrams argues for a historical perspective which tends to see this tethering of masculinity to military service as “outdated”, a position which tends to undermine his more important contention that the tethering itself is a form of myth-making. 17  Dyan Mazurana and Phoebe Donnelly, “Stop the Sexual Assault against Humanitarian and Development Aid Workers,” May 2017, fic.tufts.edu/assets/SAAW-report_5-23.pdf (last accessed 15.06.2018). 18  https://www.thenewhumanitarian.org/opinion/2016/12/05/time-confront-sexualabuse-and-harassment-aid-sector (last accessed 28.08.2019). IRIN was a news agency devoted to the humanitarian sector; its new name is The New Humanitarian. 19  Mazurana and Donnelly, 29–30.

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expression of concerns with masculinity in the humanitarian sector to date, but its impact remained largely confined to internal debates. The public scandal that broke in 2018 had a very different resonance. In February 2018, the Times and Sunday Times ran a long sequence of articles, some of which were inspired by IRIN,20 which denounced historical abuses that had taken place in the headquarters of OXFAM and Merlin in Haiti and Liberia respectively.21 Whistleblowers echoed, once again, the tone set by the previously available reports.22 OXFAM responded by making clear that it had set up, in the 2000s, policies regarding reporting, safeguarding and even whistleblowing which were intended to weed out “inappropriate” or illegal behaviour. Immediately after this first wave of incidents, other NGOs such as the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) volunteered information on the scale of internal enquiries they had conducted concerning their staff. In one instance, two relationships—one which had led to a child who was recognised and maintained financially by his NGO father and another which had led to a marriage—were also described by the press as “inappropriate” and as grounds for humbling public apologies.23 Contrary to the initial report published by Tuft, female misbehaviour was entirely silenced. Notorious critics of humanitarian NGOs seized the opportunity to portray humanitarian work in moral terms. In the words of the former British Secretary of State for International Development, Priti Patel, humanitarian predatory behaviour allegedly encompassed routine paedophilia and sexual predation.24 In the climate of moral panic associated with the broader upsurge of indignation that was driven by the #MeToo campaign against male sexual predatory behaviour,25 NGO officials found  The Times and Sunday Times, 17.02.2018 and 18.02.2018.  OXFAM (Oxford Famine Relief Committee) is the leading British development and emergency relief agency; Merlin (Medical Emergency Relief International) now absorbed within Save the Children was the leading British medical NGO in the 1990s and 2000s. 22   Kristi M.  Kirby and Claude D’Estree, “Peacekeepers, the Military and Human Trafficking: Protecting Whom,” University of St. Thomas Law Journal 6, no. 1 (2008), 221–246. 23  See the reporting of Mines Advisory Group in Sunday Times 25.02.2018. 24  Priti Patel’s interview was widely covered, for example https://www.telegraph.co.uk/ news/2018/02/11/government-threatens-withdraw-funding-oxfam-faces-fresh-allegations/ (last accessed 02.03.2018). 25  The concept originally coined by Stuart Hall is explored by David Garland, “On the Concept of Moral Panic,” Crime, Media, Culture: An International Journal 4, no. 1 (2018), 9–30. 20 21

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themselves issuing repeated apologies even when it had been their own safeguarding policies that had provided the evidence upon which journalists were relying for their campaigns of condemnation. Setting aside the political motivations that may have fuelled a campaign against OXFAM specifically,26 the current debates expose the depth of concerns about men and masculine behaviour in humanitarian contexts. From a sociological perspective, the earlier campaigns originating from the “humanitarian sector”27 were clearly set in an early twenty-first-­century desire to consider the humanitarian workplace as a workplace like any other and thus not as a space of suspended rights and exception. It also reflected the fact that many working relations were entangled in career-­ related power relations rather than being expressed in the language of volunteering. Finally, in contrast to the more prurient journalistic campaign, the initial NGO literature paid only lip-service to the sexual exploitation of “beneficiaries” of humanitarian aid, concentrating instead on the power asymmetries found in the workplace between “local” staff and expats. The latter were primarily victims of sexual assault (within their own group and from security agents); the former were primarily “coerced” into relationships which may not have been consensual. The journalistic turn was, on the contrary, focused almost entirely on prostitution, on under-­ evidenced claims of “orgies” and on all forms of sexual behaviour across the boundaries of aiders and beneficiaries. This shift reinforced a public expectation that morality would only be guaranteed by a social distance between the provider of relief and his wards. It also reinforced notions that all beneficiaries were necessarily powerless and disenfranchised. Within the British media, the scandal claimed to reveal the hypocrisy of preachy “do-gooders”. To give these stories a lasting impact, journalists themselves employed the tropes of pornography. While this recent 26  OXFAM, founded in 1942, in opposition to the Greek Blockade has long maintained a critical identity towards British foreign policy which has made it a bête noire of the British right. More recently, the debates have taken a specific nature which helps contextualise the controversies of 2018. For examples, see the editorials in the Daily Telegraph and the influential right wing blog “Guido Fawkes” of Paul Delaire Staines: https://order-order. com/2018/01/22/oxfam-go-full-corbynista/ (last accessed 02.03.2018); https://www. telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/01/25/charities-like-oxfam-have-alienated-government-leftwing-bias/ (last accessed 02.03.2018). 27  The notion of a humanitarian sector is itself a projection of an idealised set of power relations between donors, international actors and beneficiaries. See for instance the report https://www.alnap.org/our-topics/the-state-of-the-humanitarian-system published every two years by the think tank ALNAP (last accessed 15.06.2018).

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outburst may be culturally bound to a longstanding British tradition of short-­lived moral outrages, sexual politics have always been in tension with the discourse on masculine character, desire and heroics.

Humanitarian Masculine Character The earliest writings of wartime humanitarians date from the 1860s and 1870s. One of the most prominent and constant humanitarians of the 1870s was the Englishman Vincent Kennett-Barrington. When Sir Vincent Kennett-Barrington died from blood poisoning in 1903 his obituaries referred to his death as the consequence of a sporting accident involving a hot-air balloon, in which he had allegedly exhibited his chivalrous character by sacrificing himself to protect a lady.28 In reality, an open wound he suffered on landing had killed him. The story was intended to show off the intrinsic merits of someone who might be regarded as one of the first professional humanitarians. Kennett-Barrington had played a leading role in British humanitarian relief work during the Spanish Carlist War and the Franco-Prussian War, and he had managed the largest British medical humanitarian deployment to date during the Russo-Turkish War on behalf of the Stafford House Committee. The Stafford House Committee was the ad hoc committee named after the London residence of the second Duke of Sutherland, one of the richest magnates in the United Kingdom. Under his patronage, a large medical-humanitarian organisation was financed to assist the Ottoman side of the Russo-Turkish War independently of other humanitarian actors in the conflict.29 After the 1880s he had played a role in the development of the British Red Cross and St John Ambulance. Kennett-Barrington maintained a voluminous correspondence with his patrons, letters which were intended for publication, and more private correspondence with his family which have since been published.30 Throughout his writings, Kennett-Barrington adhered to the terms of what contemporaries considered to be gentlemanly character. Historians of masculinity in Britain have long shown how masculinity was reshaped 28  Sir Vincent Kennett-Barrington, The Times, 14.07.1903, 11. Kennett-Barrington spent half his life known as Barrington-Kennett. 29  See Sarah Roddy, Julie-Marie Strange and Bertrand Taithe, The Charity Market and Humanitarianism in Britain, 1870–1912 (London: Bloomsbury, 2018), Chapter 5. 30  Peter Morris, First Aid to the Battlefront: Life and Letters of Sir Vincent KennettBarrington (1844–1903) (Stroud: Sutton, 1992).

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and redefined along notions of character through schooling (he went to Eton) and sport.31 The definition of character was also attached to the core values of national identity: in his case, Englishness was transcended into imperial Britishness.32 The portrait of Kennett-Barrington is thus largely stereotypical both in its expression of manliness and in its engagement with the sufferings that one had to endure in order to deliver aid. The tropes of travel literature also applied to most of his writings, and they entailed an anecdotal treatment of surprises, cultural differences and the inconvenience of living and travelling through warzones. This light narrative framework belonged squarely to the literature of “adventure for boys”, arguably one of the greatest and most rapidly expanding book markets at the turn of the century.33 As he put it in a letter from Sofia during the Turko-Bulgarian War of 1876, worn out with cold and thoroughly out of temper with the world in general we fairly broke into a low inn and kicked, I am sorry to say, the rascally garcon until he lit a fire and administered the necessary comforts to us, which he had positively refused to do.34

In this incident, class rules trumped any claim of cultural sensitivity, which was reserved for one’s peers in social standing. Other incidents such as cart accidents are described in an identical fashion. Couleur locale and a taste for the picturesque drowned out the positionality of the traveller and glossed over gender relations in a humanitarian setting: Glorious harmony of colour and taste displayed by their Bulgarian belles of fashion. The beggars and refugees were more pleasing to behold than those 31  Even the humanitarian league—devoted to the abolition of all forms of cruelty— including the denunciation of blood sports found the issue of sport difficult to engage with—such was its central position in defining upper middle-class masculinity. Dan Weinbren, “Against All Cruelty: The Humanitarian League, 1891–1919,” History Workshop 38 (1994), 86–105. 32  J. A. Mangan, “Manufactured” Masculinity: Making Imperial Manliness, Morality and Militarism (London: Routledge, 2012). 33  Patrick A.  Dunae, “Boys’ Literature and the Idea of Empire, 1870–1914,” Victorian Studies 24, no. 1 (1980), 105–121; Jeffrey Richards, Imperialism and Juvenile Literature (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1989). Also see Richard Phillips, Mapping Men and Empire: A Geography of Adventure (London: Routledge, 1997). 34  Morris, First Aid to the Battlefront, 128, Written to his wife from Sofia about Nisch, 26.12.1876.

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whose feeble attempts to imitate the clothing of civilised people made them the greatest guys it ever shocked my nerves to behold. Went to bed thoroughly bored.35

The archetype of this narration of war-as-adventure can be found in Robert Baden-Powell’s Boy Scout movement.36 Though some of Kennett-­ Barrington’s tropes are indeed very British, they also echoed those framed a decade earlier by Henry Dunant recounting his adventures and his role in rescue work following the battle of Solferino. As a text, Souvenir de Solferino (1862) encoded many aspects of what a humanitarian gentleman might be. This self-definition rested upon a number of sharp contrasts, which made the text a highly readable account. Dunant thus contrasted his own cool-headedness in the face of danger to the cowardly attitude of his coachman: the latter probably had no intention of risking his life for the fee of a single ride.37 As Dunant stated, My Italian coachman was taken with such panic, in the half darkness at the idea of being so near the enemy, that more than once I was obliged to take the reins from him […]. My Mantuan was quite unable to recover his nerve and could no longer drive his horse straight at all. He kept turning his head from left to right, and from right to left, staring into all the bushes along the road with haggard eyes, and dreading at every moment to see some ambushed Austrians prepared to take aim at him.38

Throughout the text, Dunant made references to soldiers’ heroic behaviour and stoicism in suffering, and he provided many examples of “good deaths”. In relation to the rescuers Dunant emphasised the expression of strong character in the face of danger. Gender roles were equally starkly contrasted and the women featured in Dunant’s and Kennett-­ Barrington’s work often remained defined by their mothering instincts and nursing duties.39 While Dunant’s text was written explicitly to encourage new volunteers to respond to wartime suffering, Kennett Ibid., 129–130.  J. A. Mangan and James Walvin, eds., Manliness and Morality in Britain and America, 1800–1940 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1987). 37  Henry Dunant, A Memory of Solferino (Geneva: ICRC, 1939). 38  Ibid., 80–81. 39  Ibid., 86. 35 36

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Barrington’s letters were meant to account for his time and work; nonetheless, both were significantly setting out to define role-models for men. To be humanitarian was largely a self-descriptive act, but it was one that also entailed public recognition. Kennett-Barrington was knighted for his humanitarian work; Dunant went through a long period of obscurity but nevertheless obtained a half-share of the first Nobel Peace Prize in 1901. Despite the growing recognition given to humanitarian workers, they themselves remained primarily self-defined by their “adventures” and gentlemanly deportment. In this they resembled journalists and other adventurers who produced accounts of wars abroad. During the Turkish relief operation of 1877 conducted by the early Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement, Dr R. B. Macpherson—a neophyte Scottish humanitarian surgeon sent by his Scottish patron, Lord Blantyre, to serve with the Ottoman Red Crescent with Baron Mundy—met Kennett-Barrington and the Stafford House Committee operation at the border of Bulgaria. Moving closer to the frontline, he then characteristically described the sociability of Dr Stoker’s “Stafford House Club”, “a very tumbledown house”.40 Throughout his “adventures”, Macpherson claimed to be able to “rough it comfortably”.41 This adventure narrative matched the adventure novel written later by Archibald Forbes,42 and it also shared the same sort of casual racist remarks towards “brutal Turks”, Russians who were “indifferent to human suffering”,43 and unmanly Levantines.44 To be a ­humanitarian man was to be civilised, a trait that might be shared with Frenchmen, Germans or Austrians but which eluded anyone born east of the Oder. In Macpherson’s account, the German convert Mehmet Ali

40  R.  B. Macpherson, Under the Red Crescent, or Ambulance Adventures in the Russo Turkish War of 1877–78, (London: Hamilton, Adams and Co, 1885), 45. 41  Ibid., 55. 42  Archibald Forbes and Sydney P. Hall, Czar and Sultan: The Adventures of a British Lad in the Russo Turkish War of 1877–1878 (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1894). 43  Ibid., 283. 44  Macpherson, Under the Red Crescent, 77. On imperial masculinity, see Bradley Deane, Masculinity and the New Imperialism, rewriting Manhood in British Popular Literature, 1870–1914 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014). On effeminate “others”, see Mrinalini Sinha, Colonial Masculinity: The Manly Englishman and the “Effeminate Bengali” in the Late Nineteenth Century (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1995); Heather Streets, Martial Races: The Military, Race and Masculinity in British Imperial Culture, 1857–1914 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2004).

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Pasha or the Englishman Baker Pasha thus shone out among their Ottoman connections as gentlemen among brutes.45 In the face of the suffering of the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–1878, even humanitarians had to shield themselves behind manly displays of stoic indifference. Inured to wartime torments, Macpherson later wrote: Indeed I often felt ashamed of what seemed want of feeling, for the misery was so great and so common, and presented itself to us so much as an everyday feature, that we became in some measure callous to it, and viewed with but little concern scenes which at home would have wrung our hearts.46

There was a humanitarian price to be paid for indulging in adventurous gentlemanliness. The sense of collective identity (“we” being the British men involved) was defined not only through a shared code of behaviour but also through becoming inured to suffering. There was but little difference in being a surgeon and being one of “three English officers, spending the leave of absence pleasantly and profitably in seeing a bit of actual warfare”.47 Kennett-Barrington similarly expressed the class dimensions of the humanitarian masculine self, and it is fair to say that this masculine identity was staged as well as performed in all circumstances. His public and private correspondence following his wounding in the Serbo-Bulgarian War of 1885 expressed this forcefully.48 Both Kennett-Barrington and Macpherson met and socialised happily with controversial characters such as Colonel Valentine Baker or Baker Pasha. In Bulgaria, Macpherson thought nothing of dining repeatedly with the ex-convict even though he might have hesitated to do so in Glasgow.49 Baker Pasha was a British officer who had been convicted of indecent assault in a train in 1875 and had served one year in prison as a result. By 1877 he had reinvented himself as a dashing romantic hero of the Ottoman armies, and he was controversially lionised

 Macpherson, Under the Red Crescent, 111.  Ibid., 120. 47  Ibid., 137. 48  Morris, First Aid to the Battlefront, 212; his correspondence, much of it to be published, was also found in the Staffordshire County Archives, Duke of Sutherland papers, D593/P/26/2/1/1, Report and records of the Stafford House Committee, Report and record of the committee. 49  Macpherson, Under the Red Crescent, 136. 45 46

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by Tory aristocrats in London in 1878.50 Baker Pasha found his place in the circumstances of war, and these removed whatever stains there might have been on his character. Kennett-Barrington’s patrons at the Stafford House Committee embraced Baker Pasha as one of their own even as they promoted humanitarian work in favour of the Ottoman armies. Wartime heroics could thus whitewash peacetime misdemeanours. Despite a certain toleration for what might happen in this time of exception, flirtation or sexual encounters are seldom documented in these memoirs except in the humorous and innuendo-laden mode. Macpherson provides a good example of this when he claimed to have enjoyed “a long and pleasant flirtation with a Servian maiden, the daughter of the landlord of one of the inns we were put at, the sole medium of conversation employed being the word ‘dobra’ (good) and its negative ‘ne dobra’”.51 The reader was left to make up his or her mind as to whether the flirtation had been successful. Warzones abroad were a space of exception. There is a distinction to be drawn between humanitarians setting their project within a wider governance project—such as the active proponents of humanitarian paternalism studied by Alan Lester—and the ones who remained part of foreign responses in a context over which they could not claim any sovereignty. There are many forms of humanitarianism that differ from the wartime humanitarianism of the Red Cross. In the colonial setting, as Lester and Dussart have shown, humanitarian rulers were part of a governmentality project that developed alongside the wider colonial enterprise.52 Humanitarian “gentlemen” who were involved through the Red Cross or other competing agencies in wars with only limited relevance to their own countries lived their lives in a radically different cultural context than those whose roles included moral exemplarity as part of a colonial enterprise. Of course, the term “humanitarian” was itself not necessarily compatible with gentlemanly demeanour and masculine character. For instance, critics of Sir Roger Casement (1864–1916), another knighted diplomat and professional humanitarian, referred to his humanitarianism only in a critical fashion and with the purpose of highlighting his 50  Antony Taylor, Lords of Misrule (London: Springer, 2004), 17–44; Frank Jastrzembski, Valentine Baker’s Heroic Stand at Tashkessen 1877 (Barnsley: Sword and Pen, 2017). 51  Macpherson, Under the Red Crescent, 194. 52  Alan Lester and Fae Dussart, “Masculinity, ‘Race’, and Family in the Colonies: Protecting Aborigines in the Early Nineteenth Century,” Gender, Place & Culture 16, no. 1 (2009), 63–75.

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excessive emotiveness. Joseph Conrad famously stated that “he was all emotion. By emotional force he made his way and sheer emotionalism has undone him.”53 That comment was made at the time of Casement’s trial for treason following the failed Easter Rising in Ireland. Thirteen years earlier, the then British Consul to the Free state of Congo had produced a measured but devastating account of the economic oppression and population collapse that was being endured by the natives of the King of the Belgians’ colony.54 Roger Casement belonged to the Anglo-Irish gentlemanly class, and there is no doubt that his role as a consul positioned him as a respectable man, albeit one with an uncommonly empathetic personality. Casement differed from other exemplars of the humanitarian gentlemanly character in that he left more intimate writings that go beyond the commonplace definition of standard thrill-seeking masculinity and which transcended the class solidarity that most of his contemporaries exhibited. To some of his contemporaries his willingness to exhibit his feelings and to never become inured to suffering betrayed a form of weakness and emotional incontinence. In contrast to Kennett-Barrington, Macpherson or Dunant, his writings also offer the possibility of considering the role played by sexuality in humanitarian work.

Humanitarian Desire Roger Casement’s surviving diaries included a coded diary for personal use and a diary that formed the basis for his reporting on abuses in the Congo and South America. The so-called black and white diaries open up another window on masculine deportment in humanitarian service. There is great controversy regarding the authenticity of the “black diary”, which contains the most explicit sexual references, but the “white diary” is less doubtful.55 Casement’s biographer and, on balance, most of the Irish scholarship agrees that both diaries are likely to be authentic, even though they had been instrumental in Casement’s demise in 1916. Casement was  Roger Sawyer, Roger Casement’s Diaries (London: Pimlico, 2010), 33.  Kevin Grant, “The Limits of Exposure: Atrocity Photography in the Congo Reform Campaign,” in Heide Fehrenbach and Davide Rodogno, eds., Humanitarian Photography (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 64–88; Christina Twomey, “Framing Atrocity: Photography and Humanitarianism,” History of Photography 36, no. 3 (2012), 255–264. 55  Roger Casement, The Amazon Journal of Roger Casement, edited by Angus Mitchell (Dublin: Lilliput press, 1997). 53 54

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executed for his alleged participation in the Irish insurrection of 1916 and for having colluded with the Germans.56 What the diaries revealed was Casement’s homosexuality and some of his sexual practices. The diaries refer to the two major periods of his humanitarian activity: the Congo report through which he produced evidence of criminal exploitation by the agents of King Leopold II of Belgium (1835–1909) and the report from Putumayo when Casement resumed his investigative work in order to uncover the exploitation underpinning the harvesting of wild rubber in Peru at the behest of a British listed company.57 While acting explicitly as a humanitarian and officially as a consul, Casement engaged in a sequence of sexual acts as circumstances allowed. On the whole, many of the sexual acts were with young men and were paid for through financial transactions recorded in the diary. But over the course of his enquiries, the diarist mostly recorded voyeuristic incidents during which he contemplated the flaccid or erect members of the people he was aiming to protect. The reports of a sexual nature are particularly frequent in Peru, but they reveal more about his desires than about any sexual acts. There is no evidence of direct predation, but the evocation of desire and love are intermingled in a very interesting manner with his concern for the safety of workers involved in harvesting wild rubber. In several instances he noted the size of penises as well as any accidental erection he might have witnessed. For instance, in September 1910 he noted: “One half –white muchado magnificent display & a young Cholo with erection as he carried heavy box down left leg about 6-8 [inches]”.58 A few days later he documented the evidence of abuses on desirable bodies: “The boy terribly flogged, all over his backside and thighs … A beautiful boy”.59 While investigating criminal violence and facing constant and absurd denials, Casement combined his horror for flogging with his obsession for bodily details: “I mean to rub these highly instructive backsides well in their face until they admit that it is the lash behind and not the ‘advance’ in front that collects each fabrico of rubber.”60

56  The evidence was dubious and the trial papers show the extent of the bias against Casement: Roger Casement, The Trial of Sir Roger Casement, edited by G.  H. Knott (Glasgow: Hodge and Co., 1917), xiii–xv. 57  Casement, The Amazon Journal of Roger Casement. 58  Ibid., 77. 59  Ibid., 101. 60  Ibid., 169.

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The shift from the sexual to the compassionate is seamless in the diaries. Metaphors transpose from one to the other and define the profound emotional charge of his humanitarianism.61 Most of the subjects of Casement’s humanitarian concerns combined physical beauty with the hideous evidence of their sufferings, resulting in an abject display. As Seth Koven and Barry Reay show with regard to the imagination of abject poverty in Britain, these images of repulsion and sexual attraction were not merely for export and functioned similarly with regard to the abjection to be found in the streets of the great western metropolis.62 In Arthur Munby, for instance, Barry Reay found a fetishist subversion of sexuality that was focused primarily on one well-known partner, Hannah Cullwick, but that also involved poor working-class women who were paid to pose for him in their most dirty work-clothes. Cullwick notoriously blackened her face and covered herself in dirt to please her lover. That Munby should have been a philanthropist was congruent with the voyeuristic sexuality to be found amidst Casement’s humanitarian work.63 The traces of desire were not always so explicit as to be self-conscious or fully sexual, yet the narrative devices and the systematic uses of images of abjection framed a particular relation of power and desire in many humanitarian narratives. The representational tropes of this desire focused almost exclusively on the “helpless” and on “innocents”. In Casement’s example, desire and humanitarian work ran concurrently, even if sexual rewards were often delayed until he reached more discreet sites where he could engage in commercial sex (for instance during a stopover on the Canary Islands). Casement, who was living a secret sexual life, claimed to have developed a sixth sense for lies, and in his own diaries he often praised his powers of deduction and detection. Undoubtedly, he was capable of most effectively using evidence to identify where structural violence was hidden under the pretence of transaction, civilisation and commerce. He was particularly apt at identifying the discrepancies between empty storerooms 61  Richard A.  Wilson and Richard D.  Brown, Humanitarianism and Suffering: The Mobilization of Empathy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009); Anne-Claude Ambroise-Rendu and Christian Delporte, L’Indignation: Histoire d’une Émotion Politique et Morale, XIXe-XXe Siècles (Paris: Nouveau Monde Editions, 2008). 62  Barry Reay, Watching Hannah: Sexuality, Horror and Bodily De-formation in Victorian England (London: Reaktion Books, 2002); Seth Koven, Slumming: Sexual and Social Politics in Victorian London (Princeton N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2004). 63  Andrew Porter, “Sir Roger Casement and the International Humanitarian Movement,” Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 29, no. 2 (2001), 59–74.

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and claims of trade, spotting the maimed bodies hidden in a crowd and uncovering the clothes that hid the traces of severe physical punishment. In his own terms—that of a humanitarian investigator primarily concerned with rights and the protections of law—Casement’s gaze was his best weapon in revealing abuses and cruelty, whether abroad or at home. Like many humanitarians of his era, Casement framed his work within the broader philanthropic tradition, one that in his case had fundamentally nationalistic undertones.64 His contemporaries were either enthusiastic supporters like Edmund Dene Morel (1873–1924), who led the campaign against the King of the Belgians in 1904,65 or sceptics who could not warm to the emotional instability of the Irishman, which jarred with more militaristic forms of masculinity. War imposed itself as the priority of the new humanitarianism of the 1870s, primarily because warring was so central to nation-state formation. In victory or in defeat, masculine ideals and notions of civilisation, strength and beauty—as well as the aesthetics of action—were cast in relation to war.66 The humanitarian impulse was also expressed in the same terms, and the aesthetics of the wounded and the beauty of the dying contributed to the romance of the early Red Cross.67 This was so much so that this compassion economy built upon desire favoured the wounded over the sick and the young over the older soldiers.68 The specifically masculine traits of humanitarian compassion could nevertheless be contested as potentially weakening a virile renewal. Such a perspective was reflected most vividly in the highly influential work of French right-wing intellectuals Massis and de Tarde, who conducted a pioneering survey of young men of 1913 according to the methods of Durkheim: Les Jeunes Gens d’Aujourd’hui. According to them, young men resented and criticised the emollient sentimentality of humanitarianism, 64   Angus Mitchell, “‘An Irish Putumayo’: Roger Casement’s Humanitarian Relief Campaign among the Connemara Islanders 1913–14,” Irish Economic and Social History 31 (2004), 41–60. 65  Dean Pavlakis, British Humanitarianism and the Congo Reform Movement, 1896–1913 (Farnham: Ashgate, 2015), Chapter 7. 66  See on this point Chapter 4 of Ana Carden-Coyne, Reconstructing the Body: Classicism, Modernism and the First World War (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009). 67  This is an issue raised by Holly Furneaux when she points out that the Crimean War was the site of a shift in military masculinity. See Holly Furneaux, Military Men of Feeling: Emotion, Touch, and Masculinity in the Crimean War (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016). 68  Bertrand Taithe, Defeated Flesh (Manchester University Press, 1999), Chapter 3.

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which, according to them, signified the cult of humanity and its association with an unspoken form of pacifism.69 “It is the rationalist France, humanitarian and decadent, that the new generation repudiates so violently.”70 Against this negatively construed understanding of humanitarianism, Massis and de Tarde alleged that young men were enthused by nationalist feelings and virile attitudes. This sustained critique of humanitarianism undoubtedly had an impact on the humanitarians themselves. From the 1870s onwards, the men and women engaged in humanitarian causes made clear statements in the same direction. Far from belonging to the Romantic ideology of Utopian thinkers and attached to the relics of 1848, post-1870s humanitarians presented and imagined themselves as muscular, fit and driven.71 Their engagement— if often romantically written up in their memoirs—found its main public form in the shape of reports and statistical tables that exuded efficiency and accountability.72 The moral imperative of action became the expression of this gendered mode of narration. Humanitarianism according to this literature needed to be expedient, and the forms that this expediency might take have remained a central aspect of humanitarian narratives ever since. 69  A more emollient and emotional humanitarianism can be found in the work of the humanist and leading British humanitarian Edward Carpenter, The Need of a Rational and Humane Science: A Lecture Delivered Before the Humanitarian League (London: Humanitarian League, 1901); Henry S. Salt, Humanitarianism: Its General Principles and Progress (London: W. Reeves, 1901). In France, see the Association Médicale Humanitaire which edited the journal Revue Médico-Sociale from 1910 until 1939. Dan Weinbren, “Against All Cruelty: The Humanitarian League, 1891–1919,” History Workshop Journal 38 (1998), 86–105. 70  Henri Massis and Alfred de Tarde [Agathon], Les Jeunes Gens d’Aujourd’hui, edited by Jacques Becker (Paris: Imprimerie Nationale [1913], 1995). This survey was elite-focused and concerned with the top percentile of young men reaching university and high-school education. Historians have regarded this text as a complex but nevertheless precious document on pre-war intellectual life. Similar views were expressed around Europe at the same period. See Jean-Jacques Becker’s introduction to the 1995 edition. 71  In this they fitted with an international drive towards fitter and masculine Christian boyhood, see inter alia: David Macleod, Building Character in American Boy: The Boy Scouts, YMCA, and Their Forerunners, 1870–1920 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2004); Christopher E. Forth and Bertrand Taithe, eds. French Masculinities: History, Politics and Culture (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007); Harald Fischer-Tiné, “Fitness for Modernity? The YMCA and Physical-Education Schemes in Late-Colonial South Asia (circa 1900–40),” Modern Asian Studies 53, no. 2 (2019), 512–59. 72  See Rebecca Gill, Calculating Compassion: Humanity and Relief in War, Britain 1870–1914 (Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 2013).

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The Discourse of Post-Heroics? Memoirs of humanitarians present distinct features in relation to heroics. Even the pacifist A. Tegla Davies (1880–1967) in his history of the Friends Ambulance Unit could not refrain from remarking, “Pacifists are not immune from violent changes in morale. War, as Thucydides said, is a hard task master; for it assimilates the character of men to their conditions.”73 The book itself begins with a list of martyred lost comrades. In the context of humanitarian aid in uniform and as pacifist adjuncts to the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA) immediate post-war humanitarian effort,74 the issue of behaviour could be framed in relation to a number of cultural and disciplinary boundaries, with “fraternisation” a particular policy concern.75 As Gregor McClelland wrote in his correspondence of 3 August 1945, the meanings of “fraternisation” were specifically associated with sexual intercourse: “You quote Mr F. on fraternisation: ‘as a married man he had no use for it’. It was well said by one of the magazines that it was the pity the relaxation had been for reasons of sex rather than of principle. It is also a pity that the word has become debased in the English language.”76 From Marcel Junod’s Le Troisième Combattant77 to the many autobiographical ego-narratives penned by “new humanitarians” a generation later—like Kouchner or Emmanuelli, the founders of MSF—the urge to represent the self in humanitarian action through narrative devices that recall either the picaresque genre or forms of auto-hagiography is 73  Arfor T. Davies, Friends Ambulance Unit: The Story of the F.A.U in the Second World War 1939–1946 (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1947), 5. 74   On UNRRA see W.  Arnold-Forster, “UNRRA’s Work for Displaced Persons in Germany,” International Affairs 22, no. 1 (1946), 1–13; Jessica Reinisch, “Internationalism in Relief: The Birth (and Death) of UNRRA,” Past and Present, Suppl. 6 (2011), 258–289; Silvia Salvatici, “‘Help the People to Help Themselves’: UNRRA Relief Workers and European Displaced Persons,” Journal of Refugee Studies 25, no. 3 (2012), 428–451; Johannes-Dieter Steinert, “British Humanitarian Assistance: Wartime Planning and PostWar Realities,” Journal of Contemporary History 43, no. 3 (2008), 421–435; G.  Daniel Cohen, “Between Relief and Politics: Refugee Humanitarianism in Occupied Germany 1945–46,” Journal of Contemporary History 43, no. 3 (2008), 437–449. 75  Perry Biddiscombe, “Dangerous Liaisons: The Anti-Fraternization Movement in the U.S. Occupation Zones of Germany and Austria, 1945–1948,” Journal of Social History 34, no. 3 (2001), 611–647. 76  Grigor McClelland, Embers of War: Letters from a Quaker Relief Worker in War-Torn Germany (London: I.B. Tauris, 1997), 45. 77  Marcel Junod, Le Troisième Combattant (Geneva: Payot, 1947).

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overwhelming. Most such narratives follow a fairly simple structure: young and naïve, the hero volunteers either by accident or because they respond in a uniquely strong way to the world’s injustice. Whatever the motivation— whether pure idealism or the desire to experience something different or new—that experience remains almost unique, framed by past events and incontrovertibly personal. This emphasis on singularity is an essential component of masculine humanitarian texts (and may be shared with the women’s narratives too). Much of the following sequences would then refer to homosocial moments: smoking to cope with overwhelming stress; drinking with mercenary pilots, adventurers and interlopers; facing isolation in a remote corner of Cambodia; dodging bullets in Somalia.78 In some of the memoirs, encounters with humanitarian expats of the opposite sex feature as challenges, moments of genderless co-optation or gendered commentaries on burn-out.79 Adventure narratives remain profoundly masculine; this remains so despite their featuring women, the most significant of whom are depicted with masculine qualities. This is partially because such narratives borrow some of their essential tropes from boyhood literature, much of which originated in the late nineteenth century. But it is also because these narratives reinforce highly significant traits of humanitarianism’s gendered identity, an ethos of volunteering, engagement, decisive risk-taking and (male) leadership offered in a quasi-sacrificial manner. MSF president James Orbinski thus quotes a humanitarian who remained in Liberia in the midst of its civil war in 1992: Why did you stay? I asked. Because it was possible to do something to help, even though it was not much, Michel answered immediately. He remained silent a moment and then added: Once on the ground you have no other choice. I understand exactly what you mean.80

78  For instance, see James Orbinski, Le Cauchemar Humanitaire (Marne La Vallée: Music and Entertainment Books, 2010), 78, 99. 79  The concept of burn out itself was coined in the 1970s in relation to aid workers. Herbert J.  Freudenberger, “Staff burn-out,” Journal of Social Issues 30, no. 1 (1974), 159–165. See Bertrand Taithe, “Compassion Fatigue: The Changing Nature of Humanitarian Emotions,” in Dolores Martin Moruno and Beatriz Pichel, eds., Emotional Bodies. Studies on the Historical Performativity of Emotions (Urbana, ILL: University of Illinois Press, 2019), 242–262. 80  Orbinski, Cauchemar, 148.

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Staying on the ground either in the midst of war or in the troublesome days of the aftermath of conflicts was framed by cultural encounters which were heavily gendered and often reminiscent of “exotic” travel writings that predated settler colonialism. In colonial literature, Ann Laura Stoler reminds us, the association of colonisers and colonised was often idealised and later contrasted negatively with the more racialised boundaries emerging from segregated settler colonial enterprises. As she argues forcefully, the gendering of “fraternisation” covered heavily imbalanced gender relations: Are we to believe that sexual intimacy with European men yielded social mobility and political rights for colonized women? Or less likely, that because British civil servants bedded Indian women, Indian men had more ‘in common’ with British men and enjoyed more parity? … Sex was not a levelling mechanism but a site in which social asymmetries were instantiated and expressed.81

As the recent “scandals” remind us, there is some overlap between openly transactional sexual encounters (often labelled prostitution) and those motivated by material advantage. The literature and the archives of NGOs tend to be quite silent on matters which until very recently were deemed to be private only. Yet, through the travel literature trope one might find ways of expressing cultural encounters around issues of sexuality. The protagonist of a memoir written by the founder of Médecins Sans Frontières Canada, Richard Heinzl, thus faces the prospect of arranged marriage in rural Cambodia in the 1990s: “Oh, that woman is very beautiful. Her family has many, many cattle. Many oxen.”82 The anecdote is obviously set out to be partially a joke, but its purpose in the narrative is also to highlight the desirability of single humanitarian males in the Cambodian context. The comedic commercial value attached to a potential relationship covers up the more sordid and otherwise documented sexual encounters of the era. Heinzl directly found inspiration for his own writing in the works of Norman Lewis. Lewis was a travel writer and journalist extraordinaire of the 1940s and 1950s, and his A Dragon Apparent written in the middle of the French Indochinese war served as a template 81  Ann L. Stoler, Carnal Knowledge and Imperial Power: Race and the Intimate in Colonial Rule (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002), 57. 82  Richard Heinzl, Cambodia Calling: A Memoir from the Frontlines of Humanitarian Aid (Mississauga, ON: John Wiley, 2008), 164.

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for his memoir narrative. Beyond form, it also arguably inspired the ethos of the humanitarian isolated in provincial Cambodia. Continuity in narrative format is a feature of many memoirs produced by humanitarians. This reliance on literary models from the past also carries with it the enduring presence of masculine models dating from the colonial era. The cult of colonial doctors such as Eugène Jamot, who led a one-man campaign against sleeping sickness in Cameroon and French West Africa, is thus largely kept alive by humanitarian doctors such as MSF founder Xavier Emmanuelli. That Jamot was bigamous and kept an African family as well as a much neglected French one only added to his mystique for his admirers.83 At a time of bureaucratic imperatives and programming, normative efforts and generally disenchanting encounters with increasingly ungrateful beneficiaries, the memory of allegedly simpler ages serves as the foundation for a consolidated masculine humanitarianism.

Conclusion Much of this exploration has built upon literary sources and operational archives that are often more allusive than outspoken on matters of masculine deportment. It is a feature of gender relations that they are often left unspoken or hidden in the cracks of narratives and reports. The matter at stake is of some importance. Differences of approach and treatment revealed themselves in the daily routines as well as in the loftier ideals of a movement. The lasting power of masculine narratives written in the heroic or adventurous mode was related to the view that they were exemplars of character building, models of decisive behaviour and templates of constancy in the face of danger. Today, differentiated attitudes towards risk-taking or security measures provide some of the tools through which masculine identity can be upheld and maintained. Part of the resilience of masculine narratives relates to the myth that only extreme forms of masculine behaviour might be effective in extreme situations. This mode of understanding male behaviour refers to the notions of accepted risk and also implicitly to the valorisation of violence and states of exception that were discussed in the introduction.

83  See Bertrand Taithe, “Heroes of Charity? Between Memory and Hagiography: Colonial Medical Heroes in the Era of Decolonisation,” Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 42, no. 5 (2014), 912–35.

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Over the last 70 years the language of heroics has receded throughout Europe, and some even talk of a post-heroic age in warfare since 1989.84 In contrast to cautious changes in military doctrine, war anniversaries have led to a rise in the commemoration of the war dead. For humanitarians, the commemoration of humanitarian sacrifice has only come of age over the last 25 years, and it has often been in a heroic mode. One of the finest examples concerns Sergio Vieira de Mello whose death in Baghdad in 2003 has become a focal point of a celebration of humanitarian heroic masculinity. De Mello died in a well-known attack on the UN compound at a time when the man who had led the “reconstruction” of Cambodia attempted to repeat that feat. De Mello died in office (quite literally) and became an emblem of heroic humanitarianism for the UN. This view was not universally shared, and in a characteristically unkind review of his biography The Daily Telegraph described him thus: A handsome Brazilian with impeccable manners and an easy charm, though some of his colleagues found him obsequious and insincere. There is a type of high-flying career UN diplomat who can be found in the best hotels in the world’s worst hellholes. Vieira de Mello conformed to that type, and he took his pick from the pretty, idealistic young women who always seem to be around where the UN hands out food or oversees blue helmet operations.85

De Mello, the UN seducer and humanitarian, has since been reinvented as part of a culture of martyrdom—celebrated through a UN humanitarianism day and commemorative events—even though aspects of his behaviour would be frowned upon in the current climate. Some humanitarians like Michael Neuman see in this revival of old tropes of self-sacrifice a dangerous invocation of masculine forms in the debate on humanitarian security. According to him, at a time when many NGOs retreat into bunkerised compounds, some find it acceptable, through the invocation of martyrs and heroes, to promote the notion of acceptable losses. The sexual 84  See for instance Sibylle Scheipers, ed., Heroism and the Changing Character of War: Toward Post-heroic Warfare? (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014). The concept originates from Edward Luttwak’s work, “Towards Post-Heroic Warfare,” Foreign Affairs 74 (1995), 109–122. 85  Stephen Robinson, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/non_fictionreviews/ 3671840/Samantha-Power-on-Sergio-Vieira-de-Mello.html (last accessed 27.06.2017).

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undertones of this masculinity are associated with the virile tropes of risk-­ taking “hypermasculinity”. The history of humanitarian masculinity in the humanitarian context as a whole opens up new avenues. Exposing the complexity of compassion including in its relationship to desire is not to undermine humanitarians’ genuine commitment to the causes in which they participate. Instead, it seeks to challenge the terms and literary tropes that have enabled the autobiographical narration and self-construction of humanitarians over the ages. It also enables us to engage historically with the complexities of today’s gender and sexual politics. Acknowledgements  I am grateful for the comments and feedback colleagues have provided on ideas and versions of this chapter. In particular I thank the participants and organisers of the Leibniz-Institut für Europäische Geschichte in Mainz, Gender and Humanitarian History workshop of June 2017, Michael Neuman of CRASH, Roísín Read and other colleagues from the University of Manchester.

CHAPTER 3

Protestant Missionaries, Armenian Refugees and Local Relief: Gendered Humanitarianism in Aleppo, 1920–1939 Inger Marie Okkenhaug

But despite the awful sufferings of the (Armenian) man, it cannot be measured against the pain the Armenian woman has been forced to endure. I do not think only of the physical discomforts: hunger, thirst and beatings, and not the terrible fact that she was forced to watch her children killed by the gendarme, thrown in the rivers, or left behind, exhausted on the endless, burning road. No, I am thinking of the one condition most dreaded by Armenian women: to be taken by force by a Turk or a Kurd in order to be led to his home to live as a slave, at the mercy of the mother-in-law and the other wives’ malignance and rudeness, separated from all she held dear, from her family and friends. In many cases she might have seen her dearest ones killed in the most gruesome manner. But worst of all it has been to be forced to hear the Christian faith that her loved ones died for, being reviled.

I. M. Okkenhaug (*) Volda University College, Volda, Norway e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 E. Möller et al. (eds.), Gendering Global Humanitarianism in the Twentieth Century, Palgrave Macmillan Transnational History Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-44630-7_3

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[…] This faith has fallen on thousands and thousands of Armenian women, who even today can be found in remote mountains buried alive.1

These are the words of Danish missionary Karen Marie Petersen (b. 1881), published in a pamphlet in Swedish for a Scandinavian audience in 1920. Petersen was one of six Scandinavian missionaries employed by Female Mission Workers (Kvindelige Missions Arbejdere or “KMA”), an organization with branches in Denmark, Sweden and Norway, who became relief workers and witnesses during the Armenian genocide in the Ottoman Empire in 1915–1916.2 Her experiences throughout the war years in Turkey, aiding a large number of Armenians, made Petersen see herself as a designated spokesperson for Armenian survivors and especially female survivors.3 Historian Monika Edgren argues that eyewitness accounts of the Armenian genocide focus on the suffering of the people as a nation. “Women’s suffering is the people’s suffering, which blocks out gendered power and even women’s resistance.”4 This is not the case in the Danish narrative, in which women’s experiences of suffering are explicitly 1  Karen Marie Petersen, Digin Virginie: En Armenisk Kvinnas Lidande (Stockholm: Kvinneliga Missions Arbetare, 1920), printed in Melissa Aguero, De bortglömda, MA thesis (Stockholm: Teologiska Hogskolan, 2012). 2   See Inger Marie Okkenhaug, “Scandinavian Missionaries, Gender, and Armenian Refugees during World War I. Crisis and Reshaping of Vocation,” Social Sciences and Missions 23, no. 1 (2010), 63–93. On the history of the Armenian genocide, see Taner Akçam, A Shameful Act. The Armenian Genocide and the Question of Turkish Responsibility (New York: Holt, 2006); and Taner Akçam, The Young Turks’ Crime against Humanity. The Armenian Genocide and Ethnic Cleansing in the Ottoman Empire (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2012); Donald Bloxham, The Great Game of Genocide. Imperialism, Nationalism, and the Destruction of the Ottoman Armenians (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005); Jay M. Winter, “Under Cover of War. The Armenian Genocide in the Context of Total War,” in Jay Winter, ed., America and the Armenian Genocide of 1915 (West Nyack, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 37–51; Ugur Ümit Üngör, “The Armenian Genocide 1915,” in Barbara Boender and Wichert ten Have, eds., The Holocaust and Other Genocides: An Introduction (Amsterdam: NIOD/Amsterdam University Press, 2012), 45–72; Ronald Grigor Suny, “They can Live in the Desert but Nowhere Else”. A History of the Armenian Genocide (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2015). 3  After the genocide, Armenians urged the Scandinavian witnesses to tell international society about the persecutions. See Inger Marie Okkenhaug, En norsk filantrop. Bodil Biørn og armenerne, 1905–1934 [A Norwegian Philanthropist. Bodil Biørn and the Armenians, 1905–1934] (Kristiansand: Portal, 2016). 4   Monika Edgren, “Sexuellt våld I vittnesberättelser om massakern på armenier, 1915–1916,” Scandia 78, no. 2 (2012), 87–117, here 113. Edgren bases her study on the “Blue Book” compiled by James Bryce and Arnold Toynbee: The Treatment of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire, 1915–1916, the uncensored version of which was printed in 2000 (Princeton and New Jersey: Gomidas Institute).

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stated to be worse than men’s. In Petersen’s text there are not only male perpetrators: Turkish and Kurdish women are also seen as tormentors and oppressors within households in which Armenians were forced to live. Thus, Petersen articulates a deep understanding of the gendered consequences of the massacres and persecutions that killed more than one million Armenians. Of the 500,000 Armenian genocide survivors, 400,000 became refugees, and many of them were women.5 The gendered dimension that characterized this refugee community was a result of the Ottoman genocidal policy of targeting men first. Historian Mathias Bjørnlund has introduced the term “gendercide” in order to explain the Turkish genocidal practice: The Armenian genocide was executed in two interconnected gendercides. The first victims of the Armenian genocide were almost exclusively men. […] Armenian women and children were the next major group to be targeted. Hundreds of thousands were given short notice […] by the authorities to leave their homes and possessions and march toward the Syrian desert to be ‘relocated.’ […] The general purpose of the deportations was to kill all or most of the deportees by outright massacre, individual acts of violence, attrition, starvation, dehydration, or disease before they reached the alleged relocation areas in the desert.6

As a result of this gendered policy, approximately 80 per cent of the Armenian survivors of the massacres and deportations were women and children.7 The post-genocide Armenian society has been aptly characterized by historians as “a nation of widows and orphans”.8 A large number of the surviving women were traumatized by abuse and sexual violence. In 5  Nicola Migliorini, (Re)constructing Armenia in Lebanon and Syria. Ethno-Cultural Diversity and the State in the Aftermath of a Refugee Crisis (New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2008), 31. These Armenians constituted—in addition to Russians fleeing the Bolsjevik-regime—the core of the international refugee crisis after WWI. See Peter Gatrell, The Making of the Modern Refugee (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013). 6  Mathias Bjørnlund, “‘A Fate worse than dying’. Sexual Violence During the Armenian Genocide,” in Dagmar Herzog, ed., Brutality and Desire: War and Sexuality in Europe’s Twentieth Century (Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), 16–58, here 18. 7   Isabel Kaprielian-Churchill, “Armenian Refugee Women: The Picture Brides, 1920–1930,” Journal of American Ethnic History 12, no. 3 (1993), 3–29, here 8. 8  Nefissa Naguib, “A Nation of Widows and Orphans: Armenian Memories of Relief in Jerusalem,” in Nefissa Naguib and Inger Marie Okkenhaug, eds., Interpreting Welfare and Relief in the Middle East (Leiden  and Boston: Brill, 2008), 35–56. See also Nazan Maksudyan’s article in this volume.

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addition, even after surviving the massacres, their suffering was far from over, for a large number of young women and children had been “absorbed” into Muslim households. In Petersen’s text the gendered image of the Christian woman as a (sex) slave reflects the fact that between 100,000 and 200,000 Armenian young women, adolescent girls and children had been captured during the deportations and forcibly “absorbed” into Turkish, Kurdish and Bedouin households. This state policy saw Armenian men as the bearers of ethnicity, while it perceived Armenian women and children as susceptible to assimilation.9 For Petersen, however, this policy was built upon slavery, which is why she depicted Oriental men as uncivilized Muslim abductors and slave holders. The portrayal of Turkish (post-)genocide politics towards women and children as white slavery can also be found in reports from the League of Nations and in fundraising campaigns by missionaries, Friends of Armenia and other Western activists. This echoed the circumstances during and after the war, when Armenian women and children could be bought for a certain price.10 For the general Western readership, having your children abducted, enslaved, or killed, would be the ghastliest fate a woman might encounter. In the missionary’s interpretation, however, it was far worse to contemplate a Christian having to live as a Muslim. In addition, the genocide is understood within a religious framework in which Armenians actively defended their Christian fate. In the religious world of Protestant missionaries, the fact that Armenian Christians were killed by Turkish Muslims gave the Armenians the status of martyrs. The Christian who dies for his or her faith is a well-known trope in evangelical and mission literature.11 This image also made Armenian men, most of whom had not fought their perpetrators, seem willing to sacrifice their lives for their religion, and not weak and unable to defend their families.

 Bjørnlund, “A Fate worse than dying,” 35.  Keith David Watenpaugh, “Are there any Children for Sale? Genocide and the Transfer of Armenian Children (1915–1922),” Journal of Human Rights 12, no. 3 (2013), 283–295, here 284. According to historian William Clarence-Smith, prices on slaves fell drastically in the Middle East with the flood of Armenian women and children for sale. Personal communication 23. September 2013 with William Clarence-Smith. 11   See Flora A.  Keshgegian, “‘Starving Armenians’: The Politics and Ideology of Humanitarian Aid in the First Decades of the Twentieth Century,” in Richard Ashby Wilson and Richard D. Brown, eds., Humanitarianism and Suffering. The Mobilization of Empathy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 140–154. 9

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According to the Danish missionary narrative, the captured women endured an existence equivalent to “being buried alive”. The fact that being “absorbed” into a Muslim household was one of the few ways to avoid being killed remains unmentioned. On the contrary, Armenian women were portrayed as helpless victims: abducted and powerless. This is in line with Peter Gatrell’s analysis of the representation of female refugees, which has stressed their general invisibility: “If refugees in general have been hidden from history, refugee women were doubly banished, except insofar as they were deserving supplicants or pitiful victims.”12 Even so, Armenian women in post-war society were survivors of genocide. They had shown resistance and resilience during the years of persecution and massacres. In many parts of the Ottoman Empire, female-headed households became common in the aftermath of the World War, which had shattered family and social networks. This was especially true for Armenian refugees. Despite images of enslavement and pitifulness in religious and secular humanitarian narratives, Armenian women were survivors, breadwinners and nurturers who contributed crucially to the reconstruction of Armenian society. In their effort to rebuild post-genocide society, Armenians depended on internal and external relief. While the Armenian Church, private organizations and the French mandate government contributed significantly to humanitarian relief, the Armenian refugee community in Aleppo was not in a position to turn down foreign aid. “The ideal would have been if the Armenian people might have been living in their own fatherland without needing care from outside”, wrote Archbishop Ardavast, the Armenian head of the church in Syria, to KMA missionary and nurse Bodil Biørn (1871–1960).13 Writing after having met the Norwegian woman in 1934, the Archbishop thanked her for her humanitarian efforts. Biørn was leaving her work in Aleppo, and the Archbishop continued, “for almost ten years now, I have witnessed and lauded your sacrificial service for our ill-­ fated people and your noble, Christian personality”.14 Thus, the leader of the Armenian community, despite its patriarchal and Orthodox tradition, not only thanked the Protestant women missionaries from Scandinavia for

12  Peter Gatrell, A Whole Empire Walking. Refugees in Russia During World War I. (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2005), 127. 13  Kvartalshilsen 4 (1934), 7. 14  Ibid., 7.

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their work, but also emphasized both the humanitarian and the religious side of their engagement in Syria. This article discusses the interaction between Scandinavian women missionaries and Armenian refugees in Aleppo during the interwar years. It thus focuses on the period after the genocide, in which humanitarian work was marked by the needs and traumas of Armenian women who had not only survived the genocide but had also endured more than ten years’ existence as refugees with no prospects of returning to their home regions in Eastern Turkey. Drawing on archival sources, published letters and reports from the KMA, this article aims to show the deeply entangled nature of missionary and humanitarian work among refugee women and discusses the Protestant religion as a source of empowerment for women more generally.15 As has been shown, for American Protestant (American Board) missionaries who provided relief to Armenians before, during and after the genocide, humanitarian work and the missionary enterprise could not be disentangled.16 This fusion of evangelization, emergency relief and “longer-term efforts to prevent suffering from famine, ill-health, or poverty”17 also characterized the activities and perceptions of Scandinavian Protestants in the Middle East: The KMA reports written by missionaries stationed in Beirut or Aleppo usually combined appeals for humanitarian funding with a focus on Christianity. While KMA sources often described Armenian women’s refugee condition as pitiful, missionary narratives also feature a religious dimension that contributes to a more complex image of Armenian women refugees.18 Some of these women are presented encountering evangelical Christianity: a profound experience possibly leading to a deeply felt, personal religious life. Such an internalized religious force might also lead to a feeling of empowerment and the willingness to transgress gender roles. The representations of Armenian women as “living Christians” in KMA sources bear resemblance to Scandinavian Protestant women’s religious vocation and 15  Letters and reports from Norwegian KMA workers Bodil Biørn and Alette Andreassen, and Danish colleagues, published in the KMA member magazine Kvartalshilsen. 16  Keshgegian, “‘Starving Armenians’,” 144. 17  Johannes Paulmann, “Conjunctures in the History of International Humanitarian Aid during the Twentieth Century,” Humanity 4, no. 2 (2013), 215–238, here 215. 18   See for example Maria Småberg, “Material Help and Self-Help. Materiality and Cosmopolitan Care in the Swedish Humanitarian Work among Armenian Refugees in Thessaloniki, 1923–1947,” in Andreas Schmoller, ed., Middle Eastern Christians and Europe: Historical Legacies and Present Challenges (Wien et al.: LIT, 2018), 79–103.

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their encounter with evangelical Christianity as a force capable of subverting traditional gender systems. In the Protestant and evangelical Christian view of gender, men and women belonged to two separate and hierarchically related spheres. Thus, socially defined gender roles were naturalized and women were denied authority over men. However, all Protestants believed in a very basic spiritual equality between men and women. The conviction that all human beings—women as much as men—were equal in Christ was a strong motivation for women’s activities in the evangelical movement. Female missionaries found support in their belief that Christianity bore within it the source of all emancipation.19 The Protestant mission discourse emphasized the notion of imagined sisterly solidarity between “mission sisters” in the home country, “the serving sisters” in the field and sisters “out there”, that is, local Armenian women.20 Did Armenian women influenced by Protestantism express a belief in a Christian sisterhood between Scandinavian donors, missionaries and Armenian female refugees? This chapter has three parts, each investigating a particular form of femininity that emerged during the encounter between Protestant women missionaries and Armenian refugees. It starts with a discussion of the Scandinavian female missionaries’ understanding of their own femininity, by including the development and ideology of the female mission workers’ organization in Scandinavia and their self-representation as “witnesses”. It then goes on to analyse Armenian female refugees, whose femininity faced multiple forms of marginalization in both Scandinavian missionary sources and in the refugee camps in Aleppo themselves. The third part of the chapter focuses on local female relief, in particular through the work of the Armenian Bible Women, thus offering an understanding of femininity as a source of empowerment and of the potential for transgressing gender systems in post-genocide society.  The life story of one of the most prominent Scandinavian women missionaries— Norwegian Marie Monsen (1878–1962), active as a preacher and teacher in China from 1901 to 1932—illustrates, for example, how a Christian calling and personal religious experience helped legitimize Monsen’s role as a preacher for men as well as for women and children. See Lisbeth Mikaelsson, “Marie Monsen: Charismatic Revivalist – Feminist Fighter,” Scandinavian Journal of History 28, no. 2 (2003), 121–133; and Karina Hestad Skeie, “Kjønn og åndelig lederskap: En analyse av Kinamisjonær Marie Monsen (1878–1962). Transformasjon fra lærerinne til Vekkelsestaler,” DIN: Tidsskrift for religion og kultur 2 (2015), 31–59. 20  Inger Marie Okkenhaug, “Introduction,” in Inger Marie Okkenhaug, ed., Gender, Race and Religion: Nordic Missions, 1860–1940 (Uppsala: Studia Missionalia Svecana, 2003), 80. 19

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KMA Missionaries as Saviours and Witnesses The KMA women missionaries, who were trained as nurses, midwives and teachers, were motivated by a calling to relief work among persecuted Armenians and orphans after the Abdülhamid II massacres in 1894–1896. After the World War, the missionaries originally wanted to return to former work areas in Anatolia. Even so, with few refugees left to care for in Turkey and the Turkish nationalist government banning missionaries’ entrance to the country, the Scandinavian missionaries followed refugees to their new locations in Lebanon, Syria, Greece and the Armenian Republic. Here, the focus is on a Norwegian relief operation among Armenian refugees in Aleppo led by the aforementioned KMA missionary and nurse Bodil Biørn. Financed by donations from Scandinavian (mostly Norwegian) women, this humanitarian operation included a small orphanage caring for 18–20 sick children who were given health treatment for shorter or longer periods. In addition, KMA missionaries performed relief work in the refugee camps and evening schools for adults. When Biørn retired and went back to live in Norway in 1934, she was succeeded by the nurse Alette Andreassen. Even so, in her retirement, Biørn continued to write in the KMA journal, reporting about and translating letters written by her former Armenian colleagues and receivers of aid. KMA was the first women’s mission organization in Scandinavia that was established independently of already existing mission organizations.21 KMA missionaries and members belonged to the upper and upper middle classes and were educated women; many worked as teachers and nurses. Inspired by the international Holiness movement and the English Keswick Conventions, the first branch was established in Sweden in 1894, followed by Denmark and Finland in 1900 and Norway in 1902.22 The individual national KMA branches were founded partly because women could not exercise formal influence in the male-dominated mission societies. Influenced by women’s mission organizations in North America, Great 21  Inger Marie Okkenhaug, “Gender and Nordic Missions in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries,” Scandinavian Journal of History 28, no. 2 (2003), 73–82, here 76. 22  The Holiness movement, originating in the nineteenth century among Protestant churches in the United States, was inspired by J. Wesley’s and the Methodists’ teaching of human existence without sin. Inspired by the Holiness movement, in Keswick, England, from 1875 on, several thousand evangelical Christians gathered for annual conventions focusing on Christians’ spiritual empowerment to overcome a sinful life. https://snl.no/ hellighetsbevegelsen (last accessed 20.09.2018).

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Britain and Germany at that time, these women wanted to realize what they experienced as a divine calling to serve God in mission work at home or abroad. In addition, women were wanted as missionaries in many countries where male missionaries could not gain access to local women, who lived secluded from the men’s social world.23 By insisting on leading their own organization separately from the already existing missions and sending out women as full missionaries, KMA’s ideology and practice challenged the existing Protestant gender hierarchy.24 KMA was thus also a mobilizing force for promoting women’s right to take spiritual and professional responsibility for their own lives, as noted by theologian Kristin Norseth.25 In the Ottoman Empire, KMA missionaries had worked for a Protestant-­ style reformation among the Armenians since the early twentieth century. They promoted a particular type of personal reformation that, however, did not necessarily entail a separation from the Armenian Apostolic Church. After the genocide, recognizing the importance of the Armenian Apostolic Church for the reconstruction of post-genocide life, missionaries’ emphasized a type of evangelization aimed at a spiritual reformation among survivors, the overwhelming majority of whom were female refugees.26 The consequences of the gender imbalance in the aftermath of the war have been largely neglected in research on the lives and experiences of refugees. One reason for this lack of scholarship is the apparent absence of sources that tell the stories of female refugees in their own words.27 Yet, in the Armenian case there are missionary sources that record the stories of Armenian women refugees and of Scandinavian female missionaries who actively represented themselves as witnesses of these female refugees and their experiences. In letters, reports and postcards during and after the war, Scandinavian missionaries and relief workers wrote about the  Okkenhaug “Gender and Nordic Missions,” Scandinavian Journal of History, 76.  Kristin Norseth, La os bryte over tvert med vor stumhet: kvinners vei til myndighet i de kristelige organisasjonene 1842–1912 (Oslo: University of Oslo, 2007), 402. The largest mission organization in Norway, Lutheran Norwegian Missionary Society, did not give women full status as missionary until 1904. 25  Ibid. 26  Inger Marie Okkenhaug, “Religion, Relief, and Humanitarian Work among Armenian Women Refugees in Mandatory Syria, 1927–1934,” Scandinavian Journal of History 40, no. 3 (2015), 432–454. 27  Gatrell, A Whole Empire Walking, 127. As noted by Gatrell, “If refugees in general have been hidden from history, refugee women were doubly banished, except insofar as they were deserving supplicants or pitiful victims […].” 23 24

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fate of Armenians and especially about Armenian women and children.28 At the same time, as in most other sources, Armenian women’s own perspectives and voices are largely absent in the KMA material. The words of Armenians are often filtered through the relief worker/missionary who acted as authors, translators and publishers.29 And yet, after the war, Scandinavian missionaries chronicled the stories of Armenian survivors. The KMA journals in Denmark, Sweden and Norway published these biographical sketches in order to gain support for their activities and to draw attention to the sufferings of Armenian refugees. We do not know the criteria used for selecting the stories that were written down and published. It might have been the will to survive shown by these women and children. The mission board used the narratives of deportation, capture and survival for fundraising. Another component that motivated the publishing of these stories was the missionaries’ deep-­ felt moral duty to tell the world about the Armenian persecutions and massacres. The Scandinavian women had not only been eyewitnesses to genocide but had also lived through the inferno as relief workers. Thus, missionaries acted as witnesses of both massacres and rescues. Maria Jacobsen and Karen Marie Petersen, based at the American and Danish missions in the Anatolian cities Harpoot and Mezerh, had themselves rescued hundreds of children and women. Karen Jeppe, a Dane, working for the Orient Mission, had done the same in Urfa. In the summer of 1915, Alma Johansson and Bodil Biørn managed to save three Armenian female teachers and a few other Armenians at the Deutscher Hilfsbund’s station in Musch. After that Bodil Biørn worked as a nurse in several German orphanages in Anatolia, while Johansson undertook an extremely dangerous journey from Harpoot to Istanbul in order to witness for

28  On Scandinavia and the Armenian genocide, see Maria Småberg, “Witnessing the Unbearable. Alma Johansson and the Massacres of the Armenians, 1915,” in Karin Aggestam and Annika Björkdahl, eds., War and Peace in Transition. Changing Roles of External Actors (Lund: Nordic Academic Press, 2009), 107–127; Matthias Bjørnlund, “Before the Armenian Genocide: Danish Missionary and Rescue Operations in the Ottoman Empire, 1900–1914,” Haigazian Armenological Review 26 (2006), 141–156; and Matthias Bjørnlund, “Karen Jeppe, Aage Meyer Benedictsen, and the Ottoman Armenians: National Survival in Imperial and Colonial Settings,” Haigazian Armenological Review 28 (2008), 9–43, here 25. 29  Matthias Bjørnlund, “Recording Death and Survival: Karen Marie Petersen, Missionary Witness to Genocide,” http://www.armeniansgenocide.am/images/menus/555/ Matias%202012.pdf (last accessed 05.11.2018), 321.

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representatives from the international community.30 Writing about Alma Johansson, historian Maria Småberg argues that her witness narratives were a form of public resistance against the silence of the world concerning the Armenian genocide.31 Thus, the importance given to witnessing can be understood as a pattern of humanitarian practice that would later be taken up and “secularized” by other humanitarian organizations such as Médecins sans Frontiers.32 Samuel Martinez and Kathryn Libal are concerned with humanitarian representations, and they have emphasized the dilemmas that burden those who tell others’ stories.33 The dilemmas faced by Biørn and other KMA tellers are not revealed to us. However, for the Scandinavian missionary witnesses, listening to Armenian women of all ages, collecting their stories of survival and translating them for a Scandinavian audience was of utmost importance and gave meaning to their post-genocide lives. For the Armenians, telling their stories fulfilled a human need to cope with a trauma. On the other hand, it might also have been felt as an obligation towards the receivers, as some sort of a counter-gift in exchange for relief.34 However, the sharing of stories from the genocide also had the important function of memorializing the events within the Armenian community. As noted by historian Lerna Ekmekçioğlu, Armenian mothers were expected to read “educational texts” to their children that included eyewitness testimonies of the genocide by fellow Armenians. “Even during the war, as soon as they understood the systematic nature of 30   Matthias Bjørnlund, “Harput-Missionaries. Danish Missionaries in the Kharpert Province: A Brief Introduction,” 2015, https://www.houshamadyan.org/mapottomanempire/vilayetofmamuratulazizharput/harputkaza/religion/missionaries.html (last accessed 05.11.2018); Maria Småberg, “Mission and Cosmopolitan Mothering. Saving Armenian Mothers and Orphans, 1902–1947,” Social Science and Missions 30, no. 1–2 (2017), 44–73; Maria Småberg, “Witness Narrative as Resistance and Recovery – Alma Johansson and the 1915 Armenian Genocide,” in Anders Ahlbäck and Fia Sundevall, eds., Gender, War and Peace. Breaking up the Borderlines (Joensuu: University Press of Eastern Finland, 2014); Inger Marie Okkenhaug, “Scandinavian Missionaries, Gender and Armenian Refugees during World War I. Crisis and Reshaping of Vocation,” Social Sciences and Missions 23, no. 1 (2010), 63–93. 31  Småberg, “Witness Narrative as Resistance and Recovery”. 32  I thank Esther Möller for this comment. 33  Samuel Martinez and Kathryn Libal, “Introduction: The Gender of Humanitarian Narrative,” Humanity 10 (2014), 161–170, here 161. 34  Didier Fassin, Humanitarian Reason: A Moral History of the Present (Berkeley et  al.: University of California Press, 2012), 3–4.

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deportations and liquidation, Armenians began to record their experiences and collecting personal histories. They consciously collected evidence to bear witness for the future.”35 Thus, the reports in Scandinavian KMA journals had a role as witness-bearing for both Scandinavians and Armenians. In addition, since Armenian survivors did not have a homeland to which they could return, the stories published in the KMA journals also included descriptions of the lives and challenges that Armenians encountered as refugees.36

Armenian Female Refugees: Multiple Forms of Marginalization At the end of the World War, the largest numbers of Armenian refugees were in Syria (Fig. 3.1).37 It is estimated that by 1922 there were almost 67,000 Armenian refugees in Syria and 31,000 in Lebanon, both of which were French mandate areas. In addition, there were 10,000 orphans who were being taken care of by the Near East Relief (NER) in Lebanon and Syria. As the nationalist regime in Turkey continued persecuting Armenians, the number of refugees arriving in Syria and Lebanon rose throughout the 1920s.38 However, the situation in Syria during the 1920s was in many ways tense. The French had taken control of the country in 1920, and from 1923 to 1946 Syria was ruled as a French mandate, a rule that to a large extent was imposed on the local population. The French had to deal with a society that during the war years had experienced a severe famine in addition to military conflict. Large migrations of peasants to the cities led to a drastic growth in urbanization. Aleppo was the city that grew most quickly, partly due to the Armenian settlement, going from 127,000 inhabitants in 1914 to 320,000 in 1943. These booming cities suffered 35  Lerna Ekmekçioğlu, Recovering Armenia. The Limits of Belonging in Post-Genocide Turkey (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2016), 49. 36  Richard G. Hovannisian, The Republic of Armenia. Volume 1. The First Year, 1918–1919 (Berkeley et al.: University of California Press, 1974), 135. 37  In addition to more than a 100,000 refugees spread across the region in Palestine and Jordan, Iraq, Iran and Egypt. Migliorini, (Re)constructing Armenia in Lebanon and Syria, 32. 38  The number of native Armenians in Lebanon was 1550 and in Syria ca. 35,000. The Armenian communities of Lebanon and Syria were formed as a direct consequence of the inflow of refugees, as pointed out by historian Nicola Migliorini. Ibid.

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Fig. 3.1  Interior of an Armenian refugee camp close to Aleppo. Courtesy of National Archives of Norway

from high rates of unemployment. The hard times of the urban poor led to a strong resentment against the Armenians.39 In the mid-1930s, there was serious political unrest in Damascus, Aleppo and other cities. The Armenian refugees feared attacks and suffered because of strikes, lack of work and food.40 The large number of female refugees probably intensified the tensions between the local population and the refugees, because 39  Ellen Marie Lust-Okar, “Failure of Collaboration: Armenian Refugees in Syria,” Middle Eastern Studies 32, no. 1 (1996), 53–68, here 59, 61; Elizabeth Thompson, Colonial Citizens. Republican Rights, Paternal Privilege, and Gender in French Syria and Lebanon (New York: Columbia University Press, 2000), 11. 40  During the General Strike, which paralyzed the country for two months from January to March in 1936, Scandinavian aid included a soup kitchen for needy Armenians ran by the Karen Jeppe’s institution. The soup kitchen had been running in the years before, feeding up to 500 people with soup and bread. During the Strike, this number increased to 750. The Norwegians participated in this relief work, by financing food stamps to Armenian women that gave access to the soup kitchen. Letter from Alette Andreassen, 28.02.1936, in Kvartalshilsen 2 (1936), 4.

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they competed with Arabs for jobs in the silk and tobacco industry. By seeking income and employment outside the home, Armenian women were not only seen as taking jobs from unemployed Arab men but also as transgressing local gender norms. Last but not least, integration was also challenged by the patterns of settlement. As a result of government policy, and probably in accordance with their own preferences, the Armenian communities were often geographically separated from the Arab population. The refugee camps were found on the outskirts of towns in Syria and Lebanon. In the 1920s and 1930s, the French established separate Armenian living quarters. Armenians, seeing dispersion as a threat to both their security and communal solidarity, might have preferred to live concentrated. Single Armenian women who chose to live with their children in Arab neighbourhoods where the rent was lower than in other quarters of Aleppo also challenged the existing gender order. This was, for example, the case for one of the girls who had stayed in the Norwegian orphanage for some time, Varsenig Nalbadian, and her mother. After the daughter had left the orphanage, she stayed with her mother in a rented room in the Muslim quarter of Aleppo. There were several single Armenian women living in this Arab neighbourhood. In February 1936, during the Syrian General Strike, Arabs fired shots at the room where the Nalbadians were staying. Lacking male relatives who traditionally would have protected them, Armenian women had to appeal to French soldiers for security.41 Armenian women in the pre-genocide Ottoman Empire had lived their lives within a patriarchal family under a father, brother or other male relative’s authority. The majority of Armenians had lived in rural areas, were illiterate and worked as artisans and peasants.42 Girls were married at an early age. Based on sources from American missionaries in Harpoot in the 1890s, historian Barbara J. Merguerian has characterized gender relations in Armenian society as follows: A young bride was at the mercy not only of her husband, but of her mother-­in-­law and any male in the family, even the youngest boy. For years she was not allowed to speak without permission in the presence of her mother-in-­law. As a sign of their mute status, women were required to tie  Ibid.  Barbara J. Merguerian, “‘Missions in Eden’: Shaping an Educational and Social Program for the Armenians in Eastern Turkey (1855–1895),” in Heleen Murre-van den Berg, ed., New Faith in Ancient Lands. Western Missions in the Middle East in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries (Leiden: Brill, 2006), 241–261, here 253. 41 42

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a handkerchief over their mouths in public. They performed much of the physical labour, not only in the household, but also out in the fields.43

Writing in 1910, Biørn observed the same type of patriarchal structures and practices among Armenians in a society where “the men eat alone and demand unconditional obedience. The women are ignorant, do not know how to read and are married off by their parents.”44 Generally speaking, there were few educational opportunities for girls in Armenian society, even though the last half of the nineteenth century saw an increasing support for girls’ education, including among Armenians in rural areas in Anatolia.45 This was even more the case for the small minority of Armenians who belonged to the urban middle class. In a similar manner to Greeks and Turks, they were influenced by modernizing ideas from Western Europe and the United States. Protestant missionaries had been present among Armenians since the early nineteenth century, offering education to both boys and girls and contributing to modernizing influences. In addition, Armenian nationalists also established schools for both boys and girls.46 The tragedy of war and genocide had brought broad change to social patterns within Armenian communities. On the one hand, it had shattered the deep social and economic divide between the educated, wealthy and urban Armenians and the majority of illiterate peasants. Post-genocide conditions mixed together Armenians from different classes and different cultural and regional backgrounds. Women who in the pre-genocide society lived in separate social spheres now lived in the same camps, united by the gendered experiences of war. On the other hand, female refugees, who had been socialized in a strictly patriarchal community, were forced to devise new survival strategies and to take leading roles in defining new economic and social duties. This recalls Gatrell’s comment that “in the refugee camp, there were no ready-made institutions in which patriarchal government was secure”.47 Yet, in the reconstruction of Armenian society, the Armenian Apostolic Church—the traditionally dominant and fundamentally patriarchal religious institution—still played an essential role. The Armenian churches were among the first Armenian institutions to be  See Ekmekçioğlu, Recovering Armenia.  Kvartalshilsen 4 (1910), 28. 45  Merguerian, “‘Missions in Eden’,” 272. 46  See Razmik Panossian, The Armenians. From Kings and Priests to Merchants and Commissars (New York: Columbia University Press, 2006). 47  Gatrell, A Whole Empire Walking, 116. 43 44

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re-established in the refugee camps and later in the Armenian quarters in Lebanon and Syria.48 This was possible because the French colonial administration gave religious minorities internal autonomy, as had been the Ottoman practice through the millet system. According to Migliorini, “important moments in the life of the Armenians, such as marriages, divorces, birth registrations, continued to be regulated almost exclusively by Armenian religious authorities”.49 This meant that the traditional patriarchal rule of the Armenian Apostolic Church continued to play a fundamental role in Armenian lives after the genocide.50 Alongside the predominant Armenian Apostolic Church two other Armenian Church communities acted in Syria: the Armenian Roman Catholic Church and the Armenian Evangelical Church. The Armenian Evangelical Church, established in Istanbul in 1846, was the smallest of the three Armenian churches. After the World War, the Union of Armenian Evangelical Churches in the Near East was reorganized in Syria and Lebanon.51 As noted by Migliorini, the Armenian Evangelical community “was the religious community that was very severely damaged by the Genocide, in part on account of the small size of the Evangelical communities. The displacements resulted in the loss of most of the assets that were at the core of Armenian Protestant movement: the educational and social institutions.”52 Then again, the flexible, congregational nature of Protestant Christianity made it easier to re-establish the Church in the new refugee context.53 It is hardly surprising that the KMA missionaries in Syria engaged in the reconstruction of the local Protestant Church. Yet, the KMA sources do not tell us much about the relationship between female members of the Armenian Evangelical church and its male leadership. It is possible that the relations were as strictly patriarchal as in the Armenian Apostolic Church. However, there are indications that some Protestant Armenian women devised new arrangements for their refugee existence that had practical as well as spiritual consequences.  Migliorini, (Re)constructing Armenia in Lebanon and Syria, 53.  Ibid., 47. “The constitutional and political formula that resulted created favorable conditions for the Armenians; the community seized them.” 50  Ibid., 50. 51  World Council of Churches, “Union of the Armenian Evangelical Churches in the Near East,” https://www.oikoumene.org/en/member-churches/union-of-the-armenian-evangelical-churches-in-the-near-east (last accessed 05.11.2018). 52  Migliorini, (Re)constructing Armenia in Lebanon and Syria, 52. 53  Ibid., 52. 48 49

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Local Female Armenian Responses: The Bible Women A number of Armenian female refugees performed a new form of femininity, strengthening their agency by taking advantage of the opportunities provided by the Scandinavian missions’ power hierarchies (Fig. 3.2). This was the case for Marjam Tschaghlassian and Varter Minagossian, two genocide survivors who were employed by the KMA in Aleppo as Bible Women, a paid position that combined the roles of evangelist, relief worker and teacher.54 Both led women’s meetings in various refugee

Fig. 3.2  Armenian Bible Woman reading with female refugees, Aleppo. Courtesy of National Archives of Norway 54  There is little information available regarding the background of Marjam Tschaghlassian, but she was most likely educated at one of the many Protestant (missionary) institutions that offered girls education in the pre-war Ottoman Empire. Here she would have been made familiar with the Protestant faith and its stress on individual belief and reformation. At some point in the late 1930s, Varter succeeded Marjam Tschaghlassian as Bible woman. Varter Minagossian was a middle-aged widow and mother of five children. She was likewise educated at Protestant mission schools in the Ottoman Empire in Zeitun and Marasch and also a genocide survivor. Kvartalshilsen 4 (1939), 4.

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camps in Aleppo taking part in the more flexible, evangelical congregational life after the genocide. Varter Minagossian, moreover, wrote several reports that were translated and published in the KMA journal in Scandinavia. Several of these reports mentioned female refugees who experienced personal awakenings when attending the Norwegian-­ Armenian meetings. Usually these meetings combined preaching the Bible with teaching reading and writing.55 In 1938, Minagossian described Armenian women’s strong desire to become literate to the mission’s supporters in Scandinavia as follows: We have another meeting next to Miss (Karen) Jeppe’s house. I have many new pupils there who attend the teaching and the meeting. We have these meetings every Thursday. The pupils say that they (the meetings) have been a great help to them. We start with reading the Bible and then go on to the teaching. This year I have twenty-five pupils, in three classes. I teach pupils twice a week in two different locations. Eight of the pupils read in the Bible, the other pupils read in the basic and advanced level reading books. They have a strong wish to learn and work very hard in order to learn to read. This despite the fact that many have difficulties at home.56

Since most of the women in the refugee camps had to earn a living, during the summer season many worked as day labourers in fruit and vine orchards while some others cleared land by picking stones or worked as maids in private homes. Even so, around 30 women attended the weekly meetings led by Marjam Tschaghlassian, in which she taught reading, writing and scripture. The KMA women missionaries also opened two evening schools, one for women and one for men. Here, two Armenian women taught reading, writing, math and the Bible, while Biørn preached from the Bible and taught “cleanliness and its importance for healthiness”, thus combining her calling to evangelize with a humanitarian impetus to improve health conditions in the camps.57 Adult men and women, tired after a long working day but motivated by a wish to become literate, attended school two to three evenings a week. According to the missionary sources, women were the better students, and after some time the school for men closed down. The reason for closing down the school for

 Okkenhaug, “Religion, Relief, and Humanitarian Work,” 8.  Letter from Varter Minagossian, Kvartalshilsen 2 (1938), 7. 57  Kvartalshilsen 3 (1928), 7. 55 56

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men is not mentioned, but there might have been more offers for male adult education from other state and privately run relief organizations. Most of the female pupils had families to care for. Even so, around 20 women came regularly to class, many of whom had been married at the young age of 12–14 years and never learned to read or write. Several had lived in Turkish or Kurdish villages and been part of Muslim households, where they had not been given any formal education. This was in contrast to orphaned Armenian children who had ended up in orphanages run by the NER, various mission societies or Turkish authorities, where they were taught reading and writing in Armenian or Turkish, depending on who ran the institution.58 By teaching reading and writing, female Armenian teachers and Norwegian missionaries motivated by the Protestant wish for all people to be able to read the Bible in their own language, offered refugee women the key to literacy and thus opened up to them new avenues for improving their lives. For women, the ability to read and write entailed better chances on the job market and encouraged mothers to see to the education of their children. Thus, KMA’s evening schools can be characterized as a humanitarian effort, because they were also aimed at preventing poverty. In addition to teaching, Marjam Tschaghlassian and Varter Minagossian also visited Armenian women in their homes. Their motivations were based on both religious and relief-oriented goals: the Bible Women aimed to target refugees in need of humanitarian assistance and to offer religious guidance. Yet, Minagossian particularly emphasized the religious function of these visits, when she described calling on Armenian women in their homes as follows: “We talk about their problems in their religious lives. These visits are a great help. Many open their hearts, we pray together and they succumb to the Lord.”59 Here, Minagossian, who had herself survived the genocide and been a refugee, took on the role of spiritual counsellor, a role that traditionally had been reserved for men. The role of Bible woman thus gave Armenian women the assertiveness and authority to guide other women in their relationship with God, allowing them to 58  Inger Marie Okkenhaug, “Refugees, Relief and the Restoration of a Nation: Norwegian Mission in the Armenian Republic, 1922–1925,” in Hilde Nielssen et al., eds., Protestant Mission and Local Encounters in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (Leiden: Brill, 2011), 207–232, here 226–227. See also Donald E. Miller and Lorna T. Miller, Survivors. An Oral History of the Armenian Genocide (Berkeley et al.: University of California Press, 1999), 121–122. 59  Letter from Varter Minagossian, Kvartalshilsen 2 (1938), 7.

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truly challenge male ownership of religious practice. The empowering impact of their activities can be compared to that of Scandinavian women, whose own mission vocation challenged gender relations in Protestantism more generally. For the women visited by Minagossian, evangelicalism might have presented a spiritual source to meet daily challenges of unemployment, poverty and hunger. Living conditions worsened in times of economic crisis and political unrest. During the Syrian General Strike in 1936, work was especially difficult to find. Zarouhi, a widow from Zeitun, who had two small children and a blind mother to support, could only find work cracking nuts. She earned 8 pjastas, ca 40 Norwegian øre a day, far from being enough to survive on. Sometimes there was no work, which made the situation even worse. The KMA report, however, did not discuss the hardship of daily survival but focused on Zarouhi’s religious life. According to the report, Zarouhi had “come to life” at one of the Norwegian meetings and it was believed that her religious faith kept her going despite poverty and hardships.60 The KMA narratives also presented the Christian faith as giving strength, energy and confidence to very young girls, as in a text featuring Lousin and Vergine, two 12-year-old girls who were staying in the Norwegian orphanage: In Aziziè church there has been several awakenings. Yesterday there was a meeting for young people. Lousin and Vergine volunteered to testify about their Lord and Savior. The minister then gave them some questions, probably to be sure that the confessions were genuine. But these little girls answered with such conviction that it became a blessing for all present.61

According to the KMA report, Lousin and Vergine were two young girls vibrating with life and initiative. A male religious authority, an Armenian minister, acknowledged their personal conversion and religious experience. For these two young girls, religion was portrayed as both a moving influence and sustaining force. In addition, there are other examples of stories of survival in which Armenian identity is presented as a main source of energy and motivation for a woman to take action. This is the case in the story about Lousin’s mother, an evangelical widow named  Alette Andreassen, Kvartalshilsen 4 (1936), 3.  Alette Andreassen, Kvartalshilsen 2 (1936), 5.

60 61

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Mariam Koserian. Mariam, an exceptionally beautiful woman, had become the second wife of a cultivated, wealthy and caring Turkish man at the age of 12. But despite the comforts of an affluent Muslim household, Mariam escaped, explaining that “I would rather suffer with the Armenians than have Turkish wealth”.62 At the same time, in the Armenian community in interwar Aleppo, choosing evangelical Christianity could be also seen as disloyalty towards the Armenian heritage. Protestant Armenians at times met opposition from the members of the Armenian Apostolic Church. The women in the refugee camps were thus at times sceptical and unfriendly at their first encounter with a visiting Bible woman, and inquired if she “wanted to make them Protestants”.63 Sometimes, their attitude might change, for example when Minagossian gave assurances that she did not want to convert them to Protestantism but only to speak about Jesus. This, in turn, suggests that the Armenian Bible woman acknowledged religion and shared faith as a means of (psychological) rehabilitation. Minagossian’s attempts were obviously appreciated by at least some members of the Armenian communities in interwar Syria. In 1936, she was even allowed to preach in one of the churches in a village.64 This was a radical break with pre-war religious practices and the mute female as the archetype of Armenian woman. Reading Varter Minagossian’s reports about her activities as an evangelist and Bible woman in refugee camps in Aleppo during the late 1930s, we recognize that Armenian women had organized themselves in religious associations. By doing so, they acted in a similar manner to the KMA women in Scandinavia, who had also wanted to take responsibility for their own spiritual lives. As we have seen, in these religious associations, female refugees had a space to meet, pray and read the Bible. Taught by the evangelist, illiterate women had the chance to learn how to read and write. When the Scandinavian missionaries left the field by 1937, Minagossian became the prime mover of KMA’s humanitarian and missionary work in Aleppo. In her autobiography her own faith and willpower are presented as central factors inspiring her activities. In addition, she depicted the female missionary as playing a central role as the person who makes things happen. However, as an experienced Bible woman, widow  Kvartalshilsen 2 (1936), 5.  Kvartalshilsen 4 (1936), 4. 64  Ibid., 4. 62 63

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and mother, by the late 1930s Minagossian was leading meetings, teaching adult women and deciding who was worthy of Norwegian relief. She also instructed the refugee women in Aleppo to pray for their KMA “sisters” in Norway, who at the same time raised the funds that facilitated all relief work. “All our sisters in our associations here send many regards and ask that God may give you all strength and have mercy on you. My daughters send their regards and so do all the sisters you know.”65 Thus, Minagossian saw Armenian refugee women as an integral part of an imagined Christian sisterhood uniting them with donors and missionaries in Scandinavia. In this imagined transnational encounter, Armenian women, grounded in their faith, care and devotion, made themselves to be more than “deserving supplicants”.66 A shared belief in evangelical Christianity with its ideal of human equality created the conviction that Norwegian women, too, needed the prayers of Armenian refugees. Still, the relationship between the two groups would never be equal as long as Armenian women depended on humanitarian assistance from the outside. As noted by Didier Fassin, “compassion is a moral sentiment with no possible reciprocity […] the apparently disinterested gift assumes a counter gift in the form of an obligation linking the receiver to the benefactor”.67 Even so, while Minagossian and other refugee women showed their gratitude for gifts from KMA, they might have also seen their prayers for their “Norwegian sisters” not as an obligation, but rather a transnational contribution to the spiritual wellbeing of all of them (Fig. 3.3).

Conclusion This chapter has investigated three forms of femininity in the context of the encounter between Scandinavian female missionaries and Armenian female refugees. First of all, the missionaries represented themselves as saviours and witnesses of the genocide and particularly of the sufferings endured by Armenian women. As we have seen, in the eyes of Protestant women missionaries in interwar Syria, humanitarian relief work and evangelization could not be separated from each other. The KMA sources from refugee camps in Aleppo show that, apart from practical humanitarian  Kvartalshilsen 4 (1939), 6.  Gatrell, A Whole Empire Walking, 127. 67  Fassin, Humanitarian Reason, 3–4. 65 66

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Fig. 3.3  Bodil Biørn and Armenian women attending the KMA evening school, Aleppo c. 1930. Courtesy of National Archives of Norway

work, female refugees’ religious faith and spiritual development were recurring themes. In the missionaries’ interpretations, religion constituted a key source of resilience and rehabilitation. By assisting the Armenian refugees, the missionaries also served as witnesses of the gendered consequences of the genocide. Indeed, Armenian female refugees faced multiple forms of marginalization. At the same time however, Armenian female refugees also provided relief themselves, representing a form of empowered femininity. In this case, religion could serve as a source of agency: Accordingly, an evangelical awakening enabled some Armenian women to resist the dominating ideal of the humble, silent woman. In the framework of evangelical missionary activity, Scandinavian and Armenian women found a place to speak and some even found space to preach for a female audience. This was in sharp contrast to gender relations in both Protestant communities in Scandinavia and pre-genocide Armenian society, which was marked by a highly stratified patriarchy. Hence, in interwar Aleppo some Armenian women developed and performed a model of Protestant femininity that built on ideas

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and practices of individual religiosity, responsibility, sisterhood and female solidarity. For the Armenian evangelist Varter Minagossian, who wrote and published her own reports, religion was both a deeply felt spiritual longing and an occupation that secured her an income. Minagossian’s career as Bible woman employed by a Scandinavian women’s mission exemplifies the venture of Protestant women missionaries in interwar Syria as a combination of evangelization and practically oriented humanitarian relief.

CHAPTER 4

Maternalism and Feminism in Medical Aid: The American Women’s Hospitals in the United States and in Greece, 1917–1941 Francesca Piana

“WE ARE READY: PUT US ACROSS!” Written in orange capital letters, this was the final sentence at the end of a four-page brochure prepared by the American Women’s Hospitals (AWH), an American all-women medical humanitarian organization established in June 1917 in New York City by the War Service Committee of the Medical Women’s National Association. The brochure was published for the AWH’s first national fundraising campaign, which took place early in the spring of 1918, and it appeared alongside articles in journals as well as the campaign’s opening dinner and public conferences.1 The final goal was to raise $200,000 in  Archives of the American Women’s Hospitals, Legacy Center Archives, Drexel University College of Medicine, Philadelphia (hereafter AWH Records), Acc #144, box 33, The 1

F. Piana (*) University of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 E. Möller et al. (eds.), Gendering Global Humanitarianism in the Twentieth Century, Palgrave Macmillan Transnational History Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-44630-7_4

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order to “build (or acquire) and equip medical relief stations and dispensaries in Europe,” for which the women physicians would be solely responsible and which would be partially used to save the children of the Allies.2 The brochure, which aimed to convince donors that women physicians were indispensable to American medical war relief, stressed two interconnected elements: as trained professionals, they possessed the necessary medical training and skills to serve overseas; as women, they could “give wise and skillful care” while bringing “a woman’s atmosphere of comfort” that was characteristic of “hearth and home”.3 The AWH emerged in the United States as a reaction to women physicians’ exclusion from the Army Medical Reserve Corps and was composed of women physicians only, both at its American headquarters and overseas. Before the outbreak of the Second World War, the AWH worked in countries such as France, Serbia, Albania, Russia, Turkey, Armenia, and Japan to provide medical care to civilians in particular and only to a lesser extent to wounded soldiers. Greece became the most important mission of the AWH in the interwar period: the unexpected and dramatic exodus of one and a half million Ottoman Christians from Asia Minor, the Pontus and Eastern Thrace to a country of five million people—provoked by the Greco-Turkish War and the Convention concerning the Exchange of Greek and Turkish populations, signed on 30 January 1923—created a previously unforeseeable context for medical activism.4 For the women physicians of the AWH, the humanitarian crisis in Greece provided a professional opportunity: first, to provide medical relief to Ottoman refugees and to establish institutions and programmes for public health, and, second, from the mid-1930s, to improve the state-run institutions under the aegis of the Greek government. The AWH, which became a permanent organization, remained in Greece until 1941, when it temporarily evacuated due to the Axis occupation during the Second World War.5 American Women’s Hospitals in Europe organized by the War Service Committee of the Medical Women’s National Association, $200,000, 26.03.–06.04.1918, campaign headquarters: the Biltmore, New York. Capital letters in the original text. 2  Ibid. 3  Ibid. 4  Richard Clogg, A Concise History of Greece (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013). 5  On the AWH, Ellen Singer More, “‘A Certain Restless Ambition’: Women Physicians and World War I,” American Quarterly 41, no. 4 (1989), 636–660. Virginia Metaxas, “Ruth A. Parmelee, Esther P. Lovejoy, and the Discourse of Motherhood in Asia Minor and Greece

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Based upon documents from several American archives, this chapter looks at the creation of the AWH in the US and its work in Greece between 1917 and 1941.6 It not only revisits the motivations, actors, and processes behind the creation of the organization but also pays attention to the way discourses and practices of “social feminism, suffragism, and professionalism” as well as “women’s virtues” of dedication and care were renegotiated and received in Greece.7 In doing so, the chapter examines the institutional history of the AWH and the personal and professional paths of the most paradigmatic women physicians and nurses:8 Dr. Rosalie Slaughter Morton (1876–1968), the first chairperson of the AWH in 1917–1918; Dr. Esther Pohl Lovejoy (1869–1967), who chaired the organization from 1920 to 1967;9 Dr. Ruth Azniv Parmelee (1885–1973), who directed the Greek mission of the AWH for much of the interwar period;10 and Registered Nurse (R.N.) Emilie Willms (1887–1969), in the Early Twentieth Century,” in Ellen Singer More, Elizabeth Fee and Manon Parry, eds., Women Physicians and the Cultures of Medicine (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009), 274–293. Kimberly Jensen, Oregon’s Doctor to the World: Esther Pohl Lovejoy and a Life in Activism (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2012). Virginia Metaxas, “Working with the Sources: The American Women’s Hospitals in the Near East,” blog entry, http://archives.drexelmed.edu/blog/?page_id=923 (last accessed 08.01.2019). Isabel Kaprielian-Churchill, Sisters of Mercy and Survival: Armenian Nurses, 1900–1930 (Antelias: Armenian Catholicosate of Cilicia, 2012). Jaffa L. Panken, “Lest They Perish”: The Armenian Genocide and the Making of Modern Humanitarian Media in the U.S., 1915–1925, Ph.D. thesis (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, 2014). 6  The archives of the AWH, of the American Medical Women’s Association, of the Medical Women’s International Association, of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, and of the Near East Foundation. 7  More, “‘A Certain Restless Ambition’,” 651. 8  On transnational lives, Michelle Tusan, “The Business of Relief Work: A Victorian Quaker in Constantinople and her Circle,” Victorian Studies 51, no. 4 (2009), 633–661. Ellen Fleischmann, “‘I Only Wish I Had a Home on This Globe’: Transnational Biography and Dr. Mary Eddy,” Journal of Women’s History 21, no. 3 (2009), 108–130. Francesca Piana, “The Dangers of ‘Going Native’: George Montandon in Siberia and the International Committee of the Red Cross, 1919–1922,” Contemporary European History 25, no. 2 (2016), 253–274. Becky Jinks, “‘Making Good’ in the Near East: The Smith College Relief Unit, Near East Relief, and Visions of Armenian Reconstruction, 1919–1921,” in Jo Laycock and Francesca Piana, eds., Aid to Armenia: Humanitarianism and Interventions from 1890–2019 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, forthcoming). 9  More, “‘A Certain Restless Ambition’,” 640–642. 10  Archives of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, Houghton Library, Cambridge MA (hereafter ABCFM), box 56, ABC 77.1, Outline of the work of Dr. Ruth Parmelee.

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stationed in Greece from 1929 until the 1950s, who was one of Dr. Parmelee’s closest collaborators.11 The article looks at the connections that the four American women doctors and nurses established with the following groups: male American physicians, politicians, and humanitarians; Greek politicians and female Greek activists; Greek local and refugee doctors (both men and women); Greek refugee nurses; as well as refugees and patients. Building on the work of historian Malgorzata Anna Maksymiak—who provides a theoretically grounded example of how gender intersected with ethnicity and class to construct a plurality of otherness in 1930s Jewish-Arab history—this article argues that American women health professionals experienced forms of both oppression and empowerment and of difference and similarity and also that, at the same time, by working in Greece, they crafted “alternative entities and agencies” for themselves.12 They also concurred in simultaneously empowering and disempowering the refugee health staff, as well as the women and children that they treated and assisted.13 In doing so, American women health professionals professed a unique form of maternalism and feminism in medical aid at the crossroad of their work in the US and in Greece. In this chapter, I argue that the First World War and the Greco-Turkish War, which coincided with the end of the Ottoman Empire and the emergence of modern Turkey and a Middle East under European mandates, created contexts in which a small group of American women physicians and nurses could both fight for equality in medicine and create transnational networks of solidarity with the female and child refugees they worked with and assisted in Greece.14 While maternalist medicine in the US reached its apex with the approval of the Sheppard-Towner Act in 1921, which included state programmes for the welfare and hygiene of 11  The Obituary for Emilie Willms by Ethel S. Beer, Folder “Miss Emilie Willms Memorial Fund”, Box 101. Series 9, Record Group 1 (FA406), Rockefeller Archive Center, Sleepy Hollow NY (hereby RAC), Near East Foundation records (hereby NEF). 12  Malgorzata Anna Maksymiak, “‘Ezer Ke-Negdo’ in Zionism: The Cases of Gerda Luft and Gabriele Tergit,” in: MEDAON  – Magazin für jüdisches Leben in Forschung und Bildung 8 (2014), http://medaon.de/pdf/MEDAON_14_Maksymiak.pdf (last accessed 26.06.2019), 1–15, here 13. 13  Ibid., 3. 14  On medical humanitarianism from anthropology, see Sharon Abramowitz and Catherine Panter-Brick, Medical Humanitarianism: Ethnographies of Practice (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015); Miriam Ticktin, “The Gendered Human of Humanitarianism: Medicalising and Politicising Sexual Violence,” Gender & History 23, no. 2 (2011), 250–265.

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mothers and children, and while women physicians domestically oscillated between segregation and assimilation, the AWH promoted a particular form of maternalism and feminism in medical aid.15 By working overseas, women doctors patriotically supported the American government and fought for professional equality in medicine; at the same time and due to the fact that Ottoman refugees were mainly women and children (as the men had been drafted or made captives), they perpetuated in Greece the maternalist politics of the separate sphere well beyond the limits that maternalism had reached in the US.16 In doing so, the women physicians of the AWH produced a multiplicity of discourses around professionalism, maternalist social reforms, and feminist solidarity, proving that “maternalism and feminism coexisted and at times overlapped until the 1920s,” as Molly Ladd-Taylor, quoting historian of feminism Nancy Cott, has put it.17 In the US, since the mid-nineteenth century, women physicians had experienced decades of professional discrimination by men doctors and society at large, which relegated them to treating women and children only. This coincided with the fight for women’s suffrage in that country, which eventually saw the approval of the Nineteenth Amendment to the US Constitution in 1919, giving women the right to vote. This chapter argues that the women physicians of the AWH strongly opposed patriarchy in the US and strove for empowerment: aware of being college-­ educated, self-supporting and free from the strains of the patriarchal family, the women of the AWH were in positions of authority. Those who went to Greece created institutions and managed health staff, activities that would have been mostly denied to them at home.18 Nevertheless, there were battles that the women physicians of the AWH did not have to fight. Although in the US they were discriminated against on the basis of 15  Seth Koven and Sonya Michel, “Womanly Duties: Maternalist Politics and the Origins of Welfare States in France, Germany, Great Britain, and the United States, 1880–1920,” The American Historical Review 95, no. 4 (1990), 1076–1108, here 1079. Some of the earlier arguments were revised years later. Sonya Michel, “Maternalism and Beyond,” in Marian van der Klein et al., eds., Maternalism Reconsidered: Motherhood, Welfare and Social Policy in the Twentieth Century (New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2012), 22–37. 16  Leila J.  Rupp, Worlds of Women: The Making of an International Women’s Movement (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997). 17  Molly Ladd-Taylor, “Toward Defining Maternalism in U.S. History,” Journal of Women’s History 5, no. 2 (1993), 110–113, here 110; “Maternalism as a Paradigm,” Journal of Women’s History 5, no. 2 (1993), whole issue. 18  Esther Pohl Lovejoy, Women Physicians and Surgeons; National and International Organizations … a Review. (Livingston et al.: Livingston Press, 1940), 121.

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their gender, they did not suffer disadvantages on the basis of their race, religion, or class: all of them were white, Protestant and generally middle or upper class. Therefore, while contesting gender relations in the US, the women doctors of the AWH had an easier time finding commonalities with the racialized nationalism and imperialist drive of American men, being politicians and/or serving on the boards of the two major humanitarian organizations with which the AWH created ties, the American Red Cross (ARC) and the Near East Relief (NER). The women doctors of the AWH shared an understanding of transnational humanitarian aid as a vector of civilizing mission towards what they understood as the less civilized people of the Eastern Mediterranean region. Particularly at the beginning, women physicians described a prostrated Greek nation in which “contagious diseases, acute and chronic, spread by overcrowding in ships and camps during and after the migration, were hard to control,”19 in combination with orientalist discourses in which medical aid became a vector “for enlightenment and progress in personal and domestic hygiene”.20 However, such self-perceived cultural superiority would be mitigated over time by means of positive and fruitful professional and private interactions with the Greek people.21 In Greece, the supposed superiority of the white race and of the scientific medical and nursing training received in the US allowed women physicians to have a great deal of freedom in negotiating with Greek politicians and institutions, where, as women, they acted on an equal footing with the men in power. However, this chapter argues that the women physicians of the AWH fostered more than professionalism and female solidarity for themselves.22 As physicians, in Greece they provided curative medical relief to Ottoman Christian refugees, whose health conditions were dire, before  Ibid., 155.  AWH Records, box 9, The American Women’s Hospitals at Kokinia, Dr. Kalopothakis, undated. 21  “The […] lives [of women doctors] [had] been enriched; their views and sympathies broadened by intimate acquaintances with people of different countries – not only with the dominant races of Western Europe, but with those of older lands. Greeks, Turks, Levantines, Bulgarians, Comitadjis, Russian and Armenian Bolsheviks, [had] been deloused and cared of during sickness when their masks were off, and believe it or not, they [were] of the same general pattern as the peoples of the United States …” AWH Records, box 33, American Women’s Hospitals, 1933. See also, Jensen, Oregon’s Doctor to the World, 221. 22  Berteke Waaldijk, “Speaking on Behalf of Others: Dutch Social Workers and the Problem of Maternalist Condescension,” in Marian van der Klein et al., eds., Maternalism Reconsidered: Motherhood, Welfare and Social Policy in the Twentieth Century (New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2012), 82–98. 19 20

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engaging in both curative and preventive medicine directed at all, giving particular attention to mothers and children; to this end, they established hospitals, dispensaries, and clinics throughout the country. Because women doctors had experienced gender discrimination in the US, they were also in a better position to encourage forms of transnational solidarity: they promoted a generally respectful medical cooperation with the Greek refugee staff, composed of men and women who were absolutely essential to their work; they helped refugee women to be more than passive victims, training some of them as nurses, and professed scientific rather than innate understandings of motherhood, enabling mothers to raise healthy children and citizens amid the general context of Greek nation-building. These processes and exchanges were not free from tensions. Though the women doctors of the AWH empowered women refugees through training, they also discriminated against them on the basis of their perceived race, ethnicity, or working-class origins. By training Greek refugee women to become better mothers, the women doctors implied that the former were inferior and not skilled enough to raise their own children. Moreover, the women doctors relegated women refugees to the role of caregivers within the domestic space of the household and/or in the nursing profession, seeing them—both mothers and nurses—as vectors to serve the state and to transform male children into citizens and workers; this approach would generally be deemed to concur with their own emancipation but was not a step on the path to women’s suffrage. Indeed, even if the women physicians of the AWH were fully aware of their position as enfranchised American citizens, they had a far more ambiguous approach to the political, economic, and social rights of the women they treated, trained, and worked alongside, who would have to wait until 1952 to be granted the right to vote in Greek general elections.23

The AWH in the US The AWH was established through the engagement of a group of women physicians with the American government—which, for its part, did not allow women to serve as officers in the army—as well as in response to the 23  Tasoula Vervenioti, “The Adventure of Women’s Suffrage in Greece,” in Claire Duchen and Irene Bandhauer-Schoffmann, eds., When the War was Over. Women, War and Peace in Europe, 1940–1956 (London and New York: Leicester University Press, 2000), 103–118.

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the humanitarian needs of military and civilians overseas. Dr. Morton acted as the first chairperson of the AWH on a short 1-year mandate before the task fell to Dr. Lovejoy. Medicine and surgery ran in Dr. Morton’s family: she graduated from the Women’s Medical College of Pennsylvania in 1897, obtained postgraduate practice in Philadelphia and specialized in “surgery, internal medicine, and nervous diseases” in Europe.24 On her return, Dr. Morton worked as a gynecologist in Washington (DC) and moved with her husband to New York City, where, alongside many public offices, she established a practice in gynecology and surgery.25 After the death of her husband, with whom she did not have children, Dr. Morton left for France, Serbia, and Macedonia during the First World War, where she was introduced to the work of the Scottish Women’s Hospitals, which she wished to replicate in the US.26 Established in Great Britain in 1914 by Dr. Elsie Inglis, the Scottish Women’s Hospitals was an all-female unit that included physicians, nurses, drivers, cooks, and clerks operating in war zones in France, Serbia, and Russia.27 Dr. Morton belonged to the second generation of women physicians in the US. By the turn of the twentieth century, medicine was a profession open to women, yet it remained a field dominated by men. Historians of medicine have argued that women had been entering medical schools since the mid-nineteenth century; Elizabeth Blackwell, the first woman physician in the US, graduated in 1849. They were trained both in co-­ educational institutions and in all-female colleges.28 Even where women and men physicians received similar training, women were more likely to specialize in women’s health, such as gynecology and obstetrics in private practice, partially in response to men’s control of surgery and the difficulty of entering the hospitals and partially due to the fact that the majority of women physicians saw in activities around domesticity a natural extension of their superior “feminine” virtues. In Dr. Morton’s words, women

 More, “‘A Certain Restless Ambition’,” 640.  Ibid. 26  Ibid., 641. 27  Eileen Crofton, Angels of Mercy: A Women’s Hospital on the Western Front 1914–1918 (Edinburgh: Birlinn Limited, 2013). 28  Ellen Singer More, Restoring the Balance: Women Physicians and the Profession of Medicine, 1850–1995 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999). Regina Markell Morantz-Sanchez, Sympathy and Science: Women Physicians in American Medicine (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985). 24 25

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physicians possessed a “mother heart [that had] scientific facts to support intuition and sympathy”.29 Because of the gendered segregation in the medical profession, women physicians often turned to other women for support, stressing the importance of female solidarity. From the end of the nineteenth century, all-­ women medical organizations were created in the US, such as the Portland Medical Club, established by Dr. Lovejoy as “an all-female professional and social association that promoted Progressive Era social medicine in Portland”30. Maternalist medicine created institutions for the health of indigent mothers and children in industrialized American cities and used education as a tool for the scientific and moral uplifting of their patients. However, by the turn of the century, women physicians were keen to abandon the professionalism based on the separate sphere of female caregiving and instead aimed to join men physicians in a scientific medical professionalism.31 In 1915, squeezed between gender assimilation and their separate sphere in medicine, a few women physicians founded the Medical Women’s National Association (MWNA, which would become the American Women’s National Association), a national organization aimed at promoting their role in medicine, providing mutual support and discussing women’s health.32 The creation of the MWNA, however, did not achieve unanimity among women physicians: some tended towards gender segregation, whereas the younger generations were keener to assimilate with male colleagues.33 This explains why only one-third of women physicians signed up for membership to the MWNA, as the majority preferred not to be associated with a separatist organization and instead became members of the American Medical Association, established in 1847, which was open to both men and women.34 Tensions between gender assimilation and the separate sphere in medicine deepened during the First World War. Historian Ellen Singer More claims that “the experiences of the war demonstrated a double truth about 29  Rosalie S. Morton, A Woman Surgeon: The Life and Work of Rosalie Slaughter Morton (New York: Stokes, 1938), 7. 30  Jensen, Oregon’s Doctor to the World, 54. 31  More, Restoring the Balance; Markell Morantz-Sanchez, Sympathy and Science. 32  Archives of the American Medical Women’s Association, Legacy Center Archives, Drexel University College of Medicine, Philadelphia (hereafter AWNA Records), Acc #37, box 56, Councilor’s meeting, Medical Women’s National Association, Chicago, 11.06.1918. 33  More, Restoring the Balance, Chapter 5. 34  Markell Morantz-Sanchez, Sympathy and Science, 278–279.

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the role and status of women physicians in America: as a group, society still held them responsible for much of the nurturance modern medicine could be called on to deliver. Yet, as individuals they were held accountable to a modern standard of professional values and demeanor.”35 During the annual meeting of the MWNA in June 1917, a Committee on War Service was created to inquire into “how many women physicians and surgeons in the United States” were available to “render war service”. A statement was published in the Medical Women’s Journal so that women physicians could fill out a document in which they expressed their “willingness for patriotic service”. The collected documents were sent to the General Medical Board of the Council for National Defense and the ARC, showing how women physicians could be of service in wartime. Such an initiative was much needed: according to American law, only male physicians could become members of the Medical Service Corps, and yet in 1917 the American government was short of 2000 physicians. Therefore, women physicians petitioned the American government to be included in the Medical Service Corps. During the wait for the law to be changed—something that would only happen during the Second World War—the AWH was established, in which “women physicians and surgeons [were] ready to serve the country at home and abroad […]”.36 Institutionally, the AWH was composed of an Executive Committee—a decision-making body that met regularly in NYC and was called annually to appoint the sub-committees for finance, press, and auditing—a national sub-committee as well as sub-committees in the various states where the organization operated. The AWH was “to develop a national organization of women physicians for medical and surgical war service” by combining “patriotic and humane service, that it may be available for the use of our Government and those of our Allies during the war and for reconstruction as long as that service may be required”.37 Originally, the work of the AWH was divided nationally and transnationally: the Home Service was to oversee hospitals for acute cases among soldiers or civilians as well as convalescent and reconstruction hospitals. It went so far as to include vocational schools for soldiers, care for soldiers’ dependents, care for the women and children of interned civilians, and education of women for war  More, “‘A Certain Restless Ambition’,” 654.  AWH Records, box 31, Letter by Dr. Rosalie Slaughter Morton and Dr. Mary M. Crawford, undated, probably summer of 1917. 37  AWH Records, box 30, Rules, undated, probably 1917. 35 36

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relief. Overseas, the AWH would assist the American military, as well as the military from the Allied powers and needy civilians.38 From the beginning of the AWH’s activities, the organization was far more active transnationally than nationally (where the programmes were smaller-scale), and it concentrated its work more on civilians—especially women and children— than on the military. By working abroad, the women physicians of the AWH aimed to serve the American government, help people in need and pursue the professional goal of being equals to men physicians in the US. These committed women knew all too well what it meant to be second-class citizens, as it was only in 1919 that American women received the right to vote and to be elected, and they were marginalized professionals in a field dominated by men. Therefore, the women physicians of the AWH made uncompromising decisions that challenged gendered relations both in the US and in Greece. Institutionally, at its headquarters the AWH was an all-women organization, whereas it was mainly men who served on the boards of other humanitarian organizations, such as the ARC and the NER, despite the fact that the founder of the ARC was the well-known Clara Barton (1821–1912). In their personal lives, they lived independently from male breadwinners, did not have household obligations, as they were often childless, and prioritized work. In Greece, where women were highly under-represented in the public sphere, the female American physicians implemented humanitarian operations, ran hospitals and managed both refugee men physicians and nurses; in the US, it was instead men who were in positions of authority in hospitals, with the exception of women’s hospitals such as the Mary Thompson Hospital, and men who managed the overseas missions of the ARC and the NER. These features made of the AWH a unique organization.39  Ibid.  On the history of humanitarianism, Julia Irwin, Making the World Safe: The American Red Cross and a Nation’s Humanitarian Awakening (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013).; Julia Irwin, “Nurses without Borders: The History of Nursing as U.S. International History,” Nursing History Review 19 (2011), 78–102; Keith D. Watenpaugh, Bread from Stones: The Middle East and the Making of Modern Humanitarianism (Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 2015); Davide Rodogno, “Beyond Relief: A Sketch of the Near East Relief’s Humanitarian Operations, 1918–1929,” Monde(S) 6 (2014), 45–64, Bertrand M. Patenaude, The Big Show in Bololand: The American Relief Expedition to Soviet Russia in the Famine of 1921 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2002); Dzovinar Kévonian, Réfugiés et diplomatie humanitaire: les acteurs européens et la scène proche-orientale pendant l’entre-deux-guerres (Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 2004); Bruno Cabanes, The 38 39

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However the goal of professional equality went hand-in-hand with the AWH’s endorsement of the discourse of separate spheres, which stressed the difference between men and women. As we have seen, despite women physicians’ promotion of an equal medical professionalism, and despite the slow decline of medical maternalism in the US, the fact that the American women physicians in Greece mainly treated women and children allowed them to perpetuate maternalism, especially through the means of nursing programmes and practices of scientific motherhood. Interestingly, motherly qualities of care and nurturing were given greater focus in the AWH brochures than in reports or private correspondence. In the brochures, we see several kinds of images—Dr. Parmelee inspecting the infant ward, or a nurse training a mother who holds a baby or images of newborn babies brought to the AWH clinics to be weighed—according to the Christian iconography of the mother and the child.40 Moreover, with the exception of a few pictures portraying male patients, one is left with the impression that the AWH worked almost exclusively for women and children, which was the organization’s main—yet not its only—field of action. Why was this imagery chosen? For fundraising reasons. The Great War and the Origins of Humanitarianism, 1918–1924 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014); Branden Little, “An Explosion of New Endeavours: Global Humanitarian Responses to Industrialized Warfare in the First World War Era,” First World War Studies 5, no. 1 (2014), 1–16; Melanie S.  Tanielian, The Charity of War: Famine, Humanitarian Aid, and World War I in the Middle East (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2018). Particularly on Greece, Louis P.  Cassimatis, American Influence in Greece, 1917–1929 (Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 1988); Robert L.  Daniel, American Philanthropy in the Near East, 1820–1960 (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1970); Dimitra Giannuli, “American Philanthropy in Action: The American Red Cross in Greece, 1918–1923,” East European Politics and Societies 10, no. 1 (1996), 108–132; Davide Rodogno, “The American Red Cross and the International Committee of the Red Cross’ Humanitarian Politics and Policies in Asia Minor and Greece (1922–1923),” First World War Studies 5, no. 1 (2014), 83–99; Elisabeth Kontogiorgi, Population Exchange in Greek Macedonia: The Rural Settlement of Refugees 1922–1930 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010). For gender and humanitarianism, Dimitra Giannuli, “‘Errand of Mercy’: American Women Missionaries and Philanthropists in the Near East, 1820–1930,” Balkan Studies 39, no. 2 (1998), 223–262; Rebecca Gill, Calculating Compassion: Humanity and Relief in War, Britain 1870–1914 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2013). See the project run by Dolorès Martín Moruno at the University of Geneva, “Ces femmes qui ont fait l’humanitaire: une histoire genrée de la compassion de la Guerre Franco-Prusienne à la Seconde Guerre mondiale.” Francesca Piana, The Global Governance of Refugee Protection. Forced Displacements and Humanitarian Aid after WWI, in preparation. 40  Metaxas, “Ruth A.  Parmelee, Esther P. Lovejoy, and the Discourse of Motherhood”; Heide Fehrenbach and Davide Rodogno, eds., Humanitarian Photography: A History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015).

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AWH, which depended on American money, knew both that among its supporters were Christians who would be moved by images of pietas and that the American audience was still more open to seeing women physicians treating other women and children than to see them treating men. Who were the women physicians affiliated with the AWH and sent abroad? In addition to the small group of women doctors at the headquarters, they were trained physicians who had expressed their willingness to partake in medical humanitarianism by registering with the Medical Women for War Service. They were medical personnel (physicians and students), scientific personnel (graduates in dentistry, chemistry and pathology) and lay personnel from the Junior American Volunteer Aid.41 The majority of women physicians received a salary, at times paid by the AWH and other times by partner organizations, and their travels were reimbursed; only a small number volunteered. The great majority of women physicians had practiced domestically, while a few came from the missionary field. All were expected to “work for seven days a week, full time on all working days” and would “abide by all rules, regulations, and orders of the service,” promising to work “loyally and undividedly” for the US government.42 In the interwar period, the AWH sent out personnel who either worked directly for the organization or were affiliated with other humanitarian institutions, such as the ARC and the NER. In the first category, we find 44 women physicians, five men physicians, four women dentists and many nurses; in the second, there were 72 women physicians.43 In 1917–1918, the AWH did not have the money to establish its own hospitals in Europe and instead affiliated with the ARC.44 At first, the cooperation was not an easy one: the ARC was concerned about the AWH’s suffragism.45 However, in time, and especially due to the medical needs in Europe, the ARC agreed that the AWH would finance its work in the US and take charge of 41  For the medical women “any woman physician resident in and loyal to the United States and eligible for membership in the Medical Women’s National Association is eligible for registration” as well as “any medical student resident in and loyal to the United States, and who upon graduation will become eligible to membership in the Medical Women’s National Association is eligible for registration.” AWH Records, box 30, Rules, undated, probably 1917. 42  AWH Records, box 5, document with no title, signed by Elliott and two witnesses, Anna Beckman and Lillian Koffman, 23.10.1920. 43  Lovejoy, Women Physicians and Surgeons, 220. 44  AWH Records, box 30, letter by the chairman of the organization committee to Dr. Mead, 31.05.1918. 45  More, “‘A Certain Restless Ambition’,” 650.

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sending personnel for hospitals and dispensary units to serve under the direction of the ARC, which would “equip, establish, and maintain such medical units..46 Due to this agreement, the AWH understood itself as a clearinghouse for the ARC, which selected 35 women physicians to be sent to Europe in 1918. From 1922, the AWH also took care of the medical work in the orphanages’ dispensaries of the NER, which were moved out of Anatolia in the fall of 1922. These examples show that women physicians of the AWH created coalitions with men in positions of authority at the ARC and NER, who, in turn, supported the organization because it complemented, through medical care, their humanitarian engagement in the Eastern Mediterranean region. It was a win-win situation. As for the leadership of the AWH, Dr. Lovejoy became the new chairperson in 1920 and would stay in place until 1967. Despite the fact that Dr. Morton and Dr. Lovejoy lived almost parallel lives, they came from different social backgrounds, the former from the privileged Southern medical aristocracy and the latter from a more humble background. These differences led Dr. Lovejoy to embrace a professionalism based on gender equality as well as a marked suffragism.47 Born to a working-class family in Washington, DC, as a child she enjoyed nature and helped with the small family business, managed by an abusive father and a strong-willed mother, who later escaped her husband, bringing some of her children to Portland. There, Dr. Lovejoy graduated from the University of Oregon Medical Department, paying for her studies by working in a department store, before privately practicing gynecology and obstetrics. She married twice and was the mother of a son, who died in childhood.48 In contrast to Dr. Morton’s romanticized approach to the role of women in medicine, for which she was criticized despite her pivotal role in creating the AWH, Dr. Lovejoy was a vocal suffragist; she was a friend of Dr. Anna Howard Shaw, a leading American campaigner for women’s suffrage, and also stood as the first woman to be a congressional candidate in 1920.49 Dr. Lovejoy was far from the only woman physician active in women’s rights at the turn of the century. Among the organizations connected to the AWH was the Women’s Advisory Committee of the National Council of Defense, and, as the most influential women’s organization, the Women’s Suffrage Association, which donated a considerable amount 46  AWH Records, New York City, box 30, A meeting of the Executive Board of the AWH, 11.04.1918. More, Restoring the Balance, 137–140. 47  More, “‘A Certain Restless Ambition’;” Jensen, Oregon’s Doctor to the World. 48  Ibid., 10–97. 49  More, “‘A Certain Restless Ambition’.” Jensen, Oregon’s Doctor to the World, 2.

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of money to the AWH, as did the National League for Women’s Service.50 In 1917, the women physicians of the AWH celebrated women’s suffrage in the state of New York and assured President Woodrow Wilson that their “first official act of business as enfranchised citizens be to forward [… their] pledge of Undivided loyalty”.51 Two years later, in 1919, the Nineteenth Amendment to the US Constitution would eventually give American women the right to vote. As historian Kimberly Jensen argues, Dr. Lovejoy developed a deeply feminist understanding of women’s suffering in wartime, of their place in society and of international maternalist medical activism. First, in her view, men and women suffered the consequences of warfare differently and therefore women should be given a greater degree of protection. In 1918, she observed that French women had been raped and economically exploited by the Germans in Evian.52 In the fall of 1922, the Greek and Armenian women who happened to be in Smyrna after the Turkish cavalry’s entry into the city were often separated from their families, and some delivered babies on the piers while waiting to be evacuated.53 Second, Dr. Lovejoy stressed the necessity of strengthening overall the position of women in society and of acknowledging their specific contribution as citizens.54 Along these lines, she fiercely pushed for the AWH’s distinctive medical work to be given credit, and she stressed several times that women physicians were in charge of the institutions that had been created overseas.55 Third, she suggested specific forms of gendered medical activism, calling for it to be inclusive and equal.56 To her, assisting people in distress would not be achieved by imposing American medical practices in other countries but rather by establishing productive exchanges with national institutions and colleagues, thus respecting their knowledge and experiences.57 In France, American women physicians were not called to “supplant French physicians and midwives but could work in cooperation with 50  Archives of the Medical Women’s International Association, Legacy Center Archives, Drexel University College of Medicine, Philadelphia (hereafter MWIA Records), Acc #271, box 13, Medical Women’s International Association, minutes, executive committee. 51  AWH Records, New York City, box 30, A meeting of the Executive Board of the AWH, 08.11.1917. 52  Jensen, Oregon’s Doctor to the World, 136–137. 53  Ibid., 172–174. 54  Ibid., 188–189. 55  Ibid., 184–185. 56  Ibid., 167. 57  Ibid., 132–133.

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them to assist women in need”.58 In Greece, qualified local and refugee physicians and nurses were also hired by the AWH.59 Two other elements are important in understanding the history of the AWH in the interwar period. First, despite its goal of working both domestically and transnationally, it was only during the Great Depression that the AWH implemented programmes in the US.  It did so in southern states, such as Kentucky, Tennessee, North Carolina, and South Carolina, where the organization undertook programmes of vaccination and education for all, as well as welfare programmes specifically targeting mothers and children.60 The fact that the AWH was still largely involved in welfare programmes for women and children in Greece in the late 1920s might have inspired the organization to recognize better the needs of southern communities and to perpetuate maternalism in the US well beyond the approval of the Sheppard-Towner Act in 1921. Moreover, the AWH documents suggest that women physicians treated not only white Americans but also African-Americans.61 It is possible that the experiences that women physicians had accumulated in the Near East, where they medically treated so-called nominal Christians—that is, Greek Orthodox and Armenians of the Apostolic Church—as well as Muslims, pushed them to challenge the racist segregation in the US.62 The second important element is that the AWH was associated with the Medical Women’s International Association (MWIA): Dr. Lovejoy was the chairperson of both the AWH and the MWIA, and women physicians from the AWH sometimes attended the meetings of the MWIA.63 Alongside the creation of the AWH, the establishment of the MWIA in  Ibid., 133.  Ibid., 183–184. 60  AWH Records, box 34, American Women’s Hospitals, summary of the 1940 report of the medical service committee to the Medical Women’s National Association, home service. 61  A photograph is captioned as follows: “A AWH nurse in a mountain community immunizing a colored men against typhoid.” AWH Records, box 34, American Women’s Hospitals, rural and mountain medical service, 1941. 62  Ussama Samir Makdisi, Artillery of Heaven: American Missionaries and the Failed Conversion of the Middle East (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2008). Two important references on women’s and gender history in American missions. Dana Lee Robert, American Women in Mission: A Social History of Their Thought and Practice (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1996). Barbara Reeves-Ellington, Kathryn Kish Sklar and Connie Anne Shemo, eds., Competing Kingdoms: Women, Mission, Nation, and the American Protestant Empire, 1812–1960 (Durham: Duke University Press, 2010). 63  Jensen, Oregon’s Doctor to the World, 221–222; Caroline Rusterholz, “English and French Women Doctors in International Debates on Birth Control (1920–1935),” Social History of Medicine 31, no. 2 (2018), 328–347. 58 59

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1919 was an absolute novelty that crafted unprecedented possibilities for exchange and discussion among women physicians from different countries. In international gatherings, the women physicians who were members of the organization shared their own writings and professional experiences, discussed strategies and showed an active commitment to the advancement and equality of women in medicine and women’s health.64 It is from this rich set of discourses, practices, exchanges, and ­experimentations both nationally and internationally that the first group of American women physicians started working for the AWH in Greece.

The AWH in Greece The first programmes of the AWH targeted civilians in France and Serbia; in early 1919, the organization sent a few women physicians to Asia Minor and Armenia.65 From the fall of 1922, the AWH concentrated its medical programmes on the Greek islands and mainland. Indeed, Dr. Lovejoy, who had planned to go to Moscow, changed her plans and instead made her way to Smyrna in September 1922, where she witnessed the ethnic cleansing of Ottoman Christians and assisted women in delivering their babies in the midst of the tragedy.66 Being on the spot convinced Dr. Lovejoy to intervene immediately by establishing anti-epidemic and emergency medical work directed at men and women as well as specific medical programmes for the large number of mothers and babies among the refugees. In time, the work of the AWH would include the creation of dispensaries and hospitals, the training of nurses and cooperation with the Greek government. The initiatives that the AWH took in Greece were the combination of decisions made by different actors: the women physicians; the Athens sub-­ committee of the AWH, which worked closely with Greek and international institutions; and the NYC headquarters, in cooperation with the ARC and the NER. Here is the list of the women physicians who led the AWH mission in Greece from 1922 to 1941: in 1922–1923, it was Dr. Mabel E. Elliott, who was first stationed in various cities in the Eastern  MWIA Records, box 11, The Medical Women’s International Association, an historical sketch, 1919–1950, by Esther Pohl Lovejoy, M.D., and Ada Chree Reid, M.D. 65  Dr. Clara Williams and Dr. Elsie Mitchell were sent in cooperation with the NER to Asia Minor, whereas Dr. Mabel Elliott was sent to Armenia. AWH Records, New York City, box 30, regular meeting of the Executive Board of the AWH, 13.02.1919. 66  AWH Records, New York City, box 31, regular meeting of the Executive Board of the AWH December 28.12.1922. Metaxas, “Ruth A.  Parmelee, Esther P. Lovejoy, and the Discourse of Motherhood,” 274. 64

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Mediterranean region and the Caucasus, and later acted as chief of the Greek mission; in 1922–1925, Dr. Sarah Foulks carried out general medical and anti-tuberculosis work for the AWH in Athens and took the lead of the Greek mission when Dr. Elliott resigned; in 1925, Dr. Elfie Richards Graff, who had served with the AWH in Russia, replaced Dr. Foulks; and she was later substituted by Dr. Parmelee in 1928, who stayed in place until 1941.67 During the early years, the AWH employed American nurses and administrators, as well as 30 local and refugee doctors and 100 nurses, both graduates and those in training, who implemented daily tasks under American supervision.68 Once the emergency was over and the medical work combined both curative and preventive medicine, the number of the local staff employed by the AWH decreased: in 1932 Dr. Parmelee wrote that there were five Greek doctors and one Armenian doctor on the staff of the Kokkinia hospital, the main structure that the AWH ran in the interwar period.69 Parallel to the crucial inputs from Dr. Lovejoy at the American headquarters, Dr. Parmelee largely contributed to the development of the mission in Greece. Yet her profile, despite similar medical training, was very different from those of Dr. Morton and Dr. Lovejoy, showing the diversity in background and experiences even among the small group of women physicians in the AWH. Dr. Parmelee, whose father was also a physician, was born into a missionary family, stationed in the Ottoman city of Trebizond on the Black Sea and working for the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM). As was common among American missionaries, as a child Parmelee travelled to the US for her education: she studied at Oberlin College before obtaining a medical degree at the University of Illinois in 1912 and a specialization in women’s health at the International Philadelphia Women’s Hospital in 1914. Freshly graduated—and speaking Armenian, Greek and Turkish—Dr. Parmelee was hired by the ABCFM and moved back to Anatolia, this time assigned to the mission of Harpoot, where she stayed until 1922, when she moved to Salonica with the Greeks expelled from the Ottoman lands. She stayed there until 1927, when she went on leave in the US, and 67  AWH Records, New York City, box 31, regular meeting of the AWH, 24.09.1925. Here are the names of the other women physicians working in Greece: Frances M. Flood, Regina F.  Keyes, Lilla Ridout, Jane E.  Robbins, Olga Stastny. Lovejoy, Women Physicians and Surgeons, 245. 68  AWH Records, box 9, letter from B.L. Horn, business manager of the AWH to “dear friends” (headquarters of the AWH in the US), 01.02.1923. 69  AWH Records, box 9, report to the government by Parmelee, undated but likely 1932.

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returned in 1928 to take the lead of the AWH Greek mission. Throughout her life, Dr. Parmelee referred to herself as a missionary doctor, even when she was associated with supposedly secular organizations like the Near East Foundation and, during the Second World War, the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration.70 What did the AWH accomplish in Greece? Broadly speaking, the organization treated both men and women. In the immediate aftermath of the fall of Smyrna, it created medical facilities on the islands of Lesbos, Chios, and Crete.71 Soon afterwards, hospitals, clinics, dispensaries, and a motor medical service run by the AWH opened in and around the cities of Salonica and Athens, on the islands and in refugee camps throughout the country.72 In each institution, the AWH staff offered general and specialized treatment for dispensary and hospitalized patients, with particular attention given to ophthalmology, as trachoma was common among refugee children, and with a ward for women and children.73 The AWH also engaged in establishing nursing programmes for women and in setting up welfare and education programmes for women and children. By the outbreak of the Second World War, the AWH had, in Greece, opened 26 independent hospitals, 14 orphanage infirmaries with the NER and one hospital with the ARC; it had also opened 121 independent clinics and dispensaries as well as 24 with the NER. Some of them were run for shorter periods, while others were closed down when the AWH felt that the local institutions could adequately cope with the medical needs of the population; the organization then opened new ones in areas where refugees were in more dire conditions.74 As we have seen, the humanitarian crises of the 1920s created unprecedented medical needs, opened a space for an institution like the AWH to flourish and encouraged cooperation between Greek and international institutions. Institutionally, in Greece in 1923, the AWH—aiming to improve coordination—created a sub-committee in Athens, composed of  ABCFM, Outline of the work of Dr. Ruth Parmelee, box 56, ABC 77.1. Parmelee’s salary was paid by the ABCFM until the mid-1930s. AWH Records, box 31, Letter on Parmelee’s salary, 08.03.1934. Francesca Piana, “Dr. Ruth A.  Parmelee: Witnessing the Armenian Genocide and (Re)Negotiating the Self,” papier d’actualité, Fondation Pierre du Bois (2015), 1–6. 71  Lovejoy, Women Physicians and Surgeons, 120–121. 72  AWH Records, box 9, Star in the East: The American Women’s Hospitals in Greece, July 1936 by Dr. Parmelee. 73  Ibid. 74  Lovejoy, Women Physicians and Surgeons, 242. 70

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Dr. Elliott as the first chairperson, Dr. Sarah Foulks, Dr. Mary Kalopothakis—the first woman physician in the history of modern Greece—and Mrs. Chry and Mrs. Marian Cruikshank as secretaries.75 In time, the sub-committee would welcome, among others, Charles B. Eddy, from the Refugee Settlement Commission created under the auspices of the League of Nations, as its secretary.76 From the outset, the AWH won the support of the Greek government, which saw in the work of the organization the possibility of complementing and improving the existing, yet still fragile, public health system.77 Despite the fact that the documents of the AWH seem to suggest that the organization worked in a vacuum (there are very few references in the documents to the political changes that interwar Greece underwent, such as from monarchy to republic to the authoritarian government of Ioannis Metaxas or from the Axis occupation to the resistance), an embryonic Greek health system had emerged in the nineteenth century, modelled on the German system, as the first king of independent Greece was Bavarian.78 However, by the beginning of the twentieth century, in addition to doctors working in private practice and popular healers, “Greece’s health system was based mainly on the institutional health services of the army, municipal authorities and private charities,” thus failing to address the medical needs of many people.79 Moreover, the AWH built on the experience of cooperation that the Greek government had acquired from 1918 75  A special meeting of the Executive Board of the American Women’s Hospitals was held on Monday, June 4th, at 5 P.M. at headquarters, 637 Madison Avenue, New York. Members present Dr. Radcliff, Dr. Bentley, Dr. Mosher, Dr. Wallin and Dr. Lovejoy. AWH Records, box 31, Dr. Lovejoy presiding, 04.06.1923. The first action of the new sub-committee was to set up an audit for the all the money that had passed through Dr. Elliott. AWH Records, box 31, New York City, regular meeting of the Executive Board of the AWH, 06.12.1923. AWH Records, box 31, New York City, regular meeting of the Executive Board of the AWH, 30.07.1923. 76  AWH Records, box 9, Greek auxiliary of the American Women’s Hospitals, Executive Committee, December 1927. 77  Kontogiorgi, Population Exchange in Greek Macedonia, 265, 270–271. 78  Maria Zarifi, “Modernizing Through Medicine: Knowledge Transfer, State-Building, and the Role of Athens University during the 19th Century,” Zeitschrift für Balkanologie 50, no. 1 (2014), 99–118. 79  Leda Papastefanaki, “Politics, Modernization and Public Health in Greece: The Case of Occupational Health 1900–1940,” in Christian Promitzer, Sevasti Trubeta and Marius Turda, eds., Health, Hygiene and Eugenics in Southeastern Europe to 1945 (Budapest and New York: Central European University Press, 2010), 165–191, here 169. On popular healers, Violetta Hionidou, “Popular Medicine and Empirics in Greece, 1900–1950: An Oral History Approach,” Medical History 60, no. 4 (2016), 492–513.

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to 1920 when the ARC had undertaken anti-epidemic work, hygiene education, and an infant welfare programme in the country. In 1922, in order to coordinate medical relief for the upcoming refugees, the Greek government again requested the cooperation of the ARC in order to divide the country into medical regions and districts.80 Other bodies, such as the League of Nations and the Rockefeller Foundation, would work in Greece in the following years.81 Therefore, the AWH was just one of several international organizations operating in Greece. Looking closer, the AWH, at first, provided curative emergency relief. Preoccupied with the disastrous epidemiologic conditions of Greek refugees from the Pontus, Dr. Elliott contributed to the implementation of anti-epidemic work in Macronesi, a small inhabited island situated miles away from the Attic peninsula.82 On the island, in the first half of 1923, American physicians, nurses, and refugee health staff deloused and vaccinated nearly 22,000 men, women, and children, preventing the spread of smallpox and typhus.83 Around the same time, across the country in Salonica, Dr. Parmelee helped open and run a hospital that provided medical services to the refugee camps around it and contained a ward for expectant mothers in which many babies were born.84 In 1925, the AWH closed the Salonica hospital and replaced it with smaller clinics in the further inland.85 Moreover, from the mid-1920s, emergency medicine started to involve reconstructive work. In 1927, Dr. Parmelee moved to Athens and helped expand a hospital in Kokkinia, created in 1922 on the outskirts of the city, where many of the refugees lived and where no other health institution operated. The Kokkinia hospital, which was hosted in refugee barracks until the Greek government built a brick building in the late 1930s, provided general and surgical treatment to a large community of nearly 60,000 persons and also included prenatal, gynecological, chest, eye, baby, children’s, and dental clinics.86

80  Giannuli, “American Philanthropy in Action,” 114–116, 124. Kontogiorgi, Population Exchange in Greek Macedonia, 268. Rodogno, “The American Red Cross and the International Committee of the Red Cross.” 81  Vassiliki Theodorou and Despina Karakatsani, “Health Policy in Interwar Greece: The Intervention by the League of Nations Health Organisation,” Dynamis 28 (2008), 53–75. 82  AWH Records, box 33, The A.W.H. quarantine service. 83  AWH Records, box 9, Star in the East: The American Women’s Hospitals in Greece, July 1936 by Dr. Parmelee. 84  AWH Records, box 9, Dr. Parmelee to Dr. Elliott, 1923. 85  Lovejoy, Women Physicians and Surgeons, 174. 86  Ibid., 237.

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The medical aid that the AWH pursued in Greece occurred through different coalitions that the women physicians were able to establish, both at the crossroads of gender equality and difference and at the intersections of other factors such as race, ethnicity, education, and class. In terms of gender equality, American women physicians attempted to build equal, inclusive, and respectful working relations with refugee men physicians and women nurses. The organization stressed that hiring a refugee male doctor was a means to help destitute colleagues and to support his family. Yet, women doctors of the AWH were aware that local and refugee health personnel had received good training and possessed first-hand experience with endemic diseases such as malaria.87 For instance, Dr. Owen H.  Yereman, an ophthalmologist of Armenian origin with an American medical degree, was at times mentioned in the AWH documents for his crucial role in providing medical assistance to children with trachoma.88 However, and despite what they perceived as the superiority of their American training, the women doctors of the AWH seemed to be oblivious to the fact that they depended on the local and refugee health staff for their daily activities: not only did the latter outnumber the American staff, but they were paid less, thus allowing the AWH to implement larger programmes than it could otherwise have done had it been composed of American staff only.89 It would be interesting to understand how the local and refugee doctors and nurses perceived the management of the women physicians and nurses: were they bossy or cooperative? Did they create relationships of equality or maintain hierarchical distinctions? While, comparatively, the women physicians of the AWH were indeed far readier to acknowledge the contribution of the local and refugee health staff than organizations like the ARC and the NER, they spent far more ink stressing their own professionalism and activities, sometimes coloring their supposedly equal working relationships with forms of cultural imperialism. As for gender difference, the AWH continued to implement maternalist medicine in Greece long after the chronological end of the Progressive Era in the US, in order to respond to the medical needs of the refugees, among whom there were many vulnerable women and children.90 Alongside the  AWH Records, box 33, American Women’s Hospitals, 1933.  AWH Records, New York City, box 9, My half day with the AWH in Athens, Gertrude A. Walker M.D., first vice-chairman of the American Women’s Hospitals. AWH Records, box 33, American Women’s Hospitals, 1923–1924. 89  AWH Records, box 9, letter from B.L. Horn, business manager of the AWH to “dear friends” (headquarters of the AWH in the US), 01.02.1923. 90  More, Restoring the Balance, chapter 6. 87 88

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already existing national programmes in nursing education, Dr. Parmelee decided to train Greek and Armenian refugee women to become nurses out of necessity, as they were needed to work alongside American doctors in the hospitals.91 From this early spontaneous initiative, as early as 1922, Dr. Parmelee developed a full course of nursing and opened a school in Salonica, where a small group of Armenian and Greek refugee women were trained.92 When the Salonica hospital was closed down in 1925, the school of nursing moved to the Kokkinia hospital of the AWH, where towards the end of the 1920s, R.N.  Emilie Willms and Dr. Angenette Parry, as a volunteer, helped train the aspiring nurses. The nurses—27 graduates by 1933—were meant “to make a good living” and “to give a real service to Greece,” thus passing their knowledge to other women and working towards the reconstruction of the country. The nurses were officially accepted into the Hellenic National Graduate Nurses’ Association of Greece and then became members of the International Council of Nurses in Geneva.93 The AWH school officially closed down after the last graduation in 1933, due to lack of funding.94 R.N. Willms was particularly involved in the nursing school and is the last woman through whom this chapter explores the history of the AWH.  Born in Bremen, north Germany, but raised in New Jersey, R.N. Willms is one of the few American nurses whose path and work emerged from the documents of the AWH, where, as we have seen, the preponderance of women doctors tended to obscure other equally important agencies. In 1929 R.N. Willms arrived in Greece with a double appointment; she was the director of the Nursing Division for the AWH and an associate of the Near East Foundation. Contrary to Dr. Parmelee, R.N. Willms did not have any professional experience abroad. In 1912, she graduated from the Newark Homeopathic Hospital’s School of Nursing. She first worked as a private nurse and then undertook epidemic work (poliomyelitis) at the Newark City Hospital. From 1918 to 1925, she was mainly involved in settlement work, particularly on “infant, pediatric, and prenatal care”, and organizing visiting nurse services in the Newark area. In the years immediately before her travel to Greece, she was  AWH Records, box 9, School of nursing report by Emilie Willms, 08.08.1933. Athina J. Messolora, A Brief History of the Evolution of Nursing in Greece (Athens, 1959). 92  Giannuli, “Errand of Mercy,” 255–262. 93  AWH Records, box 9, School of nursing report by Emilie Willms, 08.08.1933. 94  AWH Records, box 9, The American Women’s Hospitals Kokkinia, Piraeus, Greece, undated, unsigned. 91

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involved in tuberculosis work in Warren County and acted as the Operating Room head at the Dover General Hospital, both in New Jersey. Her time in Greece turned out to be a great opportunity for R.N. Willms, who experienced professional growth of a kind almost unthinkable in the US and who was able to exercise a large deal of freedom and initiative.95 In addition to the nursing school, maternalist medicine was also implemented through the running of health centers and visiting nurse services, which were supervised by R.N. Willms (among others) as a result of the professional experience that she had acquired in the US. The health center attached to the Kokkinia hospital contained four departments, all of which were directed towards the health and welfare of women and children: prenatal, post-natal, infant welfare and pre-school. As for visiting nurse services, nurses went to homes in order to “visit the sick and follow-up cases from [the hospital’s] departments,” again with particular attention being paid to the health of the mother and the child.96 According to Dr. Mary Kalopothakis, the Greek physician who served in the Greek committee of the AWH, “one of the most important features of the A.W.H. work in Kokkinia Hospital is the ‘Baby-Welfare’ Station.” A large number of newborn babies were brought to the health centre to be weighed twice a week, while visiting nurses “[gave] advice to mothers not only as regards the babies but as to sanitary and hygienic conditions generally,” proof of which remained in photographs published in the AWH brochures.97 Health discussions and teachings included the topics of “[…] feeding, sleep, air, recreation, bathing, [and] elimination […]”.98 These maternalist programmes by the AWH occurred in a period in which Greece was overpopulated, eugenic measures to control the reproduction of the lower classes were being discussed and state policies and private plans to protect mothers and children through education were being only intermittently implemented.99 95  Positions held since 1912, Folder “Emilie Willms,” Box 50A, Series 9, Record Group 1 (FA406), NEF, RAC. 96  AWH Records, box 9, Report to the government by Parmelee, undated but likely 1932. 97  AWH Records, box 9, the American Women’s Hospitals at Kokkinia, Dr. Kalopothakis. 98  AWH Records, box 9, report of Adah Butts Arsenios, R.N., on her work for the American Women’s Hospitals at Jume, Macedonia. AWH Records, box 10, Baby station report. 99  Papastefanaki, “Politics, Modernization and Public Health in Greece,” 172–174. Sevasti Trubeta, “Eugenic Birth Control and Prenuptial Health Certificate in Interwar Greece,” in Christian Promitzer, Sevasti Trubeta and Marius Turda, eds., Health, Hygiene and Eugenics

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What kinds of values and meanings did the women physicians and nurses of the AWH attach to the medical activities that they undertook for the Greek (refugee) population? The women doctors of the AWH deeply believed in the professional benefits and superiority of their American medical practices to the point that the babies who received medical assistance from the AWH were thought to belong to a “stronger and better” generation than the babies born in other refugee settlements: they were members of a generation that would be in a better position to work towards the reconstruction of Greece.100 Conscious that they could only reach a small number of patients due to lack of personnel and resources, the women physicians of the AWH compensated for the discriminatory inner feature of humanitarian aid by stating that “their” children had been improved by the supposed superiority of American medicine. Moreover, within this picture—and with the exception of a few working-class Greek women depicted as making mud bricks to build their new houses in the absence of their husbands—the women doctors of the AWH constructed Greek women as mothers, whose capacity for caregiving was enhanced by the elements of scientific motherhood that they were taught, thus enabling them to raise strong children: the workers-to-be.101 In doing so, the women doctors empowered and, at the same time, disempowered both women and children. Instead of simply seeing refugee women and children as patients in need of medical assistance, they saw them as vectors through which the reconstruction of a Christian Greece would materialize. In doing so, both women and children—but particularly women— were deprived of their own agency. While maternalist medicine created forms of female solidarity between American women physicians and Greek mothers, and thereby empowered both, it also took for granted that Greek mothers—due to racist, ethnic and class discrimination—were unable to take care of their own children, thus disempowering them and furthermore relegating them to the role of caregivers within the domesticity of in Southeastern Europe to 1945 (Budapest: Central European University Press, 2011), 271–298. Vassiliki Theodorou and Despina Karakatsani, “Eugenics and Puericulture: Medical Attempts to Improve the Biological Capital in Interwar Greece,” in Christian Promitzer, Sevasti Trubeta and Marius Turda, eds., Health, Hygiene and Eugenics in Southeastern Europe to 1945 (Budapest: Central European University Press, 2011), 299–323. 100  AWH Records, box 9, the American Women’s Hospitals at Kokinia, Dr. Kalopothakis. 101  AWH Records, box 9, extract from Mr. Eddy’s report on Macedonia, undated. For women, “mothers cooperating in home building”, see financial records, fundraising brochures, letters, etc. 1922–1924.

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the house. As the work of Eileen Boris suggests, it is problematic to see the mothers’ emancipation through the lives of their children, as they themselves would remain dependent on their husbands and unable to carry out remunerated activities outside the household.102 The collaboration of the AWH with the Greek state was productive yet changed in nature around the mid-1930s, when financial resources from the US became insufficient as a result of the Great Depression; the AWH then engaged in cooperation programmes under the direct control of the Greek government. Women physicians’ visionary pragmatism and a proposal from a group of Greek women were the origins of this major change. In 1935, a committee of Greek women led by Lina Tsaldaris, the wife of the conservative Greek prime minister, Panagis Tsaldaris, and later the first Greek woman to be appointed as a minister, concluded that the AWH Kokkinia hospital was “the best, from the standpoint of management and nursing service”.103 She suggested that R.N. Willms become the Director of Nurses at the Athens Municipal Hospital in order to raise its nursing standards. Willms did so, and Dr. Parmelee advised on the reorganization of the hospital. Even more interestingly, the contact established among Lina Tsaldaris, Dr. Lovejoy, and Dr. Parmelee opened the doors for the Kokkinia hospital to be turned over to the Ministry of Hygiene and Social Welfare, which, as historian Lena Papastefanaki states, emerged in 1922, coinciding with the ethnic cleansing of Greek and Turkish populations, and worked in tight cooperation with the League of Nations.104 The Ministry of Hygiene and Social Welfare referred to the Kokkinia hospital as the “Model Public Hospital,” which would provide the basis for reformation of the whole Greek hospital system.105 American health personnel continued to work in the hospital, yet, as Dr. Parmelee reported, the Greek government would decide whether to adapt locally and develop an “American method of running the hospital”.106 This statement seems to 102  Eileen Boris, “What about the Working of the Working Mother?,” Journal of Women’s History 5, no. 2 (1993), 104–109. “Maternalism as a Paradigm”. 103  AWH Records, box 9, letter to Mrs. Elmhirst, 09.05.1935, unsigned. 104  Papastefanaki, “Politics, Modernization and Public Health in Greece,” 172. 105  AWH Records, box 9, decree about the foundation of a philanthropic establishment under the name “Model Public Hospital” (formerly American women’s) signed by the president of the Republic, Alexander Zaimis, and the minister of health and public assistance, I. Nicolitsas, 18.07.1935. 106  AWH Records, box 9, Star in the East: The American Women’s Hospitals in Greece, July 1936 by Dr. Parmelee, medical director.

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suggest that the American and Greek health models merged evenly, at least in intention. By the mid-1930s, the Greek mission of the AWH was composed of Dr. Parmelee and R.N. Willms alone. Both, in their respective fields of medicine and nursing, had developed a unique expertise in dealing with the ever-changing needs of patients, in working with local and refugee colleagues, and in negotiating with the Greek institutions. This expertise made them the most suitable candidates for participating in the 4th Congress of the MWIA, which took place in Edinburgh in July 1937. This gathering is worth mentioning for two reasons. The first is that Dr. Parmelee and R.N. Willms were not listed with the American delegation but instead with the Greek one, being the only two representatives for Greece. Second, the MWIA, which was mainly composed of women physicians, opened the door to R.N. Willms. Working in Greece had allowed her to acquire a higher professional experience than she would have attained if she had only worked as a nurse in the US.107 The outbreak of the Second World War and the occupation of Athens by the Italian and then German armies opened up new scenarios. The staff of the AWH had a difficult time receiving permits and organizing a trip from Athens through Europe to the US. In the meantime, in the buildings previously occupied by the Children’s Hospital “St. Sophia” in Athens, the Seventh Military Hospital was opened. The Greek Red Cross Nursing Division and the Ministry of War appointed R.N. Willms as the directress of nurses at the new institution, which lacked “linen, equipment, instruments or surgical dressings”.108 On her end, Dr. Parmelee was appointed as a member of the Administrative Committee in Athens by the Greek War Relief Association, with the task of administering the financial resources from the US and inspecting the work accomplished. The AWH also managed a center for the medical relief of civilians.109 Dr. Parmelee and R.N. Willms moved out of Athens just as famine was about to strike the occupied country.

 MWIA Records, box 7, fourth congress of the MWIA, list of members, 13.–18.07.1937.  AWH Records, box 9, letters from Willms and Parmelee to dear friends, S.S. “Excambion” of American export line en route to the U.S., 27.08.1941. 109  AWH Records, box 9, letter from Parmelee to the American legation in Athens, 23.05.1941. 107 108

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Conclusion This chapter has argued that the maternalism and feminism in the medical aid of the AWH became a means to many ends: the professional emancipation of American women physicians, the equality in practice with men physicians in Greece, the reconstruction of Greece, and the partial empowerment of Greek women, whether nurses or patients. Paradoxically it was in Greece rather than in the US that women physicians obtained their most enduring results: not only did they manage health institutions but they also accumulated a professional experience that was still denied to them in America. Moreover, the AWH’s maternalism differed from the paternalism of the ARC or the NER, not just because women rather than men were in positions of authority but also because power was less hierarchical and operated more cooperatively with local refugee doctors and nurses. Dr. Parmelee and R.N. Willms, in particular, not only transferred American medical practices to Greece but also proved themselves inclined to integrating local medical practices into their own. This chapter has also argued that the goals of the AWH were not exclusively limited to their own interests. Female teamwork and transnational medical activism laid the foundation for stable working relations with local and refugee physicians and nurses; it privileged the nursing training of a few Greek women, who would become professionals and pass their knowledge on to other women; and it considered scientific motherhood a path towards the reconstruction of the entirety of Greek society. As we have seen, the AWH was no monolith: the women physicians who worked at the headquarters and overseas had different understandings of medicine and nursing, which, nevertheless, did not prevent them from joining forces in the AWH. Dr. Morton embodied the Victorian model of medicine where “feminine virtues” met science. Dr. Lovejoy had a more markedly feminist approach to tackling mechanics of gendered discrimination both in American medicine and in the societies where women physicians operated. Dr. Parmelee was born into the American missionary movement, which permeated her private and professional life; she was never as vocal a feminist as Dr. Lovejoy. R.N. Willms found in Greece the possibility to deepen and expand her nursing training in ways that would have been denied to her in the US. The women physicians of the AWH constructed their femininity at the intersection of maternalism and feminism, in response to a masculinity that discriminated against them as marginalized professionals and citizens; therefore, they fought—in

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different ways—against patriarchy. At the same time, as white Americans, they, at least at first, perpetuated a racialized nationalism and forms of imperialism on which they found common ground with the men in power in the American government, ARC and NER, who, in turn, valued the work of women physicians as it complemented their own activities in the Eastern Mediterranean region. In Greece, the women physicians of the AWH both empowered and disempowered the men and women they worked with and for. As for the health personnel, local and refugee doctors and nurses worked under the strict management and supervision of the American women physicians and carried out daily activities in the hospitals, dispensaries, and health centers. However, their work was more central than was ever acknowledged by the women physicians in their private and public correspondence. While forms of female solidarity expressed through nursing education and nurse visiting empowered Greek women and mothers, they also stripped them of their agency, as working-class Greek mothers were believed to lack the knowledge necessary to raise healthy children, and it was thought that their emancipation occurred by means of the women physicians’ caregiving practices. It is precisely the Greek side of this story that provides the most promising possibilities for further research. What was the status of the Greek health system in the interwar period that left such a fertile space for the AWH to flourish? Did the AWH open the road for more Greek women to enter medical school? Did somebody like Dr. Mary Kalopothakis, the first woman physician in the country, feel empowered vis-à-vis Greek men physicians on account of her collaboration with the AWH? Did Greek private physicians feel threatened by the public preventive policies towards mothers and children that the AWH established? Regarding the interrelations of American women physicians with local and refugee physicians and nurses, did the local health staff—physicians, nurses and midwives—experience cooperation or hierarchy? For instance, did somebody like Dr. Yereman feel that he was overworked when treating 200 patients a day? Therefore, Greek primary sources would be illuminating for a more holistic story of the AWH in the country. All in all, almost a century later, the fact that institutions like the American Women’s National Association, the Medical Women’s International Association, and the American Women’s Hospitals Service are still active suggests that not only has gender equality in the medical profession not yet been reached but also that greater attention should be devoted to consolidate the achievements to which women

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health professionals like Dr. Morton, Dr. Lovejoy, Dr. Parmelee and R.N. Willms contributed with their life-long commitment to medicine and nursing.110 Acknowledgment: This chapter is part of my postdoctoral project “‘Parallel Lives’: Women, Imperialism, and Humanitarianism, ca. 1880–1950,” financed by the Swiss National Science Foundation (P2GEP1_148355 and P300P1_158445). I became familiar with the AWH when I assisted Davide Rodogno in his project entitled “Histoire des associations internationales et des organisations internationales non-gouvernementales humanitaires en Europe occidentale au 19ème et 20ème siècle (1800–1945),” also supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation (PP0011_118875). My gratitude goes to the editors of the volume, as well as to Jane Cowan, Maria Framke, Matthew Herbison, Jean Quataert, Davide Rodogno, Lora Wildenthal and Maria Zarifi. Regarding toponymy, I am using the contemporary names of places at the time of writing. Since the Eastern Mediterranean region has undergone dramatic changes in terms of geopolitics and demography during and in the long aftermath of the First World War, using current toponymy would be inaccurate, as places have changed names several times, often using a different spelling.

110  Erica Frank, Elizabeth Fee, Manon Parry and Ellen S.  More, “Opportunities and Obstacles for Women Physicians in the Twenty-First Century,” in Singer More, Elizabeth Fee and Manon Parry, eds., Women Physicians and the Cultures of Medicine (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009), 319–341.

PART II

Gender and the Politics of Humanitarianism

CHAPTER 5

The Orphan Nation: Gendered Humanitarianism for Armenian Survivor Children in Istanbul, 1919–1922 Nazan Maksudyan

One of the most powerful authors of Armenian diaspora literature, Shahan Shahnur, perfectly summarized the essence of post-genocide Armenian existence by defining it through the concepts of longing, exile and orphanhood. If you do not have the word garod [~longing] in it, your writings could not appeal to any Armenian. Yeah, don’t laugh, ‘cause it’s not the only word missing. You already know that, but let me remind you. The words mayr [mother], hay [Armenian], aksor [exile, deportee] also do not exist in French. Our kaghtagan [refugee, migrant, displaced], our vorp [orphan, destitute] has no equivalent in French.1 1  In the famous novel by Şahan Şahnur, Retreat Without Song, the protagonist BedrosPierre makes a critical comment on his friend Suren’s newly published book in French. Şahan Şahnur, Sessiz Ricat (Istanbul: Aras Yayıncılık, 2016), 221.

N. Maksudyan (*) Free University, Berlin, Germany Centre Marc Bloch, Berlin, Germany e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 E. Möller et al. (eds.), Gendering Global Humanitarianism in the Twentieth Century, Palgrave Macmillan Transnational History Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-44630-7_5

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The surviving Armenians were all “exiles” and were all “orphans”. Following the genocidal atrocities in 1915 and 1916, the Armenian people were constantly on the road in convoys or in tents in camps. Armenians who could make their way back to their cities or villages in Asia Minor and Northern Mesopotamia could not stay because they were still being persecuted in the inner areas of Anatolia. They were, once again, uprooted for the second or third time. In that sense, kaghtagan does not simply mean a refugee or a migrant but also connoted the heaviness of a perpetual exodus.2 The notion of orphanhood here referred not only to children but was used symbolically for all Armenian survivors, who were permanently uprooted from their homes and who lost their families. What is more, this was also a gendered genocide, as it affected men and women, boys and girls differently. In 1918, many survivors headed to Istanbul, where they sought shelter after having survived many horrors. This was mainly due to the political situation after the war. The Armistice of Mudros (30 October 1918), signed between the Ottoman Empire and Great Britain (representing the Allied powers), stipulated that the Allies could seize “any strategic points” in case of a threat to Allied security. The Ottoman army was demobilized; ports, railways and other strategic points were made available for use by the Allies. In 1918 and 1919, the Allies occupied a large part of the Ottoman territories (Istanbul, Mosul, Iskenderun/Alexandretta, Kilis, Antep, Maraş, Urfa, Mersin, Osmaniye, Adana and Antalya). With regard to the Armenian refugee situation, Allied rule marked the beginning of a new era. Thousands of Armenian survivors poured into Istanbul hoping to secure permanent shelter and protection. About 35,000 Armenian exiles came to the city from the provinces between 1914 and 1920. Refugee centres and orphanages were packed. For not only Armenians but also for Russians, Greeks and other groups, Istanbul was a centre of exile in the aftermath of World War I.  The Armenian community of Istanbul, headed by the Istanbul Armenian Patriarchate, tried to find ways of dealing with the situation. The American Committee for Relief in the Near East (i.e., the Near East Relief, NER), the British High Commission and the League of Nations 2  Talin Suciyan, The Armenians in Modern Turkey: Post-genocide Society, Politics and History (London and New York: I.B. Tauris, 2016), 46–53.

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also supported the relief efforts. In this paper, based on Ottoman, American and Armenian archival sources; contemporary press reports; and narrative accounts, I apply a gender perspective to the situation of Armenian survivor children in Istanbul and the humanitarian response they received. The chapter argues that gendered ideas of community and (ethnic, religious and cultural) reproduction lay at the very heart of both genocidal politics and post-genocide relief for survivor children. Furthermore, looking at the gender dimensions of genocide and the politics of relief helps to further differentiate among the various political and social groups that acted in Istanbul, which tied different hopes to humanitarian work and had specific ideas for the future of the Armenian beneficiaries they assisted. While the Turkish authorities tried to erase the Armenians by killing men and by enforcing the assimilation of women and children, Armenian religious and political authorities used different methods to restore Armenian boys and girls as members of an Armenian nation. Finally, this chapter adds an innovative dimension to current research by integrating and analysing the perspectives of the Armenian children rescued. The chapter has four parts. It first discusses the gendered aspects of genocidal violence against boys and girls by shedding light on conversion, forced adoption and assimilation in the course of the Armenian genocide. In the second part, I examine the situation of Armenian child survivors in post-war Istanbul in the midst of the refugee crisis. Focusing on Armenian refugee shelters and orphanages, which were geared towards protecting “the future of the community”, I delineate the extent to which the relief efforts of the Armenian community organizations (in collaboration with Americans and British) were a response to genocidal biopolitics of the Young Turk rule. I specifically differentiate the institutions and relief strategies for boys and girls, with the aim of highlighting the gendered visions with regard to the future feminine and masculine roles of these children in the “future of the nation”. The third part focuses on the “orphan gathering” campaign, the most crucial post-genocide activity of the Armenian community, through which Armenian survivors, mostly girls, in Muslim households were reclaimed and repatriated. The final part, centring its argument on the confession rituals in the Neutral House, delineates the nationalist and violent nature of a declaredly humanitarian effort. Approaching this history from the perspective of the children themselves brings to light the violence of rescue, but also the genocide survivors’ agency.

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Gendered Aspects of Genocidal Violence against Children As the concept genocide refers to the extermination of a religious, ethnic or other group in its entirety, the “victims” have often been treated by scholars as a monolithic category. With the progress of research on the Armenian genocide, there is now a more nuanced analysis of violence targeting different groups of victims within the same category of Armenians, one that has also emphasized the gendered dimensions of the topic. The Armenian religious and civil leadership, together with adult men, were murdered outright at the beginning of the genocide (April–August 1915). Armenian women, girls and young children were the next major group to be targeted by the Unionist government. With very short notice—weeks or even hours—all Armenians were forced to leave their homes and possessions in Anatolia and to march towards the Syrian Desert to be “relocated”. This was a death march, involving an unending series of dislocations and deportations, exposure, exhaustion, starvation, disease and epidemics. The survivors of the death marches who managed to reach the Syrian Desert were put into concentration camps with no provision of food, water or medication. The literature on the gender-specific aspects of the Armenian genocide has become rich in the past two decades, thanks to works by Matthias Bjørnlund, Katharine Derderian, Ara Sarafian, Lerna Ekmekçioğlu, Vahe Tachjian and others.3 These scholars examined the sexual violence against “gendered bodies”, in other words, young girls and women, which took the forms of rape, kidnapping, abduction, sex slavery and forced marriage. This enforced assimilation through sexual violence was an outcome of the conviction that ethnic reproduction was through the father rather than the mother. These historians have underlined that the sexually violent acts were a structural component and a natural extension of the genocidal policies of the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP), the ruling political 3  Matthias Bjørnlund, “‘A Fate Worse Than Dying’: Sexual Violence during the Armenian Genocide,” in Dagmar Herzog, ed., Brutality and Desire: War and Sexuality in Europe’s Twentieth Century (Basingstoke: Springer, 2009), 16–58; Katharine Derderian, “Common Fate, Different Experience: Gender-Specific Aspects of the Armenian Genocide, 1915–1917,” Holocaust and Genocide Studies 19, no. 1 (2005), 1–25; Ara Sarafian, “The Absorption of Armenian Women and Children into Muslim Households as a Structural Component of the Armenian Genocide,” in Omer Bartov and Phyllis Mack, eds., In God’s Name: Genocide and Religion in the Twentieth Century (New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2001), 209–221.

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party that monopolized power in 1913. Recently, the genocide studies have also paid closer attention to the genocidal fate of Armenian children.4 Miller and Touryan Miller’s valuable work of oral history on the Armenian genocide is one of the earlier examples of treating children (and women) as separate groups of victims who were affected differently in the course of the genocide.5 Vahakn N. Dadrian’s research on violence against children specifically focuses on the “ferocious and sadistic methods” through which thousands of Armenian children were murdered.6 From a gendered perspective of childhood, boys above a certain age—mostly 12, but sometimes up to 15—were mostly murdered directly along with adult men. This stemmed from the definition and limits of childhood. A 15-year-old was considered an adult and not a child, so it was considered that it would be difficult to convert and Turkify him. Mothers usually dressed their older boys as girls to save them. Many survivor stories stress that this form of disguise was a very common survival strategy for boys, as long as they were not discovered by the guards during the marches.7 If older boys wanted to survive, another chance was to convert to Islam. Fifteen-yearold Aram’s mother, for instance, knew that her son was in real danger. She convinced him that conversion was the only option to stay alive.8 Forced deportation to the desert was harder to endure for younger children, whether boys or girls. Many of them lost their lives during the marches to starvation and disease. However, several orders of the CUP made it obvious that younger boys had better chances “to be saved” by the perpetrators because they were considered “children” and not “Armenian males”. Based on centuries of experience, it was believed that children could be easily converted to Islam and Turkified in order to serve as loyal servants to their masters. Adults were not considered to have the same promise. In July 1915, the Ministry of the Interior authorized the provinces to collect and distribute Armenian orphans to Muslim families for the purposes of 4  Asya Darbinyan and Rubina Peroomian, “Children: The Most Vulnerable Victims of the Armenian Genocide,” in Samel Totten, ed., Plight and Fate of Children During and Following Genocide (New York: Routledge, 2018), 57–84. 5  Donald E. Miller and Lorna Touryan Miller, Survivors: An Oral History of the Armenian Genocide (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993). 6  Vahakn N. Dadrian, “Children as Victims of Genocide: The Armenian Case,” Journal of Genocide Research 5, no. 3 (2003), 421–437. 7  Miller and Touryan Miller, Survivors, 115–117. 8  Aram Haigaz, Four Years in the Mountains of Kurdistan: An Armenian Boy’s Memoir of Survival (New York: Maiden Lane Press, 2015), 30.

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“care and education”.9 Later, in April 1916, they specified the “age limit” as “up to twelve years old”. Thus, children up to 12 would be handed over to state orphanages, boarding schools or Muslim households for their upbringing and assimilation (terbiye ve temsil), in other words in order to Islamicize and Turkify them.10 The rest of the order makes it apparent that girls older than 12 were either adopted or “married off”, but there is no mention of older boys, suggesting that they were not considered as “victims” to be saved, but as “threats” to be eliminated. The genocidal policy of the CUP was to decimate the male members of the community so as to prevent them from procreating, thus ensuring that the Armenians would not have a demographic future in Anatolia. In other words, this was a gendered vision of reproduction, privileging the male body and suggesting that lineage was created through the father. As Kieser’s recent work stresses, the main (and successfully accomplished) aim of the genocide was to create a homogeneous Muslim population in Anatolia.11 Some Armenian children (young boys and girls) could escape death, as Ottoman society needed them as labourers, as slaves and as concubines. Since population was the salient measure of national power and prestige in the first half of the twentieth century, declining population figures during the war years coupled with nationalist population politics turned children into a valuable commodity to be possessed. Thousands of Armenian boys and girls were taken into state orphanages (Darüleytam), where they were usually used as a labour force in workshops.12 The use of labour was essentially gendered. Boys were trained in shoe-making, carpentry, blacksmithing, turnery (tornacılık), bricklaying and tiling; they were also sent outside to the imperial shipyards (Tersane-i Amire); the state printing house (Matbaa-i Amire); to tanneries (tabakhane) and also to “Chemins de fer Orientaux” (Şark Şimendiferleri Şirketi). State orphanages for girls, which were much less numerous, had workshops for sewing, needlework and other handicrafts. The girls were mostly employed in taking care of the daily needs of orphanages, such as cooking and washing. They were 9  Prime Ministry’s Ottoman Archives (BOA), Ministry of the Interior, Cipher Telegrams (Dahiliye Şifre Kalemi, DH.ŞFR.), 54/411, 12.07.1915. 10  BOA, DH.ŞFR., 63/142, 30.04.1916. 11   See Chapter 1  in Hans-Lukas Kieser, Talaat Pasha: The Father of Modern Turkey, Architect of Genocide (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2018). 12   For further information on Ottoman state orpahanages, see Chapter 1  in Nazan Maksudyan, Ottoman Children and Youth during World War I (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2019).

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introduced to the basics of childcare and home economics. The Ministry of the Interior also transferred hundreds of orphaned children from Anatolia to Istanbul through the Society for the Employment of Muslim ̇ Women (Kadınları Çalıştırma Cemiyet-i Islâmiyesi). Making use of gendered bodies and labour, the Society distributed (converted) Armenian girls to Muslim households selected by the Ministry, and boys were given away to factories, workshops, ranches and small businesses in both Istanbul and Anatolia.13 In these institutions, children were converted to Islam and given Turkish names; the boys were circumcised and so were raised as Muslim Turks. The main policy of the CUP was to Islamicize and Turkify the children, by conversion, name changes and by forcing them not to speak Armenian. Armenian girls and young women were mostly allowed to live as long as they obeyed their masters and converted to Islam.14 Girls were sold, bought, forcefully abducted or stolen by Turkish, Kurdish and Arab households.15 There was even evidence that Armenian girls and women were put up for auction.16 In addition to the private acts of seizing, adopting or selling children, the CUP government gave orders that “young women and girls be married off to Muslims, so that they will be raised according to Islamic principles”.17 The Ministry of the Interior also stressed that the state encouraged state officials to “adopt” Armenian girls into their households.18 Hundreds of Armenian girls were this way

13  The Society was established in 1916 by the Minister of War, Enver Pasha, and it was a typical wartime “voluntary association” defined by the CUP’s policies. See Yavuz S. Karakışla, “Kadınları Çalıstırma Cemiyeti Himayesi’nde Savaş Yetimleri ve Kimsesiz Çocuklar: ‘Ermeni’ mi, ‘Türk’ mü?,” Toplumsal Tarih 6 (1999), 46–55. 14  Ayşe Gül Altınay, “In Search of Silenced Grandparents: Ottoman Armenian Survivors and Their (Muslim) Grandchildren,” in Hans-Lukas Kieser and Elmar Plozza, eds., Der Völkermord an den Armeniern, die Türkei und Europa: The Armenian Genocide, Turkey and Europe (Zürich: Chronos, 2006), 117–132; Ayşe Gül Altınay and Yektan Türkyılmaz, “Unravelling Layers of Gendered Silencing: Converted Armenian Survivors of the 1915 Catastrophe,” in Amy Singer et al., eds., Untold Histories of the Middle East: Recovering Voices from the 19th and 20th Centuries (London: Routledge, 2011), 25–53. 15  Keith D. Watenpaugh, “‘Are There Any Children for Sale?’: Genocide and the Transfer of Armenian Children (1915–1922),” Journal of Human Rights 12 (2013), 283–295. 16  The report of Professor Samuel T. Dutton, Secretary of the Committee on Armenian Atrocities, “Armenian Women put up to Auction,” The New York Times, 29.09.1915. 17  BOA, DH.ŞFR., 59/150, 30.12.1915; BOA, DH.ŞFR., 63/142, 30.04.1916. 18  BOA, DH.ŞFR., 61/23, 17.01.1916.

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“adopted” by administrative and military officials.19 At the end of World War I, Armenian relief committees and other European and American aid workers estimated that there were at least 60,000 Armenian boys and girls in Muslim households and state orphanages.20 Although it is impossible to establish exact figures, both archival and narrative sources point to a marked difference in the number of girls.21 When incorporated into Muslim households—in other words, converted to Islam, married to and impregnated by Muslim men and subjected to patriarchal power within the family—young women and girls were considered less threatening and more malleable by CUP leaders. From the perspective of nationalist population politics, the government exerted control over Armenian women’s bodies, sexuality, marital behaviour and reproduction. Forced marital conversions were part of the genocidal violence and were instrumental in increasing the Muslim population. Moreover, the patriarchal culture of honour in Ottoman communities also made women more vulnerable to sexual violence in another way. Since the chastity of women was assumed to be inherently connected to the nation’s honour and identity—and thus given great symbolic value—Turkish perpetrators’ sexual violence targeting Armenian women and girls must be seen as part of the genocidal violence. Armenian boys below a certain age as well as girls definitely had a greater chance of survival thanks to their importance as a demographic resource. Unlike Nazi racial policies during the Holocaust, the CUP’s systematic and genocidal policy towards Armenian children pointed to more of a tabula rasa understanding of human resources. These children born from Christian Armenian parents could still be forcefully assimilated into the Turkish/Muslim nation and raised as Muslim Turks. There is also the need to underline that neither adoption nor conversion and assimilation were Unionist discoveries. The Ottoman 19  The Directorate of Public Security openly announced that the state had no objection to state officials adopting Armenian girls for educational purposes. BOA, DH.ŞFR., 61/23, 17.01.1916. 20  Ketih David Watenpaugh, “The League of Nations’ Rescue of Armenian Genocide Survivors and the Making of Modern Humanitarianism, 1920–1927,” The American Historical Review 115, no. 5 (2010), 1315–1339, here 1329. 21  According to the personal registers of Talat Pasha, of the 10,314 Armenian orphans who were reported by various provinces, 6858 were distributed to Muslim families, while 3456 were in state orphanages. Murat Bardakçı, Talât Paşa’nın Evrak-ı Metrukesi: Sadrazam Talât Paşa’nın özel arşivinde bulunan Ermeni tehciri konusundaki belgeler ve hususî yazışmalar ̇ (Istanbul: Everest Yayınları, 2008), 88–89; Fuat Dündar, Modern Türkiye’nin Şifresi: Ittihat ̇ ̇ ve Terakki’nin Etnisite Mühendisliği 1913–1918 (Istanbul: Iletiş im, 2008), 307.

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dynasty and the society it governed had older traditions, such as the practice of devshirme (the recruitment of young boys in the bureaucracy and the army) and the use of concubines (to procreate), both inherent to Ottoman slavery.22 The long-lived besleme tradition—through which better-off families “adopted” the daughters of poorer families to use them as maidservants and abuse them as concubines—was also a forerunner to the CUP policy.23

“Future of the Nation”: Armenian Child Survivors in Post-War Istanbul The period between November 1918 and September 1922 was actually an interesting historical limbo for the Armenians in Istanbul. Usually called the Armistice Istanbul or the Allied Period, this specific space and time could not be considered to be either part of Ottoman history or of republican Turkey. The Allied rule of the Ottoman capital marked a new era for Armenian survivors, as many of them assumed that they would finally find peace and security under British protection. The general lawlessness throughout the countryside also encouraged the movement towards Istanbul.24 Patriarch Der Yeghiayan gives the figure of 35,000 survivors who came to Istanbul from the provinces until the evacuation of Cilicia (from 1914 to 1920).25 Refugees, looking for shelter and protection, made up more than 20 per cent of the Armenian residents of the city.26 22  Marc David Baer, Honored by the Glory of Islam: Conversion and Conquest in Ottoman Europe (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011); Selim Deringil, “‘There is No Compulsion in Religion’: On Conversion and Apostasy in the Late Ottoman Empire: 1839–1856,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 42, no. 3 (2000), 547–575; Ehud R. Toledano, “Late Ottoman Concepts of Slavery (1830s–1880s),” Poetics Today (1993), 477–506. 23  This was “adoption” only in name. They were actually used as maid-servants or concubines. Nazan Maksudyan, “Foster-Daughter or Servant, Charity or Abuse: Beslemes in the Late Ottoman Empire,” Journal of Historical Sociology 21, no. 4 (2008), 488–512. 24  Suciyan underlines that there were systematic attacks on the Armenians who returned to their homes in the provinces. Armed gangs raided and plundered Armenian property and frightened away the Armenian inhabitants. Suciyan, The Armenians in Modern Turkey, 44–45. 25  Ibid., 46; Lerna Ekmekçioğlu, Recovering Armenia. The Limits of Belonging in PostGenocide Turkey (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2016), 24. 26  The Patriarch emphasizes that 35,000 exiles came to the city, which had an Armenian population of 120,000. Zaven Der Yeghiayan, My Patriarchal Memoirs (Barrington, RI: Mayreni, 2002), 180. In his chapter, in Constantinople To-day, Fred Field Goodsell gives a slightly different number. The Armenian Patriarchate in Istanbul reported in 1919 that there

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Despite the huge losses incurred by the community and the miserable situation of the refugees, Ekmekçioğlu argues that Armenians were still hopeful in this period. The Armenian religious and civil leadership and survivors concentrated on the “National Rebirth Movement”, aiming to prove to the world (and undoubtedly to the community itself) that the Armenians had survived the worst and were alive and prepared to build a better and brighter future.27 Besides reclaiming territory, the most important goal of this national revival was to find and rehabilitate survivors. This objective led to the development of several philanthropic institutions and other measures of aid to cope with the refugee crisis. The Armenian community of Istanbul, the Patriarchate and other community organizations tried to find ways of dealing with the situation through their own means.28 The first institutions for orphans and exiles began as independent initiatives of neighbourhoods in different districts, such as Galata, Kadıköy, Üsküdar, Kumkapı, Samatya, Bakırköy / Makriköy and Yeşilköy. The first exiles who arrived in Istanbul were sheltered in ad hoc, temporary camps that were established in churches and schools.29 Later the Patriarchate centrally organized the relief efforts for the refugees who were concentrated in Istanbul and opened orphanages. These activities were undertaken by two separate bodies: the Committee for Orphan Relief (Vorpakhnam) and the Central Committee for Exiles (Darakrelots Getronagan Hantsnazhoghov). The two organizations were then merged in February 1919 to form the Armenian National Relief (Hay Azkayin Khnamadarutiun).30 These activities were financed mainly by a newly instituted national tax, paid by Istanbul and Smyrna Armenian communities, the only ones that were still intact. Yet, Patriarch Zaven underlined in his memoirs that, given the enormous costs, rehabilitating the survivors were 118,000 Armenians in the city. They also estimated that 32,000 Armenian refugees had come to Istanbul since 1914. Fred Field Goodsell, “Historical Setting,” in Clarence Richard Johnson, ed., Constantinople To-day or the Pathfinder Survey of Constantinople. A Study in Oriental Social Life (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1922), 11–86, here 18. 27  Ekmekçioğlu, Recovering Armenia, 2 28  Suciyan, The Armenians in Modern Turkey, 46. Many of the orphanages and shelters for survivors had to be closed or relocated from Turkey after 1923. 29  The first group of Armenian refugees arrived on 14 November 1918. These 300 people spent the night in the Armenian Church in Galata. Immediately afterwards, the Committee of Exiles in Galata was formed and rented the Russian monastery to use it as a shelter for refugees. 30  Raymond Kévorkian, The Armenian Genocide. A Complete History (London and New York: I.B. Tauris, 2011), 759.

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required the support of the NER.31 Istanbul Armenians opened 13 refugee shelters (kaghtagayan).32 The largest was at Haydarpaşa train station since this was the entry point into the city for the refugee Armenians from the entire Anatolian provinces.33 On some days, there were as many as 2000 refugees in this camp. Many people from remote areas such as Aleppo, Hama, Homs, Damascus, Der Zor and Urfa were coming to the camp. Others from areas closer to Istanbul, such as Yenice, Izmit, Sölöz, Yalova, Bandırma and Bahçecik, also made up an important contingent. In later periods, convoys from Erzurum, Mus, Sivas, Tokat and Amasya also arrived.34 The other two big refugee shelters were at Galata and Samatya, with an average of 400–600 refugees. All the camps of the Armenian National Relief had a camp doctor, and serious cases were dealt with at the Yedikule Armenian Hospital. The Near East Relief also sent doctors and nurses for general medical inspection and treatment, especially of children, and distributed milk for undernourished children.35 There were attempts to develop educational facilities at the camp. Workshops were opened for women for vocational training, teaching sewing, embroidery and sock  Der Yeghiayan, My Patriarchal Memoirs, 279–281.  Ekmekçioğlu, Recovering Armenia, 24. Constantinople To-day mentions only 6 camps (or large buildings formerly used either as barracks or as schools) for Armenian refugees accommodating 2772 persons. C. Claflin Davis, “The Refugee Situation in Constantinople,” in Clarence Richard Johnson, ed., Constantinople To-day or the Pathfinder Survey of Constantinople. A Study in Oriental Social Life (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1922), 201–226, here 210. The League of Nations report form September 1923, listed the 13 camps as the following: Aynalı Çeşme, Andonian Convent, Beşiktaş, Kadıköy, Kumkapı, Kuruçeşme, Galata, Hasköy, Makriköy, Ortaköy, Samatya, Sakız Ağacı, Üsküdar. Archives of the League of Nations, United Nations Organization, Geneva (ALON-UNOG), Ra406.5.66.1, “Situation of Armenian Refugees in Istanbul.” 33  Haydarpaşa camp also started as a neighborhood initiative. While the first Armenian refugee convoy was placed in Galata, the second group of 400–500 people was sheltered in Aramyan School in Kadikoy. Informed that the convoys would keep coming, the Kadıkoy Comittee of Exiles was established. The Committee, in cooperation with the Armenian officials working at Haydarpaşa train station, organized the relief efforts for the exiles. In a few days, about a thousand people reached Haydarpasa. Tents were built around the station and food was provided. The Kadıkoy committee was, in a sense, the first distribution center for refugees. 34  Madteos Elbighatyan, Azkayin Khnamadarutiun: Inthanur Deghegakir: Enthanur Deghegakir Arachin Vetsamia: 1 Mayis 1919–31 Hokdemper 1919 (Istanbul: M. Hovagimyan, ̇ 1920); Zakarya Mildanoğlu, “1918’de Istanbul Ermeni dul ve yetimler diyarıydı [Istanbul was a Land of Orphans and Widows in 1918],” AGOS, http://www.agos.com.tr/tr/ yazi/5774/1918de-istanbul-ermeni-dul-ve-yetimler-diyariydi (last accessed 06.09.2019) 35  Davis, “The Refugee Situation,” 219. 31 32

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knitting.36 Moreover, the Armenian National Relief placed 1450 persons in employment between April 1920 and April 1921.37 Orphans were the Armenian community’s first priority. The education of orphans through the expansion of orphan relief in orphanages or in foster homes was considered a necessity in order to “revive the nation”. Education actually meant a series of re-socializations, such as re-conversion and re-learning a language. Armenian boys and girls, who had spent the past three to four years in Muslim households, had actually become Muslims as well as Kurdish, Arab or Turkish speakers. Their Armenian identity was questionable. The community leaders considered how they could resurrect this Armenian identity and raise them as the bearers of the future Armenian society.38 Adoption by Armenian families and national education in orphanages were the most obvious solutions to turn orphans into “tomorrow’s Armenians”. An editorial that appeared in the Istanbul newspaper Djagadamard entitled “Let us save tomorrow’s Armenians” (March 1919) argued that the children’s upbringing in Muslim households had led to the disappearance of “their native virtues”.39 The following week, the newspaper published a further editorial about orphans’ education, stressing the need “to wipe away every Turkish stain”.40 The use of such expression as “wiping away” or “to cleanse” in the context of orphans’ education actually meant re-Armenization. Especially younger children, without sufficient memories of their Armenian background, had to go through a process of re-conversion and re-socialization. Although ­nationalist discourses overshadowed gendered definitions, boys and girls were ultimately expected to assume different future roles in the rebuilding of the “Armenian nation”. In this period, motivated by the primary aim of re-Armenization, about 25 orphanages educated Armenian children in Istanbul (see Table 5.1). Some of these were already established orphanages and others were  Ibid.  Ibid., 216. 38   Vahé Tachjian, “Mixed Marriage, Prostitution, Survival: Reintegrating Armenian Women into Post-Ottoman Cities,” in Nazan Maksudyan, ed., Women and the City, Women in the City: A Gendered Perspective on Ottoman Urban History (New York: Berghahn, 2014), 86–106, here 90. 39   “[Let us save tomorrow’s Armenians],” (editorial) Djagadamard 101 (1922), 09.03.1919, Istanbul, cited in Tachjian, “Mixed Marriage, Prostitution, Survival,” 90. 40  [The orphans’ education],” (editorial) Djagadamard 105 (1926), 14.03.1919, Istanbul, cited in Tachjian, “Mixed Marriage, Prostitution, Survival,” 90. 36 37

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Table 5.1  Armenian orphanages, 1919–1922 Orphanage

Location

Number of inmates (Patriarchate data)1

Şişli Beşiktaş

Number of inmates (Pathfinder data) 3 to 20 45

Neutral Home Armenian Red Cross Home (for mothers and babies) Kindergarten Orphanage (girls) Kindergarten Orphanage (girls) Refugee Home (Red Cross) Arnavutköy Girls’ Orphanage (girls) Armenian Orphanage (girls) Girls’ Orphanage (girls) Armenian Orphanage (girls) Scutari Orphanage (girls) Kadiköy Orphanage (girls) Girls’ Orphanage (girls) St. Ann Orphanage (girls) St. Ann Orphanage (girls) St. George Orphanage Kalfayan Orphanage (girls) Boyadjian School (boys) Essayan Orphanage (boys) Arnavutköy Boys’ Orphanage (boys) Narlıkapı Orphanage (boys) Karagözyan Orphanage (boys) Armenian Central Orphanage (boys) Beylerbeyi Industrial School (boys) Trachoma Hospital Orphanage (girls) Yedikule Trachoma Orphanage (boys and girls) Total

Beşiktaş Kuruçeşme Üsküdar Arnavutköy Balat Ortaköy Kumkapı Üsküdar Kadiköy Makriköy Pera Samatya Galata Hasköy Makriköy Pera Arnavutköy Narlıkapı Şişli Kuleli Beylerbeyi Hasköy Yedikule

155 70 40 90 100 170 100 105 250 60 150 150 55 66 45 86 90 150 120 1000 247 133 330

1002 503

1000 250 130 300

3827

2810

100 100 100 100 80 250 2504

1

Der Yeghiayan only notes the ones under the supervision of the Armenian National Relief

2

Notes it as a girls’ orphanage

3

Notes it as a girls’ orphanage

According to Der Yeghiayan’s memoirs, there were more than 500 orphans in the Armenian Catholic Orphanages of Sisters of Immaculate Conception in Pera and Samatya 4

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opened by the efforts of the Armenian National Relief in the aftermath of the war. The report prepared by Anna Welles Brown for the Near East Relief and published in Constantinople To-day, the Pathfinder Survey of Constantinople provides a detailed account of the orphanages in the city.41 The data is also verified by the numbers provided by the Armenian Patriarchate. Brown reports that there were 3287 children in these 25 orphanages. Der Yeghiayan’s memoirs list 12 orphanages (since he excludes the ones supported by funds other than from the National Relief) with a total of 2810 children. In the report of Madteos Eblighatyan, National [Armenian] Relief: General Memorandum for the first six months: May 1919–31 October 1919), 4212 orphans were listed under the care of Armenian National Relief. The list contains names, cities of origin, ages, parents’ names, orphanages and special notes.42 There were three institutions that were especially designed for very young children (two in Beşiktaş and one in Kuruçeşme). In these kindergarten orphanages, children were usually under the age of five, and very young babies were cared for by their own mothers.43 A few of these women were young widows, whose Armenian husbands had been killed during the genocide. Many others were victims of the sexual violence, abduction and forced marriages, imposed on them as part of the politics of Turkification.44 Many of these abducted women and girls longed to escape this life of bondage.45 Some young Armenian women, on the other hand,

41  Anna Welles Brown, “Orphanages in Constantinople,” in Clarence Richard Johnson, ed., Constantinople To-day or the Pathfinder Survey of Constantinople. A Study in Oriental Social Life (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1922) 227–257. 42  Some names appear more than once because some children were moved between orphanages or given for adoption, etc. Madteos Elbighatyan, Azkayin Khnamadarutiwun: Inthanur Deghegakir: Enthanur Deghegakir Arachin Vetsamia: 1 Mayis 1919–31 Hokdemper 1919 (Istanbul: M. Hovagimyan, 1920). The entire list was translated into English by Ara Stepan Melkonian and published by the Gomidas Institute, http://gomidas.org/uploads/ OrphansList-web1.pdf (last accessed 04.09.2019). 43  Welles Brown, “Orphanages in Constantinople,” 229. 44  The Aleppo women’s shelter also had several Armenian women who had brought their children, who had been born as a result of forced impregnation. Tachjian, “Mixed Marriage, Prostitution, Survival,” 98. 45  An Armenian girl who recounted her story to Mabel Evelyn Elliott in Scutari Rescue Home said she had to leave her husband and her baby because the father was a Turk. Mabel Evelyn Elliott, Beginning Again at Ararat (New York: Fleming H.  Revell Company, 1924), 27–28.

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chose to stay within their Muslim households, since they had children and were not able to leave them.46 Apart from the trachoma hospital/orphanage (Hasköy), there were 12 orphanages for Armenian girls.47 Two of them were homes for girls who had escaped or been reclaimed from Muslim households. “Scutari Rescue Home” was maintained by the Armenian Red Cross at Üsküdar in the building of the American College for Girls.48 The other at Arnavutköy had 90 girls, 14–18 years old, who had spent the war years in Muslim households.49 It is notable that on the top floor of this building there was a hospital supported by the Red Cross for the special treatment of syphilis and gonorrhoea, meaning that many of these girls had been subjected to sexual violence and were suffering from sexually transmitted diseases. In Yervant Odian’s memoirs, Accursed Years, there is a mention of an Armenian woman who found it impossible to return to her community since she had lived a life of prostitution during the preceding three years.50 The orphanages at Balat, Makriköy, Ortaköy, Kumkapı, Üsküdar and Kadikoy were supported by the Armenian National Relief with aid from the Near East Relief. While some of these had reasonably well appointed buildings and facilities, others offered poor bedding and nutrition. There were four orphanages run by Armenian sisters. The St. Anne orphanages in Pera and Samatya and the St. George orphanage in Galata were in the care of Roman Catholic sisters. The Kalfayan orphanage in Hasköy was founded and endowed by a private individual, but four Gregorian sisters were in charge of the institution. In all the girls’ orphanages, the education was centred around “home-making”, while the primary goal was to immediately find Armenian husbands for girls of “marriageable age”. This indicates that reproduction was the major expectation projected on these girls and their gendered bodies. Several Armenian girls were sent to prospective husbands in the United States, and Armenian men came from

46  Yevkineh, an Armenian girl with two babies from her Kurdish husband, decided to stay with him, as she could not leave her children. Haigaz, Four Years in the Mountains of Kurdistan, 303. 47  Adding to this number the trachoma hospital/orphanage and also two kindergarten orphanages that were only for girls, the number of institutions for girls rises to 15. 48  The memoirs of Mabel Evelyn Elliott are very valuable, as she recounts many of the interviews she had there with these girls. Elliott, Beginning Again at Ararat, 20–35. 49  Welles Brown, “Orphanages in Constantinople,” 231. 50  Yervant Odian, Accursed Years: My Exile and Return from Der Zor, 1914–1919, trans. Ara Melkonian (London: Gomidas, 2009), 300–301.

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there to Istanbul to “secure brides from the orphaned of their nation”.51 It was common for Armenian religious authorities to marry destitute male and female orphans of 17 or 18 to each other in refugee camps and in orphanages so that they would procreate quickly and contribute to their community. Marriage was considered by the Armenian community leaders to be the best solution not only to save the honour of the girls but also to help the regeneration of the community with new generations.52 There were seven boys’ orphanages in the city. The Karagözyan (Şişli), Boyacıköy, Esayan (Makriköy), Narlıkapı and Arnavutköy orphanages were mid-sized with about 50–100 boys in each. The Central Orphanage at Kuleli, on the other hand, was the largest orphanage in Istanbul, housing no fewer than 1000 boys.53 The Beylerbeyi Industrial School also had about 250 orphans, who were taught carpentry, shoemaking and tailoring.54 Armenian schools and orphanages also formed boy-scouting organizations in the immediate post-war period. In November 1918, Armenian athletic groups were reunited under the name of Homenetmen (Armenian Athletic General Union and Scouts). In 1919, there were as many as 5000 boy scouts in Istanbul. Toomas Avedisian’s memoirs describe in detail the organization of boy scouts in the Armenian orphanage in Yedikule (of the Surp Prgiç Hospital) in 1919.55 It is clear that institutions for boys and girls pursued different goals. Gender-specific forms of education and relief efforts first and foremost related to different imaginations of the future roles of girls and boys in the rehabilitation or the rebuilding of the “Armenian nation”. As much of the recent literature on the history of child welfare underscores, there was a close connection between the expansion of welfare and nationalist politics, which was a gendered process.56 Boys were educated in trades to become breadwinners and in paramilitary activities to revive national strength. The  Welles Brown, “Orphanages in Constantinople,” 253.  Tachjian also notes that the primary aim of the women’s shelters in Aleppo was marrying the women off to Armenians or finding their relatives so as to achieve their social re-integration into the Armenian society. Tachjian, “Mixed Marriage, Prostitution, Survival,” 92, 98. 53  Welles Brown, “Orphanages in Constantinople,” 233. 54  Ibid., 234. 55  Thomas G. Aved, Toomas, the Little Armenian Boy: Childhood Reminiscence of TurkishArmenia (Fresno: Pioneer Publishers, 1979), 160–177. 56  Tara Zahra, Kidnapped Souls: National Indifference and the Battle for Children in the Bohemian Lands, 1900–1948 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2008); Laura Lee Downs, Childhood in the Promised Land: Working-class Movements and the Colonies de Vacances in France, 1880–1960 (Oxford: Duke University Press, 2002). 51 52

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girls, on the other hand, would be the agents of social reproduction as future mothers, giving birth and educating children. A gendered division of labour in the family and a gendered formation of the nation was a defining principle in the organization of welfare for Armenian child survivors. However, the post-war years also saw the rise of an Armenian campaign, initiated by Allied pressure, that specifically aimed to free Armenian girls from enslavement in Turkish households.

The Rescue of Armenian “Girls and Children” The dilemma of “continuity and change” between the years during the First World War and the immediate post-war period is worth noting. Obviously, socio-economic problems that originated in the war years continued afterwards. Yet, the political and cultural dynamics changed dramatically once the war ended. With the escape of the leaders of the CUP on 1 November 1918, post-genocide politics also took on a different shape. On 17 November 1918, the Armenian newspaper New Life (Nor Geank) published a letter addressing the representatives of the Allied states and demanding the rescue of Armenian orphans held in Muslim households.57 Shortly thereafter, from December 1918 onwards, the new Ottoman government, following the orders of the Allied forces, sent a series of instructions for the release of Armenian slaves, political prisoners and “orphan girls and women”.58 These telegrams from the Ministry of the Interior ordered that all “Christian girls and children (kızların ve çocukların) who had been kept by force (cebren) in Muslim households were to be freed and returned to their relatives”59 or handed over to the local Armenian religious authorities.60 Children (çocuklar) is a gender-neutral word in Turkish, comprising both boys and  The news also appeared in a Turkish newspaper, Söz, 17 Teşrin-i Sani 1334 (17.11.1918).  BOA, DH.ŞFR., 95/212, 23.12. 1918. 59  BOA, DH.ŞFR., 92/196, 21.10.1918; Lerna Ekmekçioğlu, “A Climate for Abduction, a Climate for Redemption: The Politics of Inclusion during and after the Armenian Genocide,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 55, no. 3 (2013), 522–553, here 533. 60  Telegram from the Ministry of the Interior to Adana Province (vilayet): BOA, DH.ŞFR., 94/56., 05.12.1918; Telegram from the Ministry of the Interior to the provinces: BOA, DH.ŞFR., 95/163, 18.01.1919. Where there was no Armenian community organization, they would be handed over to the commissions formed by the Armenians. Telegram from the Ministry of the Interior to Kayseri Province (mutasarrıflık): BOA, DH.ŞFR., 96/76, 05.02.1919. In the absence of any Armenian body, they would be handed over to the state orphanages (Darüleytam) or civil administrators while a registry with their names was drawn up. Telegram from the Ministry of the Interior to the province of Erzincan: BOA, DH.ŞFR., 57 58

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girls. The order, however, wanted to differentiate girls from children, probably because the authorities were aware that most of these children were actually girls. The vorpahavak campaign, which meant “the gathering (or reclamation) of orphans” was the most crucial activity of the Armenian community in post-genocide Istanbul.61 Despite the open reference to orphans, the campaign to retrieve and reintegrate the Armenian survivors in Muslim households also comprised Armenian women, who were as numerous as were the children.62 The Armenian Patriarchal authorities aimed to find, “liberate” and reclaim for the Armenian community women and children who had spent the preceding few years in Muslim households and orphanages. Those who kept Armenians in their homes had to surrender them to Armenian authorities immediately, under the threat of severe punishment.63 The campaign was often in news items. The Turkish newspaper Morning (Sabah) wrote on 9 January 1919 that “Christian women and children were forcibly kept in Turkish homes.”64 Another Turkish newspaper, New Istanbul ̇ (Yeni Istanbul), revealed that Armenian girls were formerly distributed to the houses of Unionist leaders; seven of them were in the house of Reşid Bey, the Governor of Diyarbakır, and three were in the home of Halil Pasha.65 In the course of the campaign, many boys and girls in Ottoman state orphanages in or close to Istanbul were also reclaimed.66 The records of Ottoman orphanages that were seized by the Allied police and handed over to the 96/76, 05.02.1919; Telegram from the Ministry of the Interior to Canik Province (mutasarrıflık): BOA, DH.ŞFR., 96/96, 08.02.1919. 61  The Patriarchate estimated the following numbers of Armenian women and children in Muslim households: 6000 in the regions of Istanbul, Izmit, Bursa, and Eskişehir; 2000 in Karahisar; 1500  in the district of Bolu; 3000  in Konya; 5000  in Kastamonu; 2000  in Trebizond; 3500 in Sivas; 3500 in Kayseri; 3000 in Erzurum; 25,000 in Diyarbekir-Mardin; 3000  in Harpoot; and 5000  in the vilayets of Bitlis and Van. Kévorkian, The Armenian Genocide, 759. 62  Tachjian rightly notes that the attitude towards the reclamation of women was not monolithic. Some influential figures assumed an intolerant and uncompromising stance towards “fallen women”, abandoning them permanently in their own immoral abyss. Tachjian, “Mixed Marriage, Prostitution, Survival,” 91, 94–95. 63  BOA, DH.ŞFR., 93/300, 28.11.1918; BOA, DH.ŞFR., 94/56, 04.01.1919. 64  Sabah, 9 Kanun-ı Sâni 1335, 09.01.1919. 65 ̇  Yeni Istanbul, 9 Kanun-ı Sâni 1335, 09.01.1919. 66  ALON-UNOG, A.35.1921.IV, C.281.M.218.1921. IV, Memorandum by the SecretaryGeneral on the Work of the Commission of Enquiry with Regard to the Deportation of Women and Children, Report by Dr. Kennedy, Letter from Miss E.D.  Cushman to the Secretary-General.

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Armenian Patriarchate showed that the names of Christian children had been struck out and Muslim names superimposed. Based on these registers, the Armenian authorities estimated that nearly 50 per cent of the children in state orphanages were Armenian. Moreover, the Patriarchate used the records of the Society for the Employment of Muslim Women to reclaim Armenian orphans in Muslim households. Arakel Çakıryan, a former chemistry professor at the University of Istanbul, “took” the Society’s registers from their headquarters.67 These registers listed the original names, places of origin and new identities of the Armenian children who had been entrusted to Muslim families.68 The Istanbul Armenian Patriarchate’s efforts to repatriate and rehabilitate women and children were also closely followed by international bodies, especially the representatives of the British High Commission, relief officers of the Near East Relief and the League of Nations. The British High Commission definitely played a key role in the search for Armenian orphans and young women.69 According to the Armenian Patriarch Der Yeghiayan, innumerable Turkish families feared the British so much that they immediately handed over the Armenian children whom they had kept throughout the war.70 Emma D. Cushman, League of Nations representative who worked in Istanbul from 1919 onwards for the recovery of Armenian children, reported that, in the beginning, the work was comparatively easy, since “decent self-respecting Turks brought the children themselves.”71 Mabel Evelyn Elliott also noted the importance of the High Commission in the release of “Christian girls” from Muslim households. When there was a rumour that a Christian girl was in a Muslim house, nothing could impede the Allied soldiers from entering this household.72 The Armenian authorities reported in 1921 that 3000 of the ­estimated 6000 captive Armenian women and children in Istanbul had been

67  The Society filed a complaint that he took the registers and never returned them. BOA, DH.KMS. 52/79, 22.05.1919. 68  Der Yeghiayan, My Patriarchal Memoirs, 291. 69  League of Nations. The Humanitarian Activities of the League. Book 6 of a Series of Text Books Specially Prepared for Study Circles (London: League of Nations Union, 1922), 21. 70  Der Yeghiayan, My Patriarchal Memoirs, 287. 71  ALON-UNOG, A.35.1921.IV, C.281.M.218.1921. IV, Memorandum by the SecretaryGeneral on the Work of the Commission of Enquiry with Regard to the Deportation of Women and Children, Report by Dr. Kennedy, Letter from Miss E.D.  Cushman to the Secretary-General. 72  Elliott, Beginning Again at Ararat, 35.

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rescued.73 In 1921, the League of Nations’ “Committee of Enquiry with Regard to Deportation of Women and Children” put the number of Armenian women and children reclaimed from Muslim households and institutions at 90,819, whereas it estimated that 73,350 were still in these places.74

Humanitarian “Rehabilitation” and Violence of Rescuing While many women and children were released, there were also serious complaints from Muslim households. Many of these household heads were either military or administrative officers of the state, and so they filed numerous complaints that their adoptive children were taken away on the “false presumption” that they were Armenians.75 The Ottoman officials also changed their subdued attitude, denying the charges that Armenians were being held against their will and starting to challenge the work of vorpahavak. The Armenian or Allied authorities were no longer allowed to go to Muslim households on their own. Based on the report of the Istanbul Police Department (28 April 1919), a mixed delegation was formed under the supervision of the British, consisting of an American, a Turk and an Armenian, to recover the orphan children in institutions and in families and to determine the nationality of the children suspected of being 73  Levon Marashlian, “Finishing the Genocide: Cleansing Turkey of Armenian Survivors, 1920–1923,” in Richard G.  Hovannisian, ed., Remembrance and Denial: The Case of the Armenian Genocide (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1998), 113–145, here 122. 74  ALON-UNOG, A.35.1921.IV, C.281.M.218.1921. IV, Memorandum by the SecretaryGeneral on the Work of the Commission of Enquiry with Regard to the Deportation of Women and Children, Report by Dr. Kennedy, Letter from Miss E.D.  Cushman to the Secretary-General. 75  In June 1919, there were a series of complaints by Major Süleyman Bey in Arnavutköy, Doctor Kamil Bey in Üsküdar, the Head of the Committee of Purchasing MubayaaKomisyonu) Şekib in Ortaköy, and Lieutenant Mehmet Nuri Efendi in Bakırköy that Armenian Patriarchal officers had forcibly taken away their foster daughters. BOA, Ministry of the Interior, General ̇ ̇ Administration (Dahiliye Nezareti Idare-i Umumiye, DH. I.UM.), 19–-7/1–-5, 07.06.1919. On 12 January 1919, an Armenian search committee with the support of French soldiers went to the house of Ismail Tevfik Bey, the doctor of the gunpowder factory and retired Kaymakam (district governor), in Bakırköy to find an Armenian girl. BOA, Ministry of the Interior, Public Security, Dept. 6 (Dahiliye Emniyet-i Umumiye 6. Şube, DH.EUM.6.Şb.). 47/61, 12.01.1919. In a similar instance, the Armenian search committee went into the house of Captain Kemal Bey and demanded the release of a young girl named Şerife. BOA, DH.EUM.6.Şb., 48/11, 18.01.1919.

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Armenian.76 With the growing number of counter-charges and complaints by Ottoman officials that many of the children recovered by Armenians and Allied personnel were actually Turks, the British High Commission ordered the setting up of a “neutral house”.77 This was a “clearing house”, in which the children involved in doubtful cases would be temporarily lodged, pending the results of investigations into their origins. The institution was supported by the League of Nations and the NER.78 Many of the children who ended up in the Neutral House had no documentation attesting to their identity. They were also unable to provide other details, such as their birthplaces, parents’ names, indication of whether they had siblings, and so on. In the Neutral House (first in Şişli and later in Bebek), these “disputed” cases were observed by the representatives of the Armenian and Greek communities (either secular officials or Patriarchal authorities), a representative from the Ottoman Red Crescent Society (Osmanlı Hilâl-i Ahmer Cemiyeti) and advisers from the British High Commission. Then, community representatives voted for each child.79 Memoirs and reports by the relief workers, who worked for the repatriation of Armenian children (especially the ones in the Neutral House) underlined the reluctance of children to reclaim their Armenian identity or their “claimed Armenianness”. Emma D.  Cushman emphasized that a change of environment was necessary to bring about “a mental change” in these children and to help them “discover themselves”.80 In other words, 76  BOA, Ministry of the Interior, Record Office of the Private Secretariat (Dahiliye Kalem-i Mahsus, DH.KMS.) 52/79, 29.06.1919. 77  Marashlian, “Finishing the Genocide,” 120. 78  The records of the League of Nations suggest that they took over the control and documentation of the house at least after 1922. 79  Keith David Watenpaugh, Bread From Stones. The Middle East and the Making of Modern Humanitarianism (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2015), 142. Several sources suggest that the institution was superintended by Americans and that there were two attendants – an Armenian and a Turkish woman. The Greek presence in the institution may have been just on paper. 80  “The child, a boy of twelve years, was placed for treatment in an international eye hospital, an American institution. He was sent in with other boys from a Turkish orphanage. He came with a Turkish name and a history of Turkish parentage. For two months he had been in this institution, had mixed with children of various nationalities and no one suspected that he was not a Turkish child. Suddenly, he began to sing Armenian hymns, and to speak in Armenian, not fluently of course, but a few words. When asked where he learned the hymns and also to speak Armenian, he said, ‘I spoke that language when I was little, then I sang these hymns.’ He was asked what his name was at that time, and he readily gave an Armenian name. I may add that this condition was not brought about by suggestion or persuasion, as

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the Neutral House (like other institutions that received reclaimed boys and girls) was interested not only in rescuing children from households but also in unearthing what humanitarians and Armenian leaders understood as their hidden, latent even lost identities. The following quote from Cushman’s report refers to children who were kept in the Neutral House “for weeks” and observes how “stress” or “sudden emotion” led to the surfacing of their Armenianness in the form of prayers. The most pathetic scenes are described by eye-witnesses in this House. Children who were known almost certainly to be Armenian Christians would continue for weeks to say Moslem prayers, until in a hidden corner, or under stress of a sudden emotion, they would begin repeating prayers in Armenian, in which the name of Christ constantly recurred. Even then it was difficult to reassure and pacify them when they realized that they had been overheard.81

The Armenian Patriarch described the duty of the Armenian representative as “awakening in the child’s mind memories of her youth, an association of facts or incidents”. This “hard and delicate” task could be accomplished only by reminding the child of her mother tongue, religion, customs and manners, legends and tales, nursery rhymes and folk songs to help them remember their origin.82 The Patriarch also added that “no one else but an Armenian born on the same native land, brought up under the same pedagogic circumstances, could possible address himself to that infinitely intricate task of freeing the child from the heinous effects of Turkish breeding both mentally and spiritually.”83 In other words, the duty of the no one had doubted that the child was of Turkish origin; a change of environment had brought about a mental change, and the child had discovered himself.” ALON-UNOG, A.35.1921.IV, C.281.M.218.1921. IV, Memorandum by the Secretary-General on the Work of the Commission of Enquiry with Regard to the Deportation of Women and Children, Report by Dr. Kennedy, Letter from Miss E.D. Cushman to the Secretary-General. 81  The League of Nations’ Fifth Committee’s investigations also focused on the work of the Neutral House. Therefore, there is significant discussion of the House in League of Nations reports. The League of Nations, The Humanitarian Activities of the League, 22. [italics mine] 82  “From the Armenian Patriarch to Major Arnold, Managing Director to the American Relief Committee in the Near East, 7 August 1919,” ALON-UNOG, 12/15100/4631(2). 83  Zaruhi Bahri, a prominent writer, feminist, and founding member of the Armenian Red Cross, acted for a long time as the Armenian representative at the Neutral House. Her memoirs provide contemporary Armenian discussions of the Neutral House’s operations. Watenpaugh, Bread From Stones, 142; Ekmekçioğlu, Recovering Armenia, 85.

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Armenian representative in the Neutral House was to act as an archaeologist, digging deep to recover a child’s past Armenian identity. The self-­ narrated story of Papken’s re-conversion is very telling in that respect. He reached the orphanage in Urfa in 1919 with his friend Resho, and, upon his entry, a woman interviewed them regarding their names, villages, family information, etc. All of a sudden, Papken felt very worried and disoriented. I whispered in his ear Kurdish, so no one could understand us, ‘We will always keep our promise! We are not and we’ll never become giavours [infidels, Christians]! We’ll always be Muslims!’ I then wondered why I was so determined to remain a Muslim. A shiver ran through me. Only an obscure threat could explain this choice. I did not want to be known as giavour, the most worthless human being on earth, the lowest of them all. Resho and I were overcome by shame and distress.84

Emma D. Cushman attributed children’s resistance to the carrot-and-­ stick policy employed by their foster families. Accordingly, some children were blinded by gifts and the promise of a better life in an affluent household. They did not want to leave a comfortable Turkish home to go to an Armenian institution where no luxury existed. In other cases, they feared the consequences of repudiating their new name and religion.85 From another perspective, what the observers interpreted as reluctance was probably their own prejudice and essentialist views of belonging that all these children must have been Armenians. The records of the Neutral House show that children in this institution were immediately assumed to belong to the “Armenian nation”. It is also worth stressing that based on the “Index of Children brought to the Neutral House”, the Neutral House received only 9 boys, as opposed to 41 girls. The reports consistently used the verb confess with regard to those children in the Neutral House who admitted to their Armenian origin. This clearly points to the political dimension of the campaign that strove to save 84  Papken Injarabian, Azo the Slave Boy and his Road to Freedom (London: Gormidas, 2015), 84. 85  ALON-UNOG, A.35.1921.IV, C.281.M.218.1921. IV, Memorandum by the SecretaryGeneral on the Work of the Commission of Enquiry with Regard to the Deportation of Women and Children, Report by Dr. Kennedy, Letter from Miss E.D.  Cushman to the Secretary-General.

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children for the Armenian and Christian communities rather than as individual human beings. There are many stories in an “Index of Children brought to the Neutral House” in which children were pressured for days until they provided the confession that was expected of them.86 Lütfiye, an eight- or nine-year-old girl brought to the Neutral House on 12 May 1919, confessed after a week of questioning and observation “on May 20th at last” that she was an Armenian from Erzurum, her name Nvart.87 In spite of her insisting that she was a Turk, Gülşan (Armenuhi) was also kept in the House. Armenian and American relief workers in the House wrote: “On our visits we made her confess with great difficulty that she is Armenian.”88 There were only a few cases who did not confess. Thirteen-­ ̇ year-­old Vicdan, who was brought on 1 May 1919 from Dr. Irfan Bey’s house in Kadıkoy, for instance, was allowed to leave with the doctor “because she insisted she was a Turk to the end”.89 Accusing the Neutral House committee of bias, the Turkish representative, Nezihe Hanım resigned, after the case of an 11-year-old Hatun Şayan (Zabel). This girl insisted so strongly that she was a Muslim and that she wanted to go back to her Turkish family that Nezihe Hanım found the act of keeping her at the Neutral House to be “cruel and Godless”.90 Later, her successor, Nakiye Hanım, also resigned. In mid-1921, after the resignation of these Turkish members, a serious controversy arose between the Armenian members of the Commission running the Neutral House. Dr. Artinian, Zaruhi Bahri, and Mrs. Daylarian had a dispute over determining the identity of a certain orphan. Later, Dr. Artinian wrote a newspaper article criticizing the Neutral House Commission as an “Inquisition court”, as he

86  ALON-UNOG, 12/15100/4631(1), “Index of Children Brought to the Neutral House,” 28.04.1920. A 16-year-old Nesmiye (Verjine) first assured the committee that she was a Turk, but later on she confessed that she was an Armenian (p.  3). Another Zarife (Gülyan) insisted for 15 days that she was a Turk (p. 12). 87  Ibid., 5–6. About another 9-year-old boy, Reşat (Garabed), who said he was a Turk, the committee thought “they had better keep him for one or two days in the Neutral House, because he was too young to remember all particulars at once.” But he was kept in the House for 15 days, after which he confessed to being Armenian (p. 14–-15). 88  Ibid., 16. 89  Ibid., 3. 90  ALON-UNOG, 12/15100/4631(1), “Index of Children Brought to the Neutral House,” 07.08.1919; Watenpaugh, Bread From Stones, 143, 224n40.

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was deeply disturbed and offended by these “confession rituals”.91 The children were the victims of patriarchal power for the second time. They were reduced to community bodies and not valued as individuals. The Armenian Patriarch openly underlined that their job in the Neutral House was to convert Armenian children back to Christianity: We find it difficult enough to convert the terrorized Armenian child fed up for four years with all that is Turkish, how could we possibly convert the real Turk in a fortnight’s time?92

The available literature approaches the issue of the “rescue and rehabilitation” of Armenian girls and boys from Muslim households from the perspective of religious communities and imagined nations, while the experiences and needs of the children are considered marginal. It is true that most of the Armenian boys and girls had been forcibly abducted, taken into households and forcefully converted to Islam. However, the children involved in these “rescue” efforts were asked neither for their opinion nor their consent while being removed from the households in which they had spent the preceding few years. In the case of younger boys and girls, who had been raised by Muslim families for a long time, it is plausible to assume that they learned the rules of Islam and became practicing Muslims. They were sincerely afraid of the threat of hell if they were to renounce their religion.93 It must also have been painful for them to depart from the location of their earliest memories. Humanitarian “rehabilitation” of children brings into view the violence of rescuing, which involved a rather tough period of (re-)conversion to a national/religious identity.

 Der Yeghiayan, My Patriarchal Memoirs, 182.  ALON-UNOG, 12/15100/4631(2), “From the Armenian Patriarch to Major Arnold, Managing Director to the American Relief Committee in the Near East, 7 August 1919.” 93  For further information on children’s experiences during the Armenian genocide, see Nazan Maksudyan, “The Armenian Genocide and Survival Narratives of Children,” Childhood Vulnerability Journal 1/1 (2019): 15–30. The same theme was also relevant for “hidden Jewish children” during the Holocaust who tried to survive by pretending to be Christians. Nechama Tec, “Introduction,” in Patricia Heberer, ed., Children During the Holocaust (Lanham: AltaMira Press, 2011), xxi–xli. 91 92

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Conclusion Gendered violence of the Armenian genocide meant directly killing adult men while indirectly erasing the female and underage members of the community through conversion and incorporation into Muslim households. The CUP leaders’ biopolitical endeavour through sexual violence, abduction, adoption, forced marriage and conversion was to modify the demographic composition of the empire’s multi-ethnic and multi-religious population to create a homogenous (Muslim) population in Anatolia. Subsequently, the defeat of the Ottoman Empire and the Allied occupation of parts of the country opened a new era, often defined as the Armenian “national revival”. Humanitarian work in this context, which was mostly defined as rehabilitation, re-conversion and re-Armenization, brings to light how the notions of gender, community/nation, religion, culture and age played out in the politics of humanitarianism in post-war Istanbul. Focusing on the experiences and agency of the children themselves, I suggest an alternative approach to their understanding of Turkification and re-Armenization. The gender-specific aspects of the humanitarian situation were an integral part of the post-genocide nation-­ building efforts, which took the form of a biopolitics of rescue and rehabilitation.

CHAPTER 6

The Politics of Gender and Community: Non-Governmental Relief in Late Colonial and Early Postcolonial India Maria Framke

In 1947, India’s struggle against colonial rule came to an end with the independence of British India. Two independent nation-states, Pakistan and India, came into being, a process accompanied by large-scale violence that may have caused up to one million deaths. This political and communalist violence, in combination with the displacement of approximately 12 million people, created conditions of severe misery and generated several major months-long humanitarian crises.1 It is important to note I am indebted to Nitin Sinha, Jana Tschurenev, Francesca Piana and the editors of this volume for their comments and criticism of earlier versions of this chapter. 1  Yasmin Khan, The Great Partition: The Making of India and Pakistan (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2008); Ian Talbot and Gurharpal Singh, The Partition of India (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009); Joya Chatterji, The Spoils of Partition: Bengal and India, 1947–1967 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007).

M. Framke (*) University of Rostock, Rostock, Germany e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 E. Möller et al. (eds.), Gendering Global Humanitarianism in the Twentieth Century, Palgrave Macmillan Transnational History Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-44630-7_6

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that the problem of communal violence itself—that is, violence among members of different religious communities that was often committed amid socio-economic and political inequalities—was nothing new in South Asia, albeit the scale of such disturbances in the past had been smaller.2 In the months before independence, there was a sharp rise in communal violence, with Hindus and Sikhs turned against Muslims and Muslims turned against Hindus and Sikhs. This development reached its climax during partition, leading to looting, forceful displacement and murder. Women of all three communities were especially targeted through male violence, as they embodied in the eyes of the society the “honour” of the family, community and (after partition) nation-state. They were molested, mutilated, raped, abducted, forcibly married or killed by members of other communities. To avoid these fates, some women committed suicide: the patriarchal logic of honour expected them to become “martyrs”. They were also killed by their male relatives in order to protect them from violence and thus to preserve both their own and their family’s “honour”.3 The treatment of women in this conflict was closely connected to notions of masculinity, when it came to actively protecting and defending female family and community members and also to inflicting violence against the women of other communities. Thus, partition violence and community mobilisation saw the combination of two gendered phenomena: men were identified as protectors of their community and women’s gendered bodies were seen to define the meaning of community honour. 2   C.  A. Bayly, “The Pre-History of ‘Communalism’? Religious Conflict in India, 1700–1860,” Modern Asian Studies 19, no. 2 (1985), 177–203; Sandria B. Freitag, Collective Action and Community: Public Arenas and the Emergence of Communalism in North India (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989). 3  Andrew J. Major, “‘The Chief Sufferers’: Abduction of Women during the Partition of the Punjab,” South Asia 18, Special Issue (1995), 57–72; Pippa Virdee, “Negotiating the Past,” Cultural and Social History 6, no. 4 (2009), 467–483; Deepa Narasimhan-Madhavan, “Gender, Sexuality and Violence: Permissible Violence Against Women During the Partition of India and Pakistan,” HAWWA: Journal of Women of the Middle East and the Islamic World 4, no. 2 (2006), 396–416. Urvashi Butalia touches briefly on the “myth of women’s nonviolence” during partition and points out that women occasionally took up arms and fought, either individually or as part of volunteer organisations, such as the Muslim League National Guard. These incidents, however, must be understood as “isolated” and do not alter our understanding of the partition violence as mainly male violence (See Urvashi Butalia, “Community, State and Gender: On Women’s Agency during Partition,” Economic & Political Weekly 28, no. 17 (1993), WS12–WS21+WS24, here WS16).

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However, the question of gender was equally important with regard to the ramifications of partition-related violence and displacement. These consequences, as Urvashi Butalia has pointed out, were of a twofold nature. The previous lives of women and girls were often destroyed by partition, and their life-paths changed as they lost their homes and their relatives, were forced to take up work or were unable to marry. At the same time, female survivors and displaced women had to enter the public domain on an unprecedented scale in order to rebuild their lives in different places across the newly defined borders.4 Their new identities challenged and created new openings in the existing patriarchal set-up but ultimately did not overcome it. Yet partition, one could argue, enlarged the “social spaces” available for women.5 Finally, women were not just victims but also, according to Pippa Virdee, “positive agents who contributed to the national healing process”6 through, for instance, humanitarian and social work. In the last three decades, partition literature has increasingly analysed these gender dimensions. Research has focused on the history of abducted women, who have been examined through different lenses, such as the politics and practices of the national and provincial governments of both states (India and Pakistan) towards them or the work of individual social workers employed by the postcolonial states, most famously the activist and politician Mridula Sarabhai. Oral-history projects have dealt with individual experiences of female victims of abduction and other forms of violence during partition.7 At the same time, research has also begun to look more broadly at the question of the relief and rehabilitation offered to partition victims. So far, articles and books dealing with this topic have mainly analysed the provision of aid by the national and provincial

4  Urvashi Butalia, The Other Side of Silence: Voices from the Partition of India (Durham: Duke University Press, 2000), 89–90. 5  Anjali Bhardwaj Datta, “Gendering Oral History of Partition: Interrogating Patriarchy,” Economic & Political Weekly 41, no. 22 (2006), 2229–2235. 6  Virdee, “Negotiating the Past,” 468. 7  Major, “The Chief Sufferers”; Virdee, “Negotiating the Past,” 467–483; Aparna Basu, Mridula Sarabhai: Rebel with a Cause (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2003); Ritu Menon and Kamla Bhasin, Borders & Boundaries: Women in India’s Partition (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1998); Butalia, The Other Side of Silence; Bhardwaj Datta, “Gendering Oral History of Partition,” 2229–2235; Anis Kidwai, In Freedom’s Shade. Translated by Anis Kidwai (Gurgaon: Penguin, 2011).

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governments of India and Pakistan: non-state humanitarian relief work during the months-long violence has not been adequately addressed.8 This chapter discusses the rendering of non-governmental relief in North and East India in the months before, during and after partition within the ambit of gender, violence and humanitarianism. To give aid to victims, various non-state groups and individuals began to provide comprehensive assistance,9 amongst them the Hindu Mahasabha and the All-­ India Women’s Conference (AIWC). The All-India Hindu Mahasabha was formally founded in Haridwar in 1915 with the objective of providing a political platform that would bring together different existing Hindu organisations and thus unify Indian Hindus. Although it never became a major political force in late colonial British India, the All-India Hindu Mahasabha was not only able to occupy a niche in Indian politics in the late 1930s and 1940s but also contributed lastingly to the emergence and spread of Hindu nationalism on the Indian subcontinent. Furthermore, in the context of the growing communalisation of politics and society in the late colonial period, the Hindu Mahasabha gained cultural and social 8  Joya Chatterjee, “Right or Charity? The Debate over Relief and Rehabilitation in West Bengal, 1947–1950,” in Suvir Kaul, ed., The Partitions of Memory: The Afterlife of the Division of India (Delhi: Permanent Black, 2001), 74–110; Ian Talbot, “Punjabi Refugees’ Rehabilitation and the Indian State: Discourses, Denials and Dissonances,” Modern Asian Studies 45, no. 1 (2011), 109–130; Pallavi Chakravarty, Post-Partition Rehabilitation of Refugees in India, Occasional Paper, History and Society, New Series 46 (Nehru Memorial Museum and Library [NMML], 2014); Elisabetta Iob, Refugees and the Politics of the Everyday State in Pakistan: Resettlement in Punjab, 1947–1962 (Abingdon: Routledge, 2017). First insights into the relief work of non-state organisations can be found in: Catherine Rey-Schyrr, “The ICRC’s Activities on the Indian Subcontinent Following Partition (1947–1949),” International Review of the Red Cross 323 (1998), 267–291; Ian Talbot, Divided Cities: Partition and its Aftermath in Lahore and Amritsar 1947–1957 (Karachi: Oxford University Press, 2006), 56–58 and 168–176; Peter Gatrell, The Making of the Modern Refugee (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 156–157. 9  Amongst them one could find Indian branches of international organisations, such as the Y.M.C.A., the Y.W.C.A. the St. John Ambulance Association, the Indian Red Cross, the Boy Scouts, the Girl Guides and the National Christian Council. Alongside these branches of international organisations, various non-South Asian organisations actively helped partition victims, such as the British Red Cross Society, the Catholic Relief Service and the Friends’ Service Unit. And, finally, humanitarian relief was provided by various national, regional and local organisations, voluntary party associations and individuals, for instance, the Ramakrishna Mission, the Marwari Relief Society, the Servants of India Society, the Tata Institute of Social Science, different University Volunteer Corps, the Congress Seva Dal, the Pakistan Voluntary Service, Jam’iat al Islam, the Hindu Sahayata Samiti and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh.

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influence.10 The organisation was involved in the anti-colonial struggle; however, the national movement was dominated by the Indian National Congress. After India’s independence in 1947, the Hindu Mahasabha remained active. It became, however, more and more marginalised after the early 1950s. The AIWC was one of the major actors of the national women’s movement in British India. The organisation, founded in 1927, was led by prominent, educated elite and middle-class women. Hindus predominated in its membership, but Muslim, Jewish and Christian women also participated. The AIWC worked for Indian women’s suffrage and was, as it remains, “dedicated to the upliftment and betterment of women and children”.11 As we can see, both, the Hindu Mahasabha and the AIWC did not understand themselves as humanitarian organisations and were instead engaged in relief work in the moment of crisis. However, both organisations did share prevalent ideals of social service and voluntariness and both had been active in relief provision, for instance, during the horrendous Bengal Famine in 1943.12 In the months before, during and after the partition, the Hindu Mahasabha and the AIWC took up humanitarian work. While the Hindu nationalist organisation concentrated its efforts exclusively on members of the Hindu community, the AIWC assisted victims independently of their religious affiliation; however, it concentrated its efforts on caring for 10   Richard Gordon, “The Hindu Mahasabha and the Indian National Congress, 1915–1926,” Modern Asian Studies 9, no. 2 (1975), 145–203; Prabhu Bapu, Hindu Mahasabha in Colonial North India, 1915–1930: Constructing Nation and History (London and New York: Routledge, 2012); Nandini Gondhalekar and Sanjoy Bhattacharya, “The All India Hindu Mahasabha and the End of British Rule in India, 1939–1947,” Social Scientist 27, no. 7–8 (1999), 48–74. 11  http://aiwc.org.in/ (last accessed 24.06.2017); Aparna Basu and Ray Bharati, Women’s Struggle: A History of the All India Women’s Conference 1927–1990 (New Delhi: Manohar, 1990). 12  Rakesh Batabyal, Communalism in Bengal: From Famine to Noakhali, 1943–1947 (New Delhi: Sage Publications, 2005), chapter 2; The All-India Women’s Conference: Seventeenth Session, April 7, 1944 to April 10, 1944 (Bombay: AIWC, 1944), 122. The AIWC collected funds and provided aid in connection with natural disaster in India, such as famines, floods and earthquakes. In 1940, it also started a Turkish Relief Fund, for victims of the Erzincan earthquake in Anatolia in December 1939. Furthermore, the organisation contributed to the China Relief Fund, set up to send an Indian Medical Mission to China during the Second Chinese-Japanese War. See All-India Women’s Conference: Thirteenth Session, December 28, 1938 to January 1, 1939 (Bombay: AIWC, 1939), 12 and 203; All-India Women’s Conference: Fourteenth Session, January 27 to 31, 1940 (without place: 1940), 49–50; All-India Women’s Conference: Seventeenth Session, 3, 8–10, 22, 50, 78.

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women. By analysing the complex aims, strategies and practices of these two non-state organisations, this chapter engages with two main questions: first, in which ways was humanitarian relief informed and shaped by these organisations’ notions of gender, and, second, did humanitarian work influence their norms of femininity and masculinity? Was it seen as desirable when women went out to organise help or did their participation reinforce traditional female caregiving roles? A related question will be, if, and to what extent, humanitarian actions led to the empowerment of female humanitarians and/or recipients of aid. In the case of the Hindu Mahasabha, the issue of how Hindu Nationalist relief contrasted gender hierarchies and communal ones will be discussed. This chapter addresses, first, Hindu Nationalist relief work by focusing on the Hindu Mahasabha. Afterwards, it analyses aid provision by women’s organisations, particularly the AIWC. In doing so, the chapter broadens our understanding of the diversity of Indian non-state relief ideas and practices in the months before, during and after partition. The focus on the Hindu Mahasabha and the AIWC allows us to analyse relief activities by groups that were not genuine humanitarian organisations but normally active in the political and social field instead. As gender was a crucial category for both organisations—whether in the specific context of aid provision or beyond it—the chapter is aimed at bringing research on humanitarianism and on gender in South Asia closer together.

Relief Activities by the Hindu Mahasabha Starting in the summer of 1946, British India repeatedly witnessed serious incidents of communal violence between Hindus and Muslims; Sikhs were also involved in violence in Punjab. After the Second World War, the British colonial government had opened negotiations with Indian nationalists, first and foremost with members of the Indian National Congress and of the Muslim League, to determine India’s future. The most contested question during the long negotiations was how a future independence would look, that is, whether the “transfer of power” would bring a single united postcolonial nation-state or a division of the subcontinent into India and Pakistan, the latter being envisaged as the home for India’s Muslims. The negotiations reached an impasse in summer 1946. To stress the demand for Pakistan, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the leader of the Muslim League, announced a day of “Direct Action” in Calcutta that initiated a

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spiral of communal violence between Muslims and Hindus.13 During the Calcutta riots—also called “Great Calcutta Killings”—in August 1946, more than 4000 people died and 10,000 were wounded. Subsequently, the violence spread throughout British India, leading to riots and massacres in East Bengal, Bihar, Bombay, the United Provinces, Punjab and other places.14 Different organisations quickly took up the cause of aiding the wounded victims and to provide relief for displaced refugees belonging to Hindu, Muslim and Sikh communities. Amongst them, the All-­ India Hindu Mahasabha, the political party of Hindu Nationalists, started to provide relief for Hindus.15 Several organisations, often with primarily a political or social service rather than an explicitly humanitarian background, had already been involved in relief work during communal violence between Hindus and Muslims in the 1920s and afterwards.16 These 13  Ayesha Jalal, The Sole Spokesman: Jinnah, the Muslim League and the Demand for Pakistan (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985); M. Hasan, ed., India’s Partition: Process, Strategy and Mobilization. Themes in Indian History (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1994); Nicholas Mansergh, E.  W. R.  Lumby and Penderel Moon, eds., The Transfer of Power, 1942–1947, vol. 1–12 (London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1970–1983). 14  Khan, The Great Partition, 63–77; Gyanendra Pandey, Remembering Partition: Violence, Nationalism and History in India (New Delhi: Cambridge University Press, 2001); Paul R. Brass, “The Partition of India and Retributive Genocide in the Punjab, 1946–47: Means, Methods, and Purposes,” Journal of Genocide Research 5, no. 1 (2003), 71–101; Batabyal, Communalism in Bengal. 15  In this chapter, I focus on the provision of aid by the Hindu Mahasabha in Bengal in 1946 and early 1947. Equally considered are the organisation’s initiatives and strategies for relief work and community defence that aimed at an all-India level. What is left out here are relief activities of regional and local Hindu Mahasabha branches in different violence-affected places in South Asia outside of Bengal before, during and after partition. For the relief work of the Hindu Mahasabha in Bombay, see Namrata R. Ganneri, “The Hindu Mahasabha in Bombay (1923–1947),” Proceedings of the Indian History Congress 75 (2014), 771–782. On the relief activities of other Hindu Nationalist organisations, such as the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and the Hindu Sahatya Samiti, see Christophe Jaffrelot, The Hindu Nationalist Movement and Indian Politics: 1925 to the 1990s (London: Hurst & Company, 1993), 75–76; Jean A. Curran, “The RSS: Militant Hinduism,” Far Eastern Survey 19, no. 10 (1950), 93–98, here 93–94. 16  B. V. Deshpande and S. R. Ramaswamy, Dr. Hedgewar: The Epoch Maker: A Biography (Bangalore: Sahitya Sindhu, 1981), 95–96; Muhammedali T. “In Service of the Nation: Relief and Reconstruction in Malabar in the Wake of the Rebellion of 1921,” Proceedings of the Indian History Congress 68, no. 1 (2007), 789–805. An even earlier example of communal aid was a volunteer unit set up by Keshav Baliram Hedgewar in the early 1910s. This unit provided relief for Hindus after a communal riot in Calcutta. See Gwilym Beckerlegge, “The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh’s ‘Tradition of Selfless Service’,” in John Zavos, Andrew

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community-based organisations became very active in organising aid to their community members. Their practice of selective aid became an important way of distributing relief in the months before, during and after partition, not only amongst Hindus but also amongst Muslims and Sikhs.17 Within days of the Calcutta riots in August 1946, the Hindu Mahasabha established several committees which not only provided material relief to the Hindu victims and refugees but also took responsibility for salvage and defence operations, for the collection of data regarding the inaction and perceived connivance of the police and government and for providing legal advice.18 To aid Hindu victims, the organisation established 15 relief centres in Calcutta that took care of approximately 25,000 people. After communal disturbances took place in Noakhali and Tipperah in October 1946, in which Hindus had been the main victims, the organisation extended its work to East Bengal, where it opened another 16 relief centres. The Hindu Mahasabha’s relief activities were integrated into the official party structure and placed under the chairmanship of Syama Prasad Mookerjee, acting President of the All-India Hindu Mahasabha from 1942 to 1946.19 In the beginning, the Hindu Mahasabha relief committee focused on the provision of food, clothes, blankets and medicine. The Wyatt and Vernon M.  Hewitt, eds., The Politics of Cultural Mobilization in India (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2004), 105–135, here 107. 17  Beckerlegge, “The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh’s,” 115; Ian Talbot, Freedom’s Cry: The Popular Dimension in the Pakistan Movement and Partition Experience in North-West India (Karachi: Oxford University Press, 1996), chapter 2. For the support of refugees by the Hindu right in Uttar Pradesh, see Yasmin Khan, “The Arrival Impact of Partition Refugees in Uttar Pradesh, 1947–52,” Contemporary South Asia 12, no. 4 (2003), 511–522, here 516–518. For an insider account of the relief activities by the Hindu Nationalist volunteer organisation Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, see H. V. Seshadri, RSS: A Vision in Action (Bangalore: Jagarana Prakashana, 1988), 203–204. 18  Without author, Short Report of Hindu Mahasabha Relief Activities during “Calcutta Killings” and “Noakhali Carnage” (Calcutta: Noakhali Rescue, Relief and Rehabilitation Committee, without date), 2. For the activities of the police during the “Great Calcutta Killings”, see Ranabir Samaddar, “Policing a riot-torn city: Kolkata, 16–18 August 1946,” Journal of Genocide Research 19, no. 1 (2017), 39–60. 19  See for this: NMML, Manuscripts, Syama Prasad Mookerjee Papers [SPM Papers], II.-IV.  Instalments, 2. Subject Files and NMML, Manuscripts Hindu Mahasabha Papers [HMS Papers], Subject Files. See for Mookerjee’s political career in the1940s and 1950s: Gondhalekar and Bhattacharya, “The All India Hindu Mahasabha,” 57–74; B. D. Graham, “Syama Prasad Mookerjee and the Communalist Alternative,” in Donald A.  Low, ed., Soundings in Modern South Asian History (Canberra: Australian National University Press, 1968), 330–374.

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committee also opened a hospital in Noakhali, purchased an ambulance car and formed mobile medical units, one of which was attached to each relief centre. Alongside these immediate relief measures, the Hindu Mahasabha invested in the long-term rehabilitation of the refugees by providing the tools and other materials they needed for pursuing their occupations and by supporting educational institutions. The party spent 162,000 rupees for these activities within five months and estimated further expenses of approximately half a million rupees.20 To finance its aid programme the Hindu Mahasabha opened a relief fund and appealed to Hindus across India to donate generously for the Hindu victims. The underlying idea that only the united efforts of all Hindus could alleviate the suffering mobilised widespread support. Thus, in November 1946, Satyendra Kumar Datta Choudhury, member of the Hindu Mahasabha relief committee, wrote to a donor: “Bengal Hindus will not be able to fight this great Muslim menace in Bengal unless Hindus from outside come to their help by all possible means.”21 Alongside collectives of business people, factory workers, government office staff, princes and neighbourhood initiatives, individual donors contributed to the fund.22 Even Hindu diaspora communities in East and South Africa sent money.23 In the context of the prevalent patriarchal social structure—in which men were not only the heads and usually the main breadwinners of the family but also participated to a larger extent in public life (e.g. in parties and voluntary associations) than did women—it is not surprising that most of the donations to the relief fund were (nominally) given by men. Several contributions, however, also came from women’s associations and female individuals.24 In their letters to the relief fund, donors often used the same wording as had the aid organisers, describing the recipients as  Without author, Short Report, 3-Appendix K.  NMML, Manuscripts HMS Papers, Subject Files, File C-110, “Letter by S.  K. Datta Choudhury to S. S. Bhattacharya, 27.11.1946.” 22  See letters in: NMML, Manuscripts, HMS Papers, Subject Files, File C-110 and File C-136A; NMML, Manuscripts, SPM Papers, II.-IV. Instalments, 2. Subject Files, File 143, File 150 and File 152. 23  NMML, Manuscripts, SPM Papers, II.-IV. Instalment, 2. Subject Files, File 152, “Letter by V. K. Arya to S. P. Mookerjee, 18.11.1946.” 24  NMML, Manuscripts, HMS Papers, Subject Files, File C-110, “Letter by S. K. Datta Choudhury to S. Bhattacharya, 27.11.1946”; NMML, Manuscripts, HMS Papers, Subject Files, File C-136A, “Letter by S. K. Datta Choudhury to S. H. Chakrabarti, 19.12.1946”; NMML, Manuscripts, SPM Papers, II.-IV. Instalment, 2. Subject Files, File 152, “Letter by B. Agharkar to S. P. Mookerjee, 25.11.1946.” 20 21

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“brethren” or “brethren and sisters”, phrases that strongly pointed to the asserted commonality between them through an emphasis on their shared Hindu identity.25 The exclusive circle of both donors and recipients of the aid was in this case determined by a religious and communal identity of being Hindu, independent of caste, class or creed, and was informed by the Hindu Mahasabha’s ideas of “Akhand Bharat”—an irredentist concept of “undivided land of Hindus”—and “Hindu Rashtra”. Hindu Rashtra, which literally means Hindu nation, developed into a concept in the interwar period signifying “an ideological and cultural Hindu nationalism that was inextricably linked to the […] idea of a constitutionally defined Hindu nation state or government and a ‘Hinduized’ civil society”.26 In this Hindu nation, women were depicted as the “mother, nurturer, preserver of tradition and property”.27 As symbols of the nation and its traditions they were perceived as pure; yet, simultaneously, as sexual entities women were seen as impure. According to this dichotomous (male) logic, Hindu women needed protection as well as discipline and control.28 The Hindu Mahasabha’s declared aim to protect and promote the “Hindu race, culture and civilization” in order to advance the Hindu nation entailed strong anti-Muslim sentiments. Muslims, according to Hindu nationalist logic, harboured extra-territorial ambitions and wished to humiliate and annihilate Hindus, to whom they had no allegiances.29 Similar ideas, though often expressed in less vocal terms, were also articulated by many donors to the Hindu Mahasabha’s fund.30 Several of these expressions included a strong “othering” of Muslims and the idea of a 25  See, for instance, NMML, Manuscripts, SPM Papers, II.-IV. Instalment, 2. Subject Files, File 152, “Letter by President of Arya Samaj Birla Lines to S. P. Mookerjee, 18.11.1946” and “Letter by P. C. Mehta to S. P. Mookerjee, 23.11.1946”; NMML, Manuscripts, HMS Papers, Subject Files, File C-110, “Letter by S. K. Datta Choudhury to K. L. Bhattacharya, 18.11.1946.” 26  Chetan Bhatt, Hindu Nationalism: Origins, Ideologies and Modern Myths (Oxford and New York: Berg, 2001), 42. 27  Gyanendra Pandey, “Hindus and Others: The Militant Hindu Construction,” Economic and Political Weekly 26, no. 52 (1991), 2997–3001, 3003–3005, 3008–3009, here 3004. 28  Ibid., 3003–3004; Papiya Ghosh, “The Virile and the Chaste in Community and Nation Making: Bihar 1920’s to 1940’s,” Social Scientist 22, no. 1–2 (1994), 80–94. 29  Bhatt, Hindu Nationalism, 104. 30  See several letters in: NMML, Manuscripts, HMS Papers, Subject Files, File C-110 and File C-136A; NMML, Manuscripts, SPM Papers, II.-IV. Instalments, 2. Subject Files, File 143, File 150 and File 152.

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Muslim “menace”31 that endangered the masculinity of Hindu men, who seemed incapable of defending their families and their property. Compared to Muslims, who (allegedly) posed a threat to the sexual virtue and religious belief of Hindu women, Hindus were often perceived as a “weak race” that lacked the virility to protect their women.32 As Chetan Bhatt has convincingly argued, “Hindu nationalist ideologies have from their inception been deeply gendered and obsessively focused on the imagined potency – or weakness – of the ‘Hindu man’.”33 This idea of weakness, of effeminacy or of the failure to resist “outsiders” was first articulated in the nineteenth century in the context of British colonialism. However, it was soon applied retrospectively to centuries of “foreign invasion”, including the period of Muslim rule over the subcontinent.34 Thus, in the first half of the twentieth century, Hindu nationalist intellectuals and politicians proposed a variety of strategies to strengthen the male body35 and thereby the status of the Hindu community. Their 31  One donor, for instance, described the Hindu victims in East Bengal as “helpless” and “defenceless” against Muslim atrocities. Another one stressed the importance of strengthening the masculinity of Hindu men by appealing to the main organiser of the Hindu relief fund, the Bengali politician and Hindu Nationalist Syama Prasad Mookerjee, to adhere to the traditions of famous Hindu and Sikh military leaders, such as Rana Pratap, Guru Gobind Singh and Shivaji Bhonsle. NMML, Manuscripts, SPM Papers, II.-IV. Instalment, 2. Subject Files, File 152, “Letter by Secretary Hindu Sabha Bhiwani to S. P. Mookerjee, 10.11.1946”; NMML, Manuscripts, SPM Papers, II.-IV. Instalments, 2. Subject Files, File 150, “Letter to S. P. Mookerjee, 31.10.1946.” 32  Charu Gupta, Sexuality, Obscenity, Community: Women, Muslims, and the Hindu Public in Colonial India (New York: Palgrave, 2001). 33  Bhatt, Hindu Nationalism, 136. 34  Ibid., 52–53. See for the formation of discourses regarding masculinities in the (Hindu) nationalist field in the (late) colonial period, including discussions of effeminacy of Hindus: Mrinalini Sinha, Colonial Masculinity: The “Manly Englishman” and the “Effeminate Bengali” in the Late Nineteenth Century (Manchester and New  York: Manchester University Press, 1995); Harald Fischer-Tiné, “‘Character Building and Manly Games’: Viktorianische Konzepte von Männlichkeit und ihre Aneignung in der Ideologie des frühen HinduNationalismus in Britisch-Indien,” Historische Anthropologie 9, no. 3 (2001), 432–455. 35  Physical culture activities to strengthen the male body, and eventually the nation, were not restricted to colonial India, but were promoted in many countries. See, for instance, Svenja Goltermann, “Exercise and Perfection: Embodying the Nation in NineteenthCentury Germany,” European Review of History 11, no. 3 (2004), 333–346; Andrew D.  Morris, Marrow of the Nation: A History of Sport and Physical Culture in Republican China (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2004); Joan Tumblety, Remaking of the Male Body: Masculinity and the Uses of Physical Culture in Interwar and Vichy France (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012).

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suggestions comprised, amongst other things, setting up military schools, introducing compulsory sport and drill training for Hindu boys and following brahmacharya (abstinence).36 Occasionally, the question of physical culture programmes and weapons training for girls and women was also discussed in order to enable them to defend themselves during communal disturbances. These discussions constructed a masculine image of the Hindu women as “sisters in arms”, whose purity was nonetheless at the core of the community’s honour. Despite this inclusion of women in male visions of community strengthening, the main emphasis remained on the “advancement” and prowess of Hindu males.37 The focus on strengthening the Hindu male body to ensure the security and protection of the Hindu community hardly changed in the wake of the excessive violence of partition. As in the decades before, suggestions were occasionally made in the Hindu nationalist camp that Hindu women and girls should carry weapons and learn to defend themselves.38 Despite these suggestions, it seems that the experience of communal violence in the months before partition did not challenge existing gender notions. As the letters of the donors to the aid organisers indicate, the sexual and religious purity of Hindu women and their protection by Hindu men remained at the core of the gendered community notions. To secure this protection, the Hindu Mahasabha resorted to propositions to improve the virility of Hindu men in the aftermath of the communal violence of 1946. At its annual meeting at Gorakhpur, the party decided to establish the Hindustan National Guard (also called Hindusthan Rashtra Sena), with the purpose of defending “the life, property and honour of the Hindus” in the face of communal violence.39 These units were assigned the task of not only protecting the bodies of Hindu victims and refugees— especially women—but also their religion and culture (by ­preventing, e.g. 36  Gondhalekar and Bhattacharya, “The All India Hindu Mahasabha,” 48–74; Bhuwan K. Jha, “Militarizing the Community: Hindu Mahasabha’s Initiative (1915–1940),” Studies in History 29, no. 1 (2013), 119–146. 37   Ibid., 130; Gupta, Sexuality, Obscenity, Community, chapter 6; Charu Gupta, “Articulating Hindu Masculinity and Femininity: ‘Shuddhi’ and ‘Sangathan’ Movements in the United Provinces in the 1920s,” Economic & Political Weekly 33, no. 3 (1998), 727–735, here 732. 38  NMML, Manuscripts, HMS Papers, Subject Files, File C-108, “Draft resolution by N. C. Chatterjee on Noakhali, undated.” 39  NMML, Manuscripts, HMS Papers, Subject Files, File C-143, “Letter by A. Lahiry to Rai Saheb Gur Prasad Kapoor, 06.03.1947.”

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conversions or abductions). However, it is important to note that Hindu Nationalist volunteer groups were also perpetrators of violence who instigated communal riots and attacked Muslims during disturbances.40 Since the setting up of the Hindustan National Guard took time,41 defence units were composed of male volunteers, mostly drawn from the locality or region. Although these volunteers participated in relief work by providing aid to the riot victims and assisting their rehabilitation, they were equally responsible for the protection of the Hindu community and offered physical training to Hindu men and boys.42 This blurred, ambiguous understanding of “relief provision”—comprising material and financial help as well as protection, bodily strengthening and self-defence—can also be found in the letters of the donors to the Hindu Mahasabha relief fund.43 Here, alongside money, contributors, who were often members of different Hindu organisations, offered to despatch volunteers and asked the Hindu Mahasabha to better protect the Hindu community. Hence, after the communal disturbances in Bengal, donors, relief workers and the Hindu Mahasabha closely linked aid provision with the question of masculinity by emphasising the need for strong, virile Hindu men who would be able to assist and protect their community against “Muslim aggressors”. 40   Gondhalekar and Bhattacharya, “The All India Hindu Mahasabha,” 64; Walter K. Andersen and Shridhar D. Damle, The Brotherhood in Saffron: The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and Hindu Revivalism (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1987), 48–50. 41  The setting up of the Hindustan National Guards proved to be both time consuming and not entirely successful. A training camp for workers who were supposed to organise provincial units was arranged in Delhi in February 1947. However, the Hindu Mahasabha struggled to solicit adequate financial support to build up a nation-wide organisation. NMML, Manuscripts, HMS Papers, Subject Files, File C-144, “Circular by Order of the President All India Hindu Mahasabha, 05.01.1947”; NMML, Manuscripts, HMS Papers, Subject Files, File C-143, “Letter by A. Lahiry to Rai Saheb Gur Prasad Kapoor, 06.03.1947.” 42  See, for instance, NMML, Manuscripts, SPM Papers, I. Instalment, B. Subject Files, File 32, “Narayanpur Hindu Mahasava Camp: Visit 16.06.1947” and “Borali Relief Camp: Visit on 16.–17.05.1947.” Although, the available sources do not state explicitly that women were debarred from these defence units, all volunteers listed in them are male (see the different reports on Hindu Mahasabha relief camps in: NMML, Manuscripts, SPM Papers, I. Instalment, B. Subject Files, File 32). 43  NMML, Manuscripts, SPM Papers, I. Instalment, B. Subject Files, File 32, “Letter by Secretary of Bengal Sufferer’s Relief Committee Simla to S.  P. Mookerjee, 05.11.1946”; NMML, Manuscripts, SPM Papers, II.-IV. Instalment, 2. Subject Files, File 152, “Letter by Secretary Hindu Sabha Bhiwani to S.  P. Mookerjee, 10.11.1946”; NMML, Manuscripts, SPM Papers, II.-IV.  Instalment, 2. Subject Files, File 152, “Letter by N.  P. Srivastava to S. P. Mookerjee, 15.11.1946.”

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The setting up of defence units thus corresponded well not only to broader Hindu nationalist notions of strengthening and militarise the (male) Hindu community (and in doing so reinforcing its normative masculinity as virility) but also to ideas about military training, civic duty, discipline and order that had motivated Indian humanitarian initiatives during the First World War.44 Interlinked notions of self-defence, militarisation and social service had also informed the founding and activities of various volunteer organisations and paramilitary groups established across the political and social spectrum in interwar South Asia. As Franziska Roy and Ali Raza have shown, these organisations aimed to create the ideal citizen-soldier for the future Indian nation. Roy and Raza argue that these organisations “inaugurated a politics of permanent mobilisation in which an emergent nation (read, a particular community) could discipline itself and mobilise both for the defense of India and its own community against the ‘other’”.45 Gender—visible in the aim of strengthening men to defend and protect their women and, therefore, the community—was a crucial category in these politics of mobilisation. In the wake of the pre- and post-partition violence, the mobilisation around gender in Hindu communities also involved the question of abduction of women and children and their conversion to Islam. During and after communal violence women and children were individually or in groups kidnapped, often sold from hand to hand, raped, converted and/ or (forcibly) married by men of the other community. The question of restoring the honour of abducted women—in this case of the Hindu community, but abductions of Muslim women also happened by Hindus and Sikhs—by bringing them back to their families and if necessary reconverting them had been a topic of concern for the Hindu Mahasabha since the 1920s and now it loomed large in the discussions and practices of relief work.46 Not only members of the different communities grappled with 44  Gwilym Beckerlegge, “Swami Vivekananda and Seva: Taking ‘Social Service’ Seriously,” in William Radice, ed., Swami Vivekananda and the Modernisation of Hinduism (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1998), 158–193; Carey A. Watt, Serving the Nation: Cultures of Service, Association, and Citizenship in Colonial India (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2005). 45  Franziska Roy and Ali Raza, “Paramilitary Organisations in Interwar India,” South Asia 38, no. 4 (2015), 671–689, here 675. 46  Ganneri, “The Hindu Mahasabha in Bombay,” 774; Gupta, Sexuality, Obscenity, Community, 243–259; NMML, Manuscripts, HMS Papers, Subject Files, File C-108, “Draft Resolution by N. C. Chatterjee on Noakhali, undated”; NMML, Manuscripts, SPM Papers,

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solving the question of recovery and restoring “their womenfolk”. In the aftermath of partition, this question also became crucial in state relief work and led to a series of treaties between the two postcolonial states as well as to the creation of a finely tuned recovery machinery. The entire issue was highly politicised and turned women, as Peter Gatrell has argued, into “symbols of national dishonour and patriotic duty”.47 The recovery apparatus, working with a generalised idea of female victimhood, did not allow individual women any right of choice as to whether they wanted to be rescued and restored to their original families and communities. Their forcible repatriation became a vital part of constructing and legitimising the Indian and Pakistani states and helped them to assert their authority by assuming paternal roles.48 In the understanding of Hindu nationalists, the work of recovery on the community level was mostly perceived as a task for young Hindu men, who could thus prove that the Hindu community was neither weak nor divided. “Relief” in the shape of rescue work, however, was also done in the affected areas by Hindu women. For instance, the Dayanand Salvation Mission, a sub-unit of the traditionalist Hindu reform organisation Arya Samaj, informed the Hindu Mahasabha that it had sent female workers to Bengal.49 The Dayanand Salvation Mission had been founded in 1933 with the triple objective “(1) To rescue Hindu girls and widows from the clutches of the ruffians and save them from molestation by bad characters. (2) To arrange for rescue homes at important centres. (3) To convert non-­ Hindus to Hinduism”.50 Against this background, the Mission also became active in 1946. Although the Mission agreed with the Hindu Mahasabha that rescue work was difficult, it still despatched its female workers for relief work. The Mission argued that the experience of the female volunteers and their tactful, patient and skilled behaviour would enable them to II.-IV. Instalment, 2. Subject Files, File 152, “Letter by R. R. Kochhar to S. P. Mookerjee, 07.11.1946.” The discussion around abduction and the honour of abducted women was and is a strong and enduring topos. It comprises elements of rape and even mass rape but also of consensual marriage. Both are not distinguished in this topos. 47  Gatrell, The Making of the Modern Refugee, 169. 48  Major, “The Chief Sufferers,” 57–72; Virdee, “Negotiating the Past,” 469 and 472; Butalia, “Community, State and Gender,” WS16-WS21 and WS 24. 49  NMML, Manuscripts, SPM Papers, II.-IV. Instalment, 2. Subject Files, File 152, “Letter by President of Dayanand Salvation Mission Hoshiarpur to H. C. Ghosh, 27.11.1946.” 50  Ganga P.  Upadhyaya, The Origin, Scope and Mission of the Arya Samaj (Allahabad: Allahabad Law Journal Press, 1940), 126.

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be successful in their relief work.51 Hence, the depiction of female relief workers and the accomplishment of their tasks corresponded with ideas ascribed to their feminine nature as “caring” and “non-violent”. Similar ideas about the “nature of women” were evoked by the General Secretary of the All-India Hindoo Dharm Rakshini Sabha (the All-India Religion Protection Society). He wrote to the Hindu Mahasabha in November 1946 and offered to send female Hindu volunteers to Bengal to help in recovering abducted women by searching Muslim houses. Although in his letter the General Secretary described the selected volunteers both as tenacious and determined, he suggested that all-female units should be accompanied by “chivalrous militants”52 for their safety. Despite the looming danger for the envisaged rescue squads and the necessity of masculine protection, he conceived female participation in recovery work as indispensable. In his view, only female rescue workers could enter Muslim houses and validate the religious identity of the burqa-wearing women in them.53 This is interesting in as much as the honour of the women of the “other” community—in this case the perpetrators—was respected by assigning the task to Hindu women. If Hindu men would have entered the zenana (the inner, secluded women’s area of a Muslim house), this would have been disrespectful to the Muslim women living in this household. Thus, for the All-India Hindoo Dharm Rakshini Sabha effective recovery work was linked to the biological sex and the normative feminine characteristics of their volunteers.54 This discussion suggests that 51  NMML, Manuscripts, SPM Papers, II.-IV. Instalment, 2. Subject Files, File 152, “Letter by President of Dayanand Salvation Mission Hoshiarpur to H. C. Ghosh, 27.11.1946.” 52  NMML, Manuscripts, SPM Papers, I. Instalment, B. Subject Files, File 32, “Letter by General Secretary, All-India Hindoo-Dharm-Rakshini-Sabha to S.  P. Mookerjee, 14.11.1946.” 53  Ibid. The general secretary did not elaborate on how this validation should be accomplished. However, we know from the descriptions of state recovery workers who went into households with the help of the police to search for abducted women and children that they determined religious identities by speaking with the concerned persons and with other members of the household, the neighbours and larger (village) community. Often, they received a hint beforehand that an abducted person was hidden in a particular place or enlisted the help of local people to find missing women. But there were also instances in which recovery work involved irregular activities, such using pressure and physical violence to obtain information. In some cases, the problem remained that of determining beyond any doubt who had been abducted and who had voluntarily converted and married a member of the other community (see Menon and Bhasin, Borders & Boundaries, chapter 3). 54  In the files available, it remains unclear whether this suggestion was taken up by the Hindu Mahasabha. Furthermore, the reasons behind the suggestion to assign the recovery

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one aspect of female participation in relief and recovery activities was their militarisation and work in dangerous public situations; yet, within this situation, their traditional attributions of being patient and sacrificial was highlighted. Also, it was only through their female identity that they could gain access to the zenana. The discourses around and practices of Hindu nationalist relief work were closely linked to notions of gender. These notions of the “pure” Hindu woman in need of protection against “Muslim aggressors”—and therefore of strong Hindu men who could defend their womenfolk—had formed an essential part of Hindu nationalist thinking in the decades before partition. During the communal violence in 1946 and 1947, such ideas did not undergo significant revision; instead, they were reaffirmed. However, these notions strongly influenced the ideals and practices of aid provision by the Hindu Mahasabha and other Hindu Nationalist organisations. In conflating material and financial help as well as protection, bodily strengthening and self-defence under the term “relief”, the question of a virile Hindu masculinity became of crucial importance for the Hindu Mahasabha’s humanitarian work. Hindu women also participated in this work, and it seems that their participation likewise remained mainly within the pre-existing structures. Thus, their engagement in recovery work was valuable to the male relief organisers, especially due to their ascribed feminine nature as patient and tactful. Thus, going into the riot-affected areas to save women of their own community points to an altered perception of Hindu femininity; however, in doing so, female humanitarians needed protection that was provided by Hindu men.

Working for the Relief of All Women: The All-­India Women’s Conference Gender notions also influenced different aspects of relief work that were carried out by non-state South Asian women’s organisations and female activists, for instance, by the AIWC.55 The AIWC—which, in contrast to the Hindu Mahasabha, had not only Hindu but also Muslim, Jewish and work to women are not further elaborated. In this period of excessive violence and communalisation it seems doubtful that the All-India Hindoo Dharm Rakshini Sabha would have adopted an open approach that respected all communities. Rather it could be possible that the society wanted to avoid any resurgence of disturbances. 55  For Pakistani initiatives, see Virdee, “Negotiating the Past,” 473–477.

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Christian members—became active in relief provision in the aftermath of communal disturbances in Calcutta and East Bengal in the summer and autumn of 1946. Its regional branches across India collected funds and material donations for the victims, whether they were men, women or children. Women volunteers were recruited and sent to the affected areas to help displaced people and to rescue abducted women from their abductors. Pointing to the “alarming proportions” of violence against women, members of the AIWC (especially because they were women themselves) felt the duty to join or form rescue parties. In East Bengal, however, it was seen as necessary to be accompanied by military patrols.56 Furthermore, in cooperation with other women’s organisations, such as the Chandpur Mahila Samiti and the All Bengal Mahila Atma Raksha Samiti (Women’s Self-Defense Association),57 the AIWC started relief camps with a special focus on expectant and nursing mothers in the riot-affected areas of Noakhali and Chandpur.58 The organisation also ran rehabilitation projects.59 In its work in Bengal and later in the wake of partition violence, the AIWC stressed the virtue of women as peacemakers, as pacifiers during the

56  NMML, Microfilm, All-India Women’s Conference Papers [AIWC Papers], I. Instalment, File 389, “Letter S.  Ramaturani to Honorary Secretary AIWC, 12.12.1946”, “Letter by K.  Sayani to A.  Gupta, 02.12.1946” and “Appeal by Mrs. S.  Sen, undated”; NMML, Microfilm, AIWC Papers, II. Instalment, File 32, All-India Women’s Conference, Calcutta Branch, Half-yearly report, January to June 1947. 57  The All Bengal Mahila Atma Raksha Samiti (MARS) had previous experience of working in humanitarian crises. Organised by leftist women leaders in Bengal, MARS had links with the Communist Party of India and provided relief during the Great Bengal famine of 1943. See Gargi Chakravartty, “Emergence of Mahila Atma Raksha Samiti in the Forties: Calcutta Chapter,” in Tanika Sarkar and Sekar Bandyopadhyay, eds., Calcutta: The Stormy Decades (Oxon and New York: Routledge, 2018), 177–203. 58  Renu Chakravartty, “Humanity Uprooted at Noakhali and Chandpur,” Roshni I, no. 10–11 (1946), 101–107, here 105–106. The AIWC cooperated on various occasions during and after partition with other non-state organisations and relief initiatives, such as the United Council of Relief and Welfare. Organised in India in autumn 1947, the United Council was led by the former Vicerine Lady Edwina Mountbatten and supported by the postcolonial government. It brought together various non-state relief organisations with the aim of providing coordinated and joint aid, thereby avoiding overlaps and any duplication of effort. Donald F. Ebright, Free India: The First Five Years. An Account of the 1947 Riots, Refugees, Relief and Rehabilitation (Nashville: Parthenon Press, 1954), 58–60. 59   NMML, Microfilm, AIWC Papers, II.  Instalment, File 32, All-India Women’s Conference, Calcutta Branch, Half-yearly report, January to June 1947.

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communal frenzy.60 Communal harmony had been repeatedly on the agenda of the organisation since the 1930s. At that time, the organisation had not only pledged to support those candidates in upcoming elections who would stand for the removal of electorates based on communal (religious and ethnic) identities, it had also come up with a comprehensive practical programme to promote communal unity on the ground. Amongst others, it asked its local and regional branches to include women of all communities in their working committees, suggested participating in the celebration of religious festivals of other communities and urged them to strengthen their social interactions. The programme also advocated a non-­ communal education.61 The vital role and potential success of the AIWC in the promotion of communal unity were attributed to the very fact that it was genuinely a women’s organisation. Rani Lakshmibai Rajwade, long-­ term member and president of the AIWC in 1938, linked this work with normative gender notions; however, in her understanding, these extended beyond the private into the public domain. As she explained in a speech in December 1936: Just as a woman, as the mother, wife, or daughter is a stabilizing force in a home, we feel that this conference on account of the unique stand they have taken has proved itself to be such a force in the wider, the larger, home, the Nation. I am confident that the women’s unity will be the ultimate means of bringing about a brotherly understanding and even active co-operation among the seemingly divided communities of this land.62 60  The role of women as peacemakers and corresponding notions of femininity have a longstanding tradition in women’s activism worldwide. See, for instance, Annika Wilmers, Pazifismus in der internationalen Frauenbewegung (1914–1920): Handlungsspielräume, politische Konzeptionen und gesellschaftliche Auseinandersetzungen (Essen: Klartext-Verlag, 2008); Erika Kuhlmann, “The ‘Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom’ and reconciliation after the Great War,” in Alison S. Fell and Ingrid Sharp, eds., The Women’s Movement in Wartime: International Perspectives, 1914–1919 (Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), 227–243; Melinda Plastas, A Band of Noble Women: Racial Politics in the Women’s Peace Movement (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2011). 61  All-India Women’s Conference: Eleventh Session, December 23 to 27, 1936 (Ahmedabad, 1937), 28–29; All-India Women’s Conference: Thirteenth Session, 73. 62  All-India Women’s Conference: Eleventh Session, 40. Rani Lakshmibai Rajwade had received a medical education in Bombay and Great Britain and had worked as practical physician before her late marriage. She was an active member of the AIWC and had been its honorary secretary in the early 1930s. Rajwade was a supporter of reproductive control and served as the chairwomen of the Subcommittee on “Woman’s role in planned economy” in the National Planning Committee after Indian independence. See, Barbara N.  Ramusack,

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The violence before and during partition proved that communal harmony was not achieved when India and Pakistan became independent. The AIWC, however, contrary to the Hindu Mahasabha, adhered to its non-communal agenda and mostly refrained from mentioning any particular community in its communications and aid-appeals. In the case of East Bengal, for instance, we do not read about “Muslim aggressors” and “Hindu sufferers” but instead about female victims who needed aid.63 While the Hindu nationalist emphasis was on separate aid work and the deployment of women to work exclusively for victims of their own community, the AIWC called for an intense cooperation between Hindu and Muslim women in aid and peace work. Thus, in an article, published in Roshni, the organisation’s journal in December 1946, we read: But the most difficult yet most essential job is that of approaching both the Hindu and Muslim women of the locality and their menfolk to realise that riots hit at the root of all that women hold most dear, irrespective of community. Women suffer most, so women, both Hindus and Muslims, by their effort, must solder together in fraternal comradeship the fast growing rift between the two major communities before the communal hatred envelopes fresh areas. The job will no doubt be hard and uphill but experience and time will lead to the realisation of the futility of riots.64

Although the AIWC felt that the task was “superhuman”—and by using this phrase it underlined the difficulties involved—it thought that this commitment would “best [befit] a non-communal organisation of women” (which is how they understood their own outlook) and be their “best contribution”.65 By encouraging all women, not just the ones that were already politically or socially active, to leave their houses and to stand up for inter-communal harmony (even against the views of their male family members), the AIWC repeated earlier ideas about the role of women in national life and re-emphasised the importance for Indian women to move into the public domain. That is not to say that before 1946 Indian women “Embattled Advocates: The Debate over Birth Control in India, 1920–40,” Journal of Women’s History 1, no. 2 (1989), 34–64. 63  See, for instance, NMML, Microfilm, AIWC Papers, I. Instalment, File 389, “Appeal by Mrs. S. Sen, undated.” 64  Chakravartty, “Humanity Uprooted,” 106. 65  Ibid., 106–107. See for similar appeals in December 1947: Basu and Bharati, Women’s Struggle, 101.

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had not participated in public life, for instance, by joining the struggle against colonial rule.66 However, their numbers had been small, and the life of most women was confined to the private realm of family and community. With partition and the constitution of two independent nation-­ states, the AIWC ceased to be active in the newly created territory of Pakistan. However, at first, the organisation continued to cherish the idea of a “united greater India”, and during its annual session in Madras in December 1947 it appealed to “the women of both the Dominions to bridge this unnatural cleavage and vigorously work for communal harmony and take every care to prevent coming generations from being infected with this communal virus”.67 Thus, in the understanding of the AIWC, South Asian women were—irrespective of religious, social or political differences—naturally equipped to prevent communal violence now and in the future due to their femininity. By seeing women as non-violent and peaceful—an ascription that was shared by men—the AIWC felt that women were well fitted to this job. However, this task assured that women would not only remain, as before, in the private realm as mothers and wives but would also have to move beyond it into the public domain. During partition, the AIWC continued its relief work68 and voiced ideas that simultaneously potentially enlarged and restricted the social spaces available to both female humanitarian helpers and aid recipients. When violence and displacement ran high in the summer and early autumn of 1947, the organisation demanded that more social and medical workers be trained, for instance, through offering mandatory classes in ambulance work, nursing or first aid in universities, colleges and schools for girls and also for boys.69 The humanitarian crisis proved to be a moment of empowerment for some women. The AIWC also reacted to the government’s call to join “women’s work parties” with the task of knitting badly needed garments: it appealed to its regional branches to “be foremost in their 66  For a history of women’s life, status and participation in public affairs in colonial India, see Geraldine Forbes, The New Cambridge History of India. IV.2: Women in Modern India (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996). See also: Suruchi Thapar, “Women as Activists: Women as Symbols: A Study of the Indian National Movement,” Feminist Review 44 (1993), 81–96. 67   NMML, Microfilm, AIWC Papers, I.  Instalment, File 422, “All India Women’s Conference Resolutions from Branches, 20th Session, Madras 1947.” 68  See, for instance, NMML, Microfilm, AIWC Papers, I.  Instalment, File 413 and File 422; NMML, Microfilm, AIWC Papers, II. Instalment, File 32 and File 35. 69  Without author, “News and Notes,” Roshni II, no. 8 (1947), 50–53, here 53.

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offer to help” in producing these garments.70 These working parties had a longer tradition in South Asia. During the world wars, women had been asked or they volunteered to contribute to the war effort; the production of garments had been one public working sphere open to them.71 As partition caused the flight of millions of people, the AIWC appealed to female relief workers to proceed to the refugee camps and assist, in particular, female refugees by giving lessons in hygiene, kitchen work and child education. In these appeals, women’s relief work was framed in an ambivalent way. On the one hand, the aid which female workers were supposed to provide touched upon the traditional realms of women’s work, that is, the household and childcare. On the other hand, the AIWC explicitly stressed the necessity to render the right type of education to the refugee women and children, an education that was understood to mould them into disciplined and self-supporting citizens who would, in future, serve their state rather than becoming a burden.72 By emphasizing that women should learn a vocation or profession and therefore be able to support themselves, the AIWC promoted an arrangement that had the ­potential to partially empower women in the long run.73 Thus, the local branches of Andheri and Vile Parle in the Bombay Province, for instance, sent their volunteers to teach the refugee women embroidery and knitting. Furthermore, the necessary tools for self-support, such as charkas (spinning wheels) were also provided.74 The argument brought forth by the AIWC corresponded well with the agenda of the postcolonial Indian government, which—very much in the tradition of the colonial state—did not want to create long-term dependents on charity.75 It is not surprising that certain ideas and practices of the 70  NMML, Microfilm, AIWC Papers, I.  Instalment, File 422, “Circular from President AIWC to Members of the Standing Committee, 10.10.1947.” 71  See, for instance, British Library [BL], Asia, Pacific, and Africa Collections (APAC), IOR/L/I/1/1020. 72  Without author, “News and Notes,” Roshni II, no. 8 (1947), 52–53; without author, “News and Notes,” Roshni II, no. 10 (1947), 65–66. 73  See for the efforts of the Indian state to provide employment to women: Datta, “Gendering Oral History of Partition,” 2232–2235. 74  NMML, Microfilm, AIWC Papers, I.  Instalment, File 413, “The Bombay Branch Central Committee, Draft Minutes, 23.10.1947.” 75  Carey A.  Watt, “Philanthropy and Civilizing Missions in India c. 1820–1960: States, NGOs and Development,” in Carey A. Watt and Michael Mann, eds., Civilizing Missions in Colonial and Postcolonial South Asia: From Improvement to Development (London: Anthem Press, 2011), 271–316; David Arnold, “Vagrant India: Famine, Poverty, and Welfare under

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AIWC fit neatly with the state’s programme. The postcolonial Indian state was run by the Indian National Congress and thus by members of the independence movement. Many of the women who were in leading positions in the AIWC and who worked during 1946 and 1947 as non-state relief activists had also participated in the struggle against colonial rule and were members of the Indian National Congress or the Congress Socialist Party. Furthermore, several women activists, such as Rameshwari Nehru and Mridula Sarabhai became appointed state relief workers in the months after partition and shaped governmental relief politics and practices, especially regarding women and their “recovery”. With its relief provision, the AIWC and its women volunteers contributed to the rebuilding of the Indian nation.

Conclusion The communal violence before and during partition generated several major months-long humanitarian crises in colonial and postcolonial South Asia. This chapter has focused on the humanitarian relief work of two non-­ state organisations with particular attention to their gender politics, namely, the Hindu Mahasabha and the AIWC. Hindu nationalist relief work in the months before and during partition was linked to existing notions of the necessity to defend and strengthen the Hindu community. By emphasizing three elements—namely, the Muslim menace (i.e. the image of the virile Muslim as the aggressor), the danger of Hindu women being raped and abducted (thereby bringing the violation of the whole Hindu communal body) and the inability of Hindu men to safeguard their women—Hindu nationalists’ aid became an instrument aimed at strengthening the virility of Hindu men and the Hindu nation. Hindu female relief workers were, as the example of the Dayanand Salvation Mission has shown, generally understood through the lens of existing gender norms, that is, via the ideal of woman as a care-giver. However, this example also points to a shift in the ideals of normative femininity that were applied: from a view of women as patient and sacrificial to a reading of Hindu women as defenders of the “Hindu race” who actively went into the riot-­ torn areas to rescue and reconvert members of their community, especially abducted women. Colonial Rule,” in A. L. Beier and Paul Ocobock, eds., Cast out: Vagrancy and Homelessness in Global and Historical Perspective (Ohio: Ohio University Press, 2008), 117–139.

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In contrast, the relief work of the AIWC can be described as non-­ communal, and it was framed in a gender discourse that both broadened and conserved the social spaces deemed open to women. By taking up aid and peace work, humanitarian helpers themselves often left the realm of private and community life in order to work in modern professions. The AIWC’s support for local female peace work, its views on education and on forming active future women citizens also must be understood as challenges to normative gender roles. At the same time, the aid practices that were suggested—such as the provision of household, hygiene and childcare courses for female victims—tended to reinforce existing gender roles.

CHAPTER 7

Humanitarian Service in the Name of Social Development: The Historic Origins of Women’s Welfare Associations in Saudi Arabia Nora Derbal

On 25 November 2009, heavy rainfall in the Mecca region caused one of the most severe natural disasters in Saudi Arabian history. For days, the southern part of the city of Jeddah, where thousands of pilgrims had gathered on the eve of the annual pilgrimage, was flooded. The water currents destroyed parts of the local infrastructure, such as streets and bridges, and carried away cars and buses. Poorly built houses collapsed under the mud carried by the currents. While the official death toll stood at 123, the opposition group Movement for Islamic Reform in Arabia (MIRA) counted several thousand deaths.1 Nevertheless, the state’s emergency 1  The Guardian reported more than 500 deaths, see Ali al-Ahmed, “Jeddah Flood Deaths Shame Saudi Royals,” The Guardian, 03.12.2009, http://www.theguardian.com/com-

N. Derbal (*) The American University in Cairo (AUC), Cairo, Egypt e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 E. Möller et al. (eds.), Gendering Global Humanitarianism in the Twentieth Century, Palgrave Macmillan Transnational History Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-44630-7_7

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relief agencies like the Civil Defence Organization and the Saudi Red Crescent Society were absent from the city, focusing their capacities on the ongoing pilgrimage in Mecca and Medina. Instead, the vacuum of assistance was met by the city’s numerous welfare associations, which led the way for a vast number of volunteers, many of them women. Building on decades of engagement for Jeddah’s inhabitants in times of distress and need, the welfare associations were ready to engage in immediate relief activities, such as the distribution of food, clothing, and blankets, and they also established provisional shelter for the homeless and offered medical assistance to the injured.2 What came to be known as “the Jeddah floods” (suyūl Jidda) clearly revealed the Saudi government’s lack of a systematic approach to disaster relief and highlighted instead the important role of traditional welfare associations as providers of aid in times of emergency. Yet, Saudi Arabia’s nearly 750 welfare associations (jamʿiyyāt khayriyya) do not easily qualify as humanitarian actors; instead, they exemplify the blurred boundaries between humanitarian action, charity, and development in the twentieth-century Middle East.3 These blurred boundaries are reflected in the Arabic language itself, which has no single accepted term equivalent to “humanitarianism”.4 Only in the second half of the twentieth century did the term insāniyya (and its masculine adjective insānı̄) emerge to denote “humanitarian” action. The welfare associations discussed in this chapter describe their engagement as amal insānı̄ (humanitarian work) and mentisfree/2009/dec/03/jeddah-floods-sewage-al-saud (last accessed 12.01.2016); see a critical discussion of these numbers and detailed analysis of the floods, in Jannis Hagmann, Regen von oben, Protest von unten: Eine Analyse gesellschaftlicher Mobilisierung in Jidda, Saudi-Arabien, anhand von Presse, Petitionen und Facebook, Working Paper Series 4 (Berlin: Freie Universität Berlin, 2012). 2  To voice the seriousness of the situation was part of the relief workers’ strategy; hence, local media coverage was abundant, see Hassna’a Mokhtar, “Outpouring of Citizen Action after Flooding,” Arab News, 01.12.2009, http://www.arabnews.com/node/330553 (last accessed 12.01.2016); Michael Bou-Nacklie, “The Rise of Civil Society in an Emergency,” Destination Jeddah 12 (2010), 6–11. 3  In 2015, the Ministry of Social Affairs counted 746 welfare associations upon changing their legal status to NGOs, see Adam Coogle, “Dispatches: Better Late Than Never – Saudi Arabia Approves NGO Law,” Human Rights Watch, 02.12.2015, https://www.hrw.org/ news/2015/12/02/dispatches-better-late-never-saudi-arabia-approves-ngo-law (last accessed 09.01.2016). 4  For a lexical analysis of the term, see Jasmine Moussa, “Ancient Origins, Modern Actors: Defining Arabic Meanings of Humanitarianism,” HPG Working Paper (London: Humanitarian Policy Group, 2014), https://www.odi.org/sites/odi.org.uk/files/odiassets/publications-opinion-files/9290.pdf (last accessed 29.07.2018), 3–7.

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khidma insāniyya (humanitarian service), yet their discourses and practices equally mobilize a charitable register, justifying their actions as amal alkhayr (works of benevolence, charity) motivated by the religious notion of piety (al-birr) and good deeds (al-iḥsān). The multiple meanings associated in Arabic with the term insānı̄—which also means “human”, “humane”, and “philanthropist”5—are deeply embedded in ideas of Islamic charity. Hence, Saudi humanitarian organizations with an explicitly secular mission, like Al-Basar International Foundation, which provides eye care in Africa and Asia, have been rare in the history of Saudi humanitarianism.6 Particularly in the Gulf states, charity initiatives have been predominantly justified through religious rather than secular motivations. The religious imperative to give to the poor and needy and to show compassion is an integral part of Islam and deeply ingrained in the culture of aid within Gulf states as well as in the political practice of the Gulf states.7 The so-called alms tax, in Arabic zakāt, is one of the five pillars of Islam and one of the few taxes that the Saudi state has historically levied. Pious foundations (awqāf ), freewill offerings (ṣadaqa), and donations associated with the religious calendar—such as the distribution of food during the fasting month of Ramadan and clothing for its subsequent feast (ʿid al-fitr)—have a strong tradition in Saudi Arabia.8 5  Hans Wehr, “Insān,” in J. Milton Cowan, ed., A Dictionary of Modern Written Arabic (Urbana, IL: Spoken Language Services, 1994), 39 who does not yet list “humanitarianism” among the meanings associated with the Arabic root “I” “n” “s” or with the term insāniyya. 6  However, we are currently witnessing a shift towards secularization, accelerated under King Salman’s reign since 2015, as is visible, for instance, in the drastic remodelling of the International Islamic Relief Organization of Saudi Arabia (IIRO or IIROSA), see Jonathan Benthall, “The Rise and Decline of Saudi Overseas Humanitarian Charities,” Occasional Paper 20 (2018), 1–41, here 27. 7  On Islamic aid and humanitarianism, see Jonathan Benthall, “Islamic Charities, FaithBased Organizations, and the International Aid System,” in Jon B. Alterman and Karin von Hippel, eds., Understanding Islamic Charities (Washington, D.C.: Center for Strategic and International Studies, 2007), 1–14; and Jonathan Benthall, “‘Cultural Proximity’ and the Conjuncture of Islam with Modern Humanitarianism,” in Michael Barnett and Janice Gross Stein, eds., Sacred Aid: Faith and Humanitarianism (Oxford et al.: Oxford University Press, 2012), 65–89; for the Gulf region, see Robert Lacey and  Jonathan Benthall, eds., Gulf Charities and Islamic Philanthropy in the “Age of Terror” and beyond (Berlin: Gerlach Press, 2014); for Gulf-based transnational Islamic aid, see Marie Juul Petersen, For Humanity or for the Umma? Aid and Islam in Transnational Muslim NGOs (London: Hurst & Co, 2015). 8  Nora Derbal, “Domestic, Religious, Civic? Notes on Institutionalized Charity in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia,” in Robert Lacey and Jonathan Benthall, eds., Gulf Charities and Islamic Philanthropy in the “Age of Terror” and beyond (Berlin: Gerlach Press, 2014), 145–167.

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Whereas the Saudi Arabian state’s transnational humanitarian practices have been at the centre of much scholarly debate,9 little is known outside of the kingdom about voluntary approaches to domestic need, disasters, and crises. The literature on Saudi Arabia’s approach to aid has highlighted the intricate entanglement of its transnational humanitarian agenda and its development assistance with charity.10 The aid mission of the Saudi state is framed as an act of charity, reflecting its motivation through the religious obligation to provide alms.11 By contrast, the domestic welfare associations discussed in this chapter were not established in the name of religious belief but were instead set up according to an ideological framework intended to support the new nation state. By law, the scope of domestic humanitarian actors such as welfare associations is limited to the country’s national borders. In fact, few welfare associations even reach beyond their local environment, such as their neighbourhood, city, or region, and networks that include non-state humanitarian actors from different regions are rare and weak.12 In view of these tensions, women’s welfare associations in Saudi Arabia, as on the wider Arabian Peninsula,13 are a particularly interesting case to study, because they were set up in the name of service to the nation and its 9  For an overview from various angles, see Lacey and Benthall, Gulf Charities and Islamic Philanthropy in the “Age of Terror” and beyond. 10  Khalid Al-Yahya and Nathalie Fustier, “Saudi Arabia as a Global Humanitarian Donor,” in Robert Lacey and Jonathan Benthall, eds., Gulf Charities and Islamic Philanthropy – In the “Age of Terror” and Beyond (Berlin: Gerlach Press, 2014), 169–197; Sherine El TaraboulsiMcCarthy, “A Kingdom of Humanity? Saudi Arabia’s Values, Systems and Interests in Humanitarian Action,” HPG Working Paper (London: Humanitarian Policy Group, 2017), https://www.odi.org/sites/odi.org.uk/files/resource-documents/11741.pdf (last accessed 06.08.2018). 11  Ministry of Foreign Affairs et  al., “Partnership in Development and South-South Cooperation,” 2016, http://www.sa.undp.org/content/saudi_arabia/en/home/library/ human_development/KSA_ODA_report.html (last accessed 16.02.2017). 12  A notable exception is the al-Birr Society (Jamʿiyyat al-Birr al-Khayriyya), founded in 1953, which counts some 462 organizations and offices in every major town of the country, see Ministry of Social Affairs, Dalı̄l al-Jamʿiyyāt al-Khayriyya fı̄ al-Mamlaka al-ʿArabiyya al-Saʿūdiyya [Directory of Welfare Associations in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia] (Riyadh: Ministry of Social Affairs, 2012). 13  For Yemen, see Susanne Dahlgren, “Welfare and Modernity: Three Concepts for the ‘Advanced Woman’,” in Nefissa Naguib and Inger Marie Okkenhaug, eds., Interpreting Welfare and Relief in the Middle East (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2008), 57–82.

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progress (taqaddum, tanmiyya) and not in the name of charity. In Saudi Arabia, women’s welfare associations (jamʿiyyāt khayriyya nisāʾiyya) began to be established in the 1960s by informal groups of women volunteers. Initially, they were women-only, bottom-up, and non-profit volunteering organizations. However, over the years, motivated by their growth and professionalization, many of the associations began employing professional staff—such as social workers, teachers, and administrative personnel—in addition to working with volunteers and mobilizing members who supported these organizations’ efforts through membership fees. The aim of the early women’s welfare associations was to support women and (female-headed) families in need. The majority of beneficiaries in the early days of these associations were non-Saudi citizens, which resulted from non-citizens being ineligible for the state’s comprehensive welfare services. Within 50 years, the number of women’s welfare associations in Saudi Arabia grew to comprise 38 organizations registered at the Ministry of Social Affairs.14 Women’s welfare associations have a long history of female charity and giving in the Middle East.15 In Saudi Arabia, most women’s charitable practices appear to have been informal in nature, which makes them difficult to trace in historical sources.16 In the standard reference work on changes in the social organization of women in twentieth-century Saudi Arabia, Soraya Altorki describes how informal networks of solidarity used to connect women from elite families in Jeddah with “women from lower income groups”, for instance, when they spoke to one another over a daily  Ministry of Social Affairs, Dalı̄l al-Jamʿiyyāt al-Khayriyya, 9.  See, for instance, Mary A.  Fay, “Women and Waqf: Toward a Reconsideration of Women’s Place in the Mamluk Household,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 29 (1997), 33–51; Amy Singer, Constructing Ottoman Beneficence: An Imperial Soup Kitchen in Jerusalem (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2002), 71–99; Beth Baron, “Islam, Philanthropy, and Political Culture in Interwar Egypt: The Activism of Labiba Ahmad,” in Michael Bonner, Mine Ener, and Amy Singer, eds., Poverty and Charity in Middle Eastern Contexts (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2003), 239–254. 16  Information on formal charity is scattered throughout the sources; on shelters endowed by women in Mecca, see, for example, Richard T.  Mortel, “‘Ribātṣ ’ in Mecca during the Medieval Period: A Descriptive Study Based on Literary Sources,” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 61, no. 1 (1998), 29–50, here 36, 42, 44, 47; an endowment for a school made by a Calcuttan woman is mentioned in Madawi Al-Rasheed, A Most Masculine State: Gender, Politics and Religion in Saudi Arabia (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 83. 14 15

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shared lunch.17 According to Altorki, it was regarded as the responsibility of wealthy households to extend hospitality and support to the needy in times of crisis, such as death, illness, and husband’s unemployment. During the month of Ramadan, the head of household would allocate a portion of the annual alms (zakāt al-fitr) to his wife for distribution among needy women; these were often the same individuals every year, thus establishing long-lasting networks of solidarity between the families.18 The women’s welfare associations’ origins discussed in this chapter built on these informal traditions of charity, and yet religion played only a minor role in the representation of their activities. Instead, the following analysis highlights how the first women’s welfare associations promoted a vision in which women contributed to the development of Saudi Arabian society. The chapter examines the emergence of women’s welfare associations in Saudi Arabia in the light of the deeply gendered political project of the young Saudi nation state. The first part of the chapter locates gender inequality in Saudi Arabia within King Faysal’s (1964–75) development agenda, where it manifested one aspect of the emerging national identity of the young nation state. Within Faysal’s political course, Saudi women represented one of the important markers of the modernization of the state.19 However, how far did the opening of the realm of social welfare to women also represent an opening of the roles and representations of Saudi Arabian women? The second part of the chapter asks this question again with regard to the relation between gender and the discourses and practices of the early women welfare associations. A reading of their humanitarian discourses and practices which is sensitive to gender issues suggests that the early women volunteers mobilized prevalent social and cultural constructions of femininity in order to represent and justify their involvement in the welfare field. Yet, the actual humanitarian practices of these associations often went beyond the state’s official policies, for instance by reaching out to non-Saudi citizens. At the same time, this chapter will argue that humanitarian work allowed these women to modify and expand the role of “the ideal Saudi woman” as portrayed by the state. This chapter explores the historical origins of two of the oldest, still extant women’s welfare associations in Saudi Arabia: the First Women’s Welfare Association in Jeddah (al-Jamʿiyya al-Khayriyya al-Nisāʾiyya  Soraya Altorki, Women in Saudi Arabia: Ideology and Behavior among the Elite (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986), 66. 18  Ibid., 48. 19  Al-Rasheed, A Most Masculine State, 78, 89–95. 17

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al-Ū lā bi-Jidda), founded in 1961, and Al-Nahda Women’s Charitable Society (Jamʿiyyat al-Nahḍa al-Nisāʾiyya al-Khayriyya), the Al-Nahda Society for short, founded in Riyadh in 1962. With some 3500 families annually, both associations count today as among the largest providers of assistance (musāʿada), support (iʿāna), and social service (khidma ijtimāʿiyya) in Saudi Arabia’s urban centres, Jeddah and Riyadh. The First Women’s Welfare Association in Jeddah was one of the associations leading the relief work in the wake of the Jeddah floods in 2009. I followed the events in Jeddah, where I lived from August 2009 to March 2010 as a visiting graduate student at King ʿAbd al-ʿAziz University. For several weeks, I participated in the flood relief work, and this shared experience helped facilitate contacts to volunteers and their associations in the context of my field work. The analysis is based on the textual documentation of the aid associations, particularly their annual reviews, member magazines, and booklets, together with information from their websites. Furthermore, the analysis draws on observations from personal visits to the associations’ various branches and on interviews conducted during 16 months of fieldwork in Jeddah and Riyadh between 2009–2010 and 2012–2013. The semi-structured interviews, loosely based on an interview guide, covered a wide hierarchical spectrum of both female and male interview partners from the associations and those involved in the field of charity work in Jeddah and Riyadh.

King Faysal, Social Welfare and Women As Markers of Development: An Opening for Women? Gender inequality in Saudi Arabia is often explained by Wahhabism, which is the prevalent interpretation of Islam in the kingdom, based on a supposedly “literal” interpretation of the sources of Islam, Qurʾan and sunna (the sayings and deeds attributed to the Prophet Muhammad). The doctrine was formulated by the ideological father of the movement, the preacher and activist Muhammad Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhab (1703–1793). The Wahhabiya in and of itself, however, does not explain gender inequality in Saudi Arabia; what is equally important is its transformation from a religious revival movement to a state project that devised and cultivated gender relations as one aspect of a greater political endeavour.20 From the 20  Central argument of Eleanor A. Doumato, “Gender, Monarchy, and National Identity in Saudi Arabia,” British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 19, no. 1 (1992), 31–47; and Al-Rasheed, A Most Masculine State; and Amélie Le Renard, A Society of Young Women:

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historic 1744/45 alliance between the religious reformer Muhammad Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhab and the founder of the dynasty Ā l Saʿud, Muhammad Ibn Saʿud (ca. 1700–1765), religious nationalism has been one of the founding principles of the Saudi state. Other scholars have argued that rather than Islam, it is oil that has fuelled gender inequality in Saudi Arabia.21 For Saudi women, oil wealth created an unusual situation. Prior to the oil boom, economic necessity forced Saudi women to participate in a variety of occupations in animal husbandry and agriculture.22 Only families belonging to rich sedentary elites could afford to enclose their women indoors, making gender segregation and the seclusion of women into a marker of high status.23 The oil boom led to an unprecedented expansion of government bureaucracy, thus offering employment to a whole generation of educated Saudi men. Regular salaries made women’s economic contributions to the household redundant. At the same time, oil wealth allowed for the importation of foreign domestic workers, thus relieving housewives of most household chores. Except for the management of a large number of servants, they participated little in the running of their households. Madawi al-Rasheed draws the picture of an “idle minority”24; wealthy but unemployed, these women engaged in new consumption patterns, particularly following the 1973 oil boom, which created new shopping areas in Saudi Arabia’s urban landscape together with new shopping practices. Yet, this left many women unsatisfied and struggling with the lack of responsibility or of meaningful tasks: the result was “boredom”, in the words of humanitarian workers like Jihan al-Amawy—introduced below—who is remembered as one of the founders of the First Women’s Welfare Association. For these women volunteers, “going to the jamʿiyya” appeared a much more meaningful Opportunities of Place, Power, and Reform in Saudi Arabia (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2014). 21  That it was oil rather than Islam that increased women’s confinement in twentieth century Arabia is argued, for instance, by Michael Ross, “Oil, Islam, and Women,” American Political Science Review 102, no. 1 (2008), 107–123. 22  Aisha M. Almana, “Economic Development and Its Impact on the Status of Women in Saudi Arabia,” unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Colorado (1981), 124–127; Salwa Al-Khateeb, “The Oil Boom and Its Impact on Women and Families in Saudi Arabia,” in Alanoud Alsharekh, ed., The Gulf Family: Kinship Policies and Modernity (London: Saqi, 2007), 83–108, here 83–84, 99–102. 23  Almana, “Status of Women”; Le Renard, A Society of Young Women, 29–33. 24  Al-Rasheed, A Most Masculine State, 103–107.

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alternative.25 Hence, the effects of the oil boom were twofold: on the one hand, characteristic of the 1960s and 1970s, the oil boom led to the more rigid confinement of Saudi women to the private sphere, meaning the (extended) family (home(s)), since their economic contribution to the household income was no longer needed. Yet, on the other hand, the oil boom allowed for the emergence of novel female publics—that is gender-­ segregated spaces—which catered exclusively to women and in which women unrelated by blood or family interacted,26 such as women’s welfare associations. One of the first “new” gender-segregated publics was the field of education, which perpetuated a particular model of femininity that came to define “the Saudi woman” of the time. The supporters of women’s education and the supporters of women’s welfare associations were often the same protagonists. Both faced substantial opposition (which is better documented for education) and both dealt with it through similar strategies, namely aligning themselves with the development mission of the state. Excess oil wealth in the hands of the state allowed large investments in country-wide, gender-segregated education. Prior to the oil boom, there were, generally speaking, only limited educational opportunities in Saudi Arabia, whether for boys or girls. Most schools were founded in the Western region of the country in the form of traditional kuttāb (study circles run by religious scholars), and a handful of schools were established on the basis of endowments (awqāf ) in Mecca, Medina, and Jeddah.27 In 1954, the creation of the Ministry of Education established free compulsory education as a basic right of every male citizen.28 Yet, public education for women in Saudi Arabia was only introduced in 1960, against 25  Informal conversation with a volunteer from the first generation of volunteers, at the Annual Member Meeting of the First Women’s Welfare Association, at the headquarters of the association, Jeddah, 10.12.2012. 26  For general discussion of female public spaces and their definition, see Le Renard, A Society of Young Women, 6. 27  Al-Rasheed, A Most Masculine State, 78–89. 28  Sarah Yizraeli, Politics and Society in Saudi Arabia: The Crucial Years of Development, 1960–1982 (New York: Columbia University Press, 2012), 228–234. Already in 1925, Ibn Saʿud had established a Directorate for Education (Mudiriyyat al-Maʿārif) in Mecca, which announced that primary education would be compulsory for boys and free of charge. Yet, due to strong religious opposition, the directorate failed to introduce general subjects into the curricula. An illiteracy rate estimate of 97.5 per cent by UNESCO in 1962 suggests that the directorate did not reach far. See also Alexei Vassiliev, The History of Saudi Arabia (New York: New York University Press, 2000), 309–310.

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substantial opposition from religious clerics, who maintained that girls should not be educated outside the home and argued that a woman’s role in society was to fulfil herself through marriage and children.29 Even before the 1960s, especially in the central region of Najd, upper-class households, including the royal family, mostly relied on the home schooling for girls that was offered by local religious scholars. Breaking with precedent, King Faysal bin ʿAbd al-ʿAziz went as far as sending his own daughters Sarah, Latifa, and Loulwa (who would go on to play prominent roles in women’s welfare associations) to boarding schools in Switzerland. In 1960, the government negotiated a compromise with the religious establishment by placing girls’ education under the authority of religious scholars, whose ideas of femininity, centring on certain normative expectations regarding women’s behaviours and activities, dominated the field of education in Saudi Arabia for decades. Whereas boys’ education was subject to the Ministry of Education, girls’ education fell under the purview of the General Presidency for Girls’ Education, composed of a group of religious scholars—all of them men—headed by the country’s highest religious authority at the time, Shaykh Muhammad ibn Ibrahim.30 Through such (symbolic) gender politics, the Ā l Saʿud leadership reinforced its legitimacy as the guarantor of a community in accordance with God’s laws. Specific educational policies, with regard to course content and limited course selection, strengthened a religious nationalist project that framed “the Saudi woman” as an ideal Muslim by emphasizing her role as housewife and mother.31 Hence, in 1960 King Saʿud issued an order by royal decree “to establish schools to educate girls in religious matters (Quran, Creed, and Fiqh), and other sciences that are accepted in our religious tradition such as house management, bringing up children and disciplining them”.32 This suggests that the role of Saudi women was reduced to (the “privileges of”) raising the children of the nation and overseeing a family household. This distinguished “the Saudi woman” from the large numbers of immigrant working women,33 who were attracted by the country’s many new employment opportunities in the wake of the oil boom, as teachers, nurses, doctors, and workers in the service sector, such  Al-Rasheed, A Most Masculine State, 89–95.  Ibid., 77–107. 31  Doumato, “Gender, Monarchy, and National Identity in Saudi Arabia.” 32  Al-Rasheed, A Most Masculine State, 90, 91. 33  A central argument of Le Renard, A Society of Young Women. 29 30

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as Saudi Arabia Airlines flight attendants.34 Hence, gender politics and the models of femininity that were promulgated fulfilled an important function in the national project of the young nation state, helping to establish a shared national identity that distinguished Saudi Arabia as a privileged faithful, Islamic community in accordance with God’s laws and based upon religious and ethnic exclusiveness. Throughout the twentieth century, women’s universities centred on religious education, humanities, and social sciences. By contrast, boys could go on to study natural sciences, engineering, and law, subjects not to be found at women’s universities in the twentieth century.35 To a certain extent, opening the field of education to Saudi women also reflected rising political pressure on the ruling elite, as well as political rivalry within the royal family itself, which was manifested in a conflict between King Saʿud (who reigned 1953–1964) and his half-brother, Faysal bin ʿAbd al-Aziz (1906–1975).36 The 1950s were a particularly tumultuous time in the political history of the young state. King Saʿud considered growing oil revenues to be the rightful private income of the ruler and his family, rather than state income to be used towards benefiting all Saudi inhabitants of the country.37 This was reflected in his fiscal policies, which introduced an item into the annual budget in 1958 called the privy purse (al-khazı̄na al-khaṣsa ̣ ), which covered the expenses of the royal family.38 Despite its enormous oil income, Saudi Arabia faced bankruptcy in 1958.39 In the Eastern Province, strikes and demonstrations in 1953 and 1956 paralysed the Arabian American Oil Company (ARAMCO).40 Framed in nationalistic slogans, the 1956 protests posed a direct challenge

34  Reflected in the memoirs of Teresa Fortis, Lockruf Saudia: Meine Erlebnisse im HostessenCamp (München: Knaur, 2011). 35  Eleanor A.  Doumato, “Education in Saudi Arabia: Gender, Jobs, and the Price of Religion,” in Eleanor Abdella Doumato and Marsha Pripstein Posusney, eds., Women and Globalization in the Arab Middle East: Gender, Economy, and Society (London: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2003), 239–257. 36  Sarah Yizraeli, The Remaking of Saudi Arabia: The Struggle Between King Saʿud and Crown Prince Faysal, 1951–1962 (Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv University, 1997). 37  Vassiliev, History of Saudi Arabia, 337–338. 38  Yizraeli, Crucial Years of Development, 265. 39  Vassiliev, History of Saudi Arabia, 341. 40  Ibid., 336–341; Robert Vitalis, America’s Kingdom: Mythmaking on the Saudi Oil Frontier (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2007), 92–95.

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to the legitimacy of the royal family.41 In 1964, King Saʿud was ousted from power and Faysal bin ʿAbd al-Aziz ascended the throne. This represents the only occasion in the history of the kingdom in which a designated king was forced to step down. Saudi historiography presents King Faysal bin ʿAbd al-ʿAziz (1906–1975) as the glorious counter-image to his brother Saʿud: conservative, deeply religious, and committed to the development of the state. Third son to the state founder, ʿAbd al-ʿAziz, Faysal fought at his father’s side to consolidate control over Arabia leading the troops against Husain Ibn ʿAli, king of the Hijaz region (1916–1924). He was appointed viceroy of the Hijaz in 1926, the kingdom’s first foreign minister in 1930, prime minister (1953–1958 and 1962–1964), and king of Saudi Arabia until his murder in 1975. Schooling Saudi girls became one of the most publicized achievements of development under King Faysal.42 With increasing oil wealth and the emergence of a rentier economy, development became the prime agenda of Faysal’s government.43 Already in 1962, Faysal announced his programmatic vision in the so-called Ten-­ Point Programme, which described the economic, financial, political, and judicial principles that Saudi Arabia needed to master in order, according to Faysal, “to soon become an industrial country […] thus being able to perform its duties towards its people”.44 Faisal referred to development as tanmiya—meaning “raising and stepping up” as well as “furtherance of growth”—and tat ̣wı̄r which implies “to advance” and “to evolve”.45 The Ten-Point Programme refrained from describing development as “modernization” (taḥdı̄th, tajdı̄d, taʿṣır̄ ), a concept that implied some adoption 41  Toby Matthiesen, “Migration, Minorities, and Radical Networks: Labour Movements and Opposition Groups in Saudi Arabia, 1950–1975,” International Review of Social History 59 (2014), 473–504. 42  For a critical reassessment of Faysal’s role in women’s education, see Al-Rasheed, A Most Masculine State, 90–92. 43  Toby C.  Jones, Desert Kingdom: How Oil and Water Forged Modern Saudi Arabia (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010), 54–89; Toby C. Jones, “The Dogma of Development: Technopolitics and Power in Saudi Arabia,” in Bernard Haykel, Thomas Heghammer, and Stéphane Lacroix, eds., Saudi Arabia in Transition (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 31–48. 44   From the ninth point of Faisal’s speech, cited from Yizraeli, Crucial Years of Development, 307. 45  Hans Wehr, “Tanmiya,” in J.  Milton Cowan, ed., A Dictionary of Modern Written Arabic (Urbana, IL: Spoken Language Services, 1994), 1174; Hans Wehr, “Taṭwı̄r,” in J. Milton Cowan, ed., A Dictionary of Modern Written Arabic (Urbana, IL: Spoken Language Services, 1994), 669.

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of supposedly Western standards, values, and attitudes, such as the diminishing role of religion, the decreasing role of (extended) family relations, and an emancipatory approach to gender relations (all of which were highly contested notions of Western modernity).46 Instead, in the preamble Faysal declared his intention of leading the country to take up the position it deserved, “[a]s a people (ka-shaʿb), from the dawn of Arab history this place was the center of true Arabism (al-ʿurūba) and the origin of spreading of the eternal Islamic civilization (ḥaḍāra al-islāmiyya al-khālida)”.47 Today, the proclamation is considered to be the advent of “a new political reality”, in which the Saudi government attempted to justify its authority vis-à-vis its citizens.48 Toby Jones argues that technical, infrastructural, and social development brought the ruling elite legitimacy while simultaneously expanding their oversight and control over citizens’ lives.49 The social development agenda introduced by the state established citizenship as a source of economic benefit and, thus, maintained a sharp distinction, differentiating between Saudi citizens and the increasing numbers of non-Saudi citizens in the country. Faysal’s government framed public social welfare and education as key areas of social development. Public social welfare was based on distributive and subsidy programmes with key elements being free education50 (including various international scholarship schemes and student loans), free medical and health services, social-security benefits, and subsidies for a broad range of products from basic goods to utilities.51 For instance, the social-security benefit (iʿāna ḍamān ijtimāʿı̄) introduced by royal decree in 1962 was exclusively directed at Saudi citizens.52 Since the welfare programmes which the state promoted from the 1960s onwards were universally available to Saudi 46  Andrew Webster, “Modernisation Theory,” in Andrew Webster, ed., Introduction to the Sociology of Development, 2nd ed. (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 1990), 41–64. 47  From the preamble of Faisal’s speech, cited in Yizraeli, Crucial Years of Development, 303. 48  Jones, Desert Kingdom, 62. 49  Ibid., 54–90, especially 84. 50  To a certain extent, education is an exception to the rule, since primary (ibtidāʾiyya) and high-school (thanawiyya) education is free of charge for non-Saudi residents in Saudi Arabia who can prove a valid residence permit for their children. 51  Which Faysal outlined in the Ten-Point Programme, specifically § 7, in Yizraeli, Crucial Years of Development, 303–308. 52  Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs, Al-Ḍ amān al-Ijtimāʿı̄ fı̄ Thalātha Sanawāt, 1382–1385  h. [Three Years of Social Security, 1962–1965] (Riyadh: Ṭ abʿa Markaz al-Tadrı̄b, 1965).

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nationals but unavailable to non-Saudis, they cemented a growing gap between domestic and imported labour. As Kiren Aziz Chaudhry notes, welfare programmes in fact came to define citizenship.53 Not only did the programmes exclude the new migrants, they also excluded Palestinians and the so-called bidūn (literally meaning “without”), people who had been living in the country for generations but without official acknowledgment or proof of citizenship.54 Against this background, it is remarkable to note that the first women’s welfare associations in Saudi Arabia assisted two groups: first, largely non-­ Saudi citizens who were ineligible for the state’s public social welfare system, and, second, those who faced great difficulties in accessing the public social welfare system despite their citizenship status, namely Saudi women with no legal guardians. As we shall see, it seems to be no coincidence that private women’s welfare associations were established around the same time as the public welfare system built by the state in the early 1960s. The timing suggests that the state tolerated these private initiatives precisely because they assisted those to whom the state turned a blind eye due to the high political costs that would have been associated with assisting non-­ Saudis or Saudi women without a legal guardian, who transgressed the common roles and norms of femininity.

Women’s Welfare Associations in Saudi Arabia Welfare associations (jamʿiyyāt khayriyya) emerged in the early twentieth century in Saudi Arabia as a continuation of earlier Islamic philanthropy, offering food, shelter, and medical services to the poor and needy, particularly to orphans and those without relatives. The term jamʿiyya55 first came into general use in Lebanon and Syria in the late seventeenth century in reference to monastic communities. It became prevalent in other Arabic-­ speaking countries in the mid-nineteenth century in reference to voluntary 53  Kiren Aziz Chaudhry, The Price of Wealth (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1997), 149, my emphasis. 54  On statelessness in the context of the wider Gulf, see Claire Beaugrand, “Statelessness & Administrative Violence: Bidūns’ Survival Strategies in Kuwait,” Muslim World 101, no. 2 (2011), 228–250. 55  The Arabic term translates into a variety of associational formats, including the club, association, society, corporation, organization and assembly: see Hans Wehr, “Jamʿı̄ya,” in J. Milton Cowan, ed., A Dictionary of Modern Written Arabic (Urbana, IL: Spoken Language Services, 1994), 160.

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associations which served a wide range of scientific, literary, or political purposes.56 Since few representative institutions existed at the time and newspapers were still a young institutional format, these societies provided a space to support science and literature and, in a more general sense, worked to generate political ideas and articulate opinions vis-à-vis the sovereign.57 In the late nineteenth century, benevolent initiatives began to adopt this new organizational form. One of the first welfare associations (jamʿiyya khayriyya)—if not the first—was the Islamic Benevolent Association (al-Jamʿiyya al-Khayriyya al-Islāmiyya) founded in Alexandria in 1878.58 The developments in Egypt did not go unnoticed in Saudi Arabia. In particular, the Western region of Saudi Arabia, the Hijaz, was connected to Egypt through various channels, including pilgrimage and merchant networks which traversed the Red Sea. The press, too, served to link the two regions. The extent to which women were also involved in the early welfare associations in Saudi Arabia is not clear. Among the first Saudi Arabian welfare associations were the National Medical Ambulance Society (Jamʿiyyat al-Isʿāf al-Ṭ ibbı̄ al-Wat ̣aniyya) founded in Mecca in 1934, which became the Benevolent Ambulance Society (Jamʿiyyat al-Isʿāf al-­ Khayriyya) in 1935, the Penny for Palestine Society (Jamʿiyyat Qirsh li-l-­ Filisṭı̄n), also founded by Muhammad Surur Sabban in 1935, and the Charity Society (Jamʿiyyat al-Birr), founded by Muhammad Salih Jamal in Riyadh in 1953. These early welfare associations offered a wide range of services, including medical care, orphanages, public kitchens, and fundraising for the Palestinian national cause. Given the limited mobility and visibility particularly of well-to-do urban women—who did not have to support their households economically—we can assume that Saudi women were not part of these early formal associations but rather engaged in informal networks of solidarity, such as the above-mentioned giving practices associated with Ramadan. Associations specifically characterized by female involvement emerged in Saudi Arabia only in the early 1960s and thus at the same time as the 56  A. H. Hourani et al., “Ḏjamʿiyya,” in P. Bearman et al., eds., Encyclopaedia of Islam (Brill Online Reference Works, first published online 2012), http://www.brillonline.nl/subscriber/entry?entry=islam_COM-0182 (last accessed 23.01.2018). 57  For the early twentieth century Middle East, 1908–1914, see Eliezer Tauber, The Emergence of the Arab Movements (London: Cass, 1993), 61–331. 58  Lisa Pollard, “Egyptian by Association: Charitable States and Service Societies, circa 1850–1945,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 46 (2014), 239–257.

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creation of public educational facilities for women. In many cases, the women fighting for education were equally engaged in establishing welfare organizations; hence, many framed both of these endeavours within a nationalistic discourse, claiming that educated girls would become good citizens who would serve their nation through their (humanitarian) work, as the following example illustrates. In the summer of 1962, a group of Saudi women publicly raised their voices through a series of articles published in the Saudi daily newspapers.59 Among the authors in support of girls’ education was Samira Khashogji (1935–1986), who became the director of Al-Nahda Society in 1962, the first women’s welfare association that was established in the Saudi capital, Riyadh. Khashogji was educated in Egypt, where she married the Egyptian billionaire Mohammad al-Fayed in 1954, and gave birth to their only child Dodi al-Fayed. Soon after giving birth, the couple divorced and Khashogji returned to Saudi Arabia. Khashogji is one of the first Saudi female novelists and one of the first Saudi women whose articles were published in the daily press in Saudi Arabia.60 Khashogji argued that educated girls were […] important for the renaissance of the nation. Islam requires women to be educated. We should educate women to make her husband happy, and bring up her children in an appropriate manner. We also need to educate her so that she can worship God. She will become queen in her own kingdom. If we educate her, she will teach her sons proper masculinity (rujula). We need to teach women the latest cooking and cleaning styles so that her house becomes heavenly. We need to teach her nursing and medicine to perform first aid. We need to teach her the love of God and nation.61

By acknowledging the dominant roles of women as housewives and mothers, Khashogji’s writings did not question the status quo. This leads Al-Rasheed to conclude that the “discourse in support of education was hardly about individual women’s improvement or emancipation […] both men and women, were keen to educate women for the sake of men and the nation […]. Educated women teach their sons real rujula, the totality

 Al-Rasheed, A Most Masculine State, 94–95.  Saddeka Arebi, Women and Words in Saudi Arabia: The Politics of Literary Discourse (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994), 31. 61  Samira Khashogji, “al-Marʾa wa-l-Taʿlı̄m [Women and Education],” Huqul (2007), 81–83, 83, cited in Al-Rasheed, A Most Masculine State, 95. 59 60

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of desired male qualities”.62 This conclusion is challenged, however, by women’s associations that explicitly set out to improve the situation of women in the country. Women’s welfare associations thereby reacted to the fact that women in Saudi Arabia have been particularly vulnerable and prone to poverty. From its inception, the state’s public social welfare programmes identified women as an especially vulnerable group in need of assistance. For instance, the social security benefit (al-ḍamān al-ijtimāʿı̄), introduced in 1962, addressed four groups of citizens: the elderly, the handicapped, orphans, and women with no male legal guardian were able to gain considerable support. (maḥram).63 Such state policies reflected a guardianship system (walı̄y al-amr), which throughout the twentieth century rendered women in Saudi Arabia perpetual minors and subject to a male legal guardian (maḥram). Hence, the same policies which rendered women, in theory, eligible to assistance hindered them, in practice, from receiving it, since women were not allowed access to ministries directly: they could only, for instance, issue a request for social security through an authorized male guardian. Until marriage, the maḥram was usually the father, but he could also be a brother, uncle, or son. The status of women reflected a very particular interpretation of a highly controversial Qurʾanic passage, which states that “[m]en are the managers of the affairs of women for that God has preferred in bounty one of them over another, and for that they have expended of their property”.64 This interpretation was propagated by the Council of Senior Religious Scholars (Hayʾat Kibār al-ʿUlamāʾ) and the Grand Mufti (Dār al-Iftāʾ). Like government agencies, both institutions were financed by the state, which appointed its officials. A growing body of scholarship emphasizes that the guardianship system, along with gender segregation outside the home and limited mobility, have rendered women  Al-Rasheed, A Most Masculine State, 101.  Social security was introduced by royal decree (rusūm malakı̄) no. 19.17, dated 19.08.1962 (18.3.1382 h.) and later modified by no. 32, dated 11.02.1966 (20.10.1385 h.). It was composed of social assistance (musāʿadāt ijtimāʿiyya), a one-time payment for specific hardship caused by natural catastrophe or extraordinary social circumstances, such as imprisonment, and a monthly stipend (maʿāsha) stipulated at SR 30 (USD 7) per individual, or SR 130 (USD 29) for a family household with a maximum of seven members, see Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs, Al-Ḍ amān al-Ijtimāʿı̄ fı̄ Thalātha Sanawāt, 1382–1385 h. [Three Years of Social Security, 1962–1965]. 64  Sura, The Women (IV), verse 35–40, here given as Arthur J. Arberry, trans., The Koran (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), 77. 62 63

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prone to poverty. In particular, women who are on bad terms with their legal guardians, or who are without a guardian, suffer from marginalization.65 Women needed the consent of their guardians for a wide range of activities, such as pursuit of higher education, travel, and medical surgery (including caesarean surgery). As perpetual minors, women could not sign contracts without the consent of their guardians, including contracts for housing, telecommunications, and—until 2012—employment.66 Women’s welfare associations introduced the motto “women in support of women”.67 The founding statutes of the First Women’s Welfare Association defined its mission as “comprehensive care for the woman” and “raising the standard of the Saudi family”,68 “family” often being a euphemism for female-headed households.69 The First Women’s Welfare Association commenced charitable activities in 1964/65 (1384 h.), providing support to about 400 families. Within 20  years, it expanded to count 2913 registered families in 1980/81 (1401 h.). Upon its establishment, the association had two commissions that specialized in activities supporting mothers and children and promoting their education. The Social Commission studied the conditions affecting female-headed households in need, registered them with the society, and supported them with in-kind donations and food products. The Health Commission supervised 65  For example, Abū Bakr Bāqādir, al-Faqr wa-Ā thāruhu al-Ijtimāʿiyya wa-Barāmij wa-Ā liyāt Mukāfaḥatihi fı̄ Duwal Majlis al-Tāʿāwun [Poverty and its Social Impact as well as Programs and Means Combatting it in the Cooperation Council [GCC]], Council of Ministers of Labour and Ministers of Social Affairs in the GCC States, ed., (Manama: GCC Executive Bureau, 2008), 207–225; Hayfāʾ ʿAbd al-Raḥmān Al-Shalhūb, Mushkilat al-Faqr bayn il-Nisāʾ fı̄ al-Mamlaka al-ʿArabiyya al-Saʿūdiyya [The Problem of Poverty among Women in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia] (Riyadh: Maktabat al-Rushd, 2010); Talha Fadaak, Female Poverty in Saudi Arabia: A Study of Poor Female Headed Households, Social Policies and Programmes in Jeddah City (Saarbrücken: Lambert Academic Publishing, 2012). 66  Human Rights Watch, “Boxed In: Women and Saudi Arabia’s Male Guardianship System,” 2016, https://www.hrw.org/sites/default/files/report_pdf/saudiarabia0716web.pdf (last accessed 20.07.2016). 67  To my knowledge, there are no equivalent associations organized explicitly “by men, for men” in Saudi Arabia. 68  First Women’s Welfare Association, Kutayyib Aṣdarathu al-Jamʿiyya al-Nisāʾiyya alKhayriyya bi-Munāsabat Murūr 20 Sana ʿalā Taʾsı̄sihā [Booklet Issued by the First Women’s Welfare Association on the Occasion of 20 Years since its Establishment] (Jeddah: Unknown Publisher, 1982), 39. 69  See also Talha Fadaak, “Poverty in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia: An Explanatory Study of Poverty and Female-Headed Households in Jeddah City,” Social Policy Administration 44, no. 6 (2010), 689–707.

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a clinic that specialized in motherhood and childhood concerns. The projects of the association gradually expanded to include widows’ homes, nurseries, and a dormitory in Jeddah for female students from rural areas who attended state education facilities but had no relatives with whom to stay in the city. During the 1960s and 1970s, the social work of the association included school teachers from preparatory to secondary schools (who assisted female students struggling with school) and music teachers and it offered classes in typewriting and foreign languages, physical training, sewing and needlework, and health and hygiene awareness, thus reflecting the association’s gradual emphasis on eradicating illiteracy.70 While these activities do not qualify as “humanitarian” practices within a classical definition of humanitarianism—as upheld, for instance, by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), which centres on life-­ saving relief in emergency settings—others have argued that the notion of humanitarianism should be expanded to also consider the underlying and long-term causes of suffering through development, public health, and other social interventions.71 Through aligning their efforts with the development agenda of King Faysal’s government, the women’s welfare associations were able to gain considerable support. Al-Nahda Society framed its emphasis on improving the lives of women in need by promoting a vision in which “the woman” was “an active partner in the development of Saudi society” (anna al-marʾa sharı̄k faʿālı̄ fı̄ tanmiya al-mujtamaʿ al-saʿūdı̄).72 The First Women’s Welfare Association aimed at “raising the aptitude (mustawā, [literally: level]) of the Saudi family” through training and educating girls and women so they could attain “the appropriate economic and social level”.73 Through the work of the association, both beneficiaries as well as female volunteers were presented as “increasing their effectiveness”  First Women’s Welfare Association, Murūr 20 Sana, 53–93.  Defined by the ICRC as “impartial, independent, and neutral provision of life-saving relief in emergency settings”, for a critical discussion of the concept, see Michael Barnett and Janice Gross Stein, “Introduction,” in Michael Barnett and Janice Gross Stein, eds., Sacred Aid: Faith and Humanitarianism (Oxford et al.: Oxford University Press, 2012), 3–36, here specifically 11–12. 72  Al-Nahda Society, “ʿAn al-Nahḍa [About al-Nahda],” 2016, http://www.alnahda-ksa. org/About.aspx (last accessed 01.05.2016). 73  First Women’s Welfare Association, “al-Ruʾya wa-l-Risāla wa-l-Ahdāf [Vision, Mission and Goals],” 2012, http://www.firstwelfaresociety.org.sa/index.php/ar/ (last accessed 26.01.2016). 70 71

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(ziyādat fāʿiliyatihā) within Saudi Arabian society.74 A booklet published in 1982, on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of the First Women’s Welfare Associations, presents its origins as a “natural response to the progress of civilization (li-l-taqaddum al-ḥaḍārı̄) and intellectual progress (wa-taqaddum al-fikrı̄), which the kingdom witnessed at the time”.75 In an interview therein, Jihan al-Amawy, who is presented as the originator of the idea of establishing the association, highlighted the support which the association received from the state: The factors that have contributed to the success of the idea of the society and its coming into existence are three. First, the zeal of his excellency the minister of labour and social affairs […]. I brought to his awareness how much boredom (al-ḍıq̄ ) the woman, who is free from work (al-­mutafarrigha), suffers from. Especially the one whose children have grown into adults, and whose house responsibilities have become lighter […].  Through welfare societies, a woman helps, as far as her time permits. When I told him this, and that there were most willing and sincerely eager ladies, he welcomed the idea and encouraged me to go ahead with it […]. Second, the zeal of the founder women and the early members. They contributed to the society with serious and sincere work, exerting effort and offering money for the sake of its success. And they stood firmly, confronting opposing currents (al-wuqūf fı̄ wujh al-tayyārāt al-muʿāraḍa), which stand in the way of every successful work. But for their zeal, cooperation, collaboration and generosity, there would have been no society.76

Jihan al-Amawy described the then-minister of labour and social affairs, ʿAbd al-Rahman Aba al-Khail, as a source of encouragement. She mentioned his support as the first factor that had contributed to the association’s success, though it is probable that the conventions arising from the document’s official nature also necessitated highlighting the minister’s assistance. Yet, it seems that the early women volunteers actively sought the support of the state, presumably also to shield their efforts from the “opposing currents” which al-Amawy mentioned without being more specific as to who was opposing their efforts. We can imagine that these might have been the same religious authorities who opposed women’s  Ibid.  “Nubdha ʿan Taʾsı̄s al-Jamʿiyya,” in First Women’s Welfare Association, Murūr 20 Sana, 32. 76  Ibid., 99. 74 75

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education, arguing that a woman’s place should be the private home and family. It is interesting to note that the first welfare associations that registered with the Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs in 1963 were the newly founded women’s associations, such as the First Women’s Welfare Association, which registered as number one, and Al-Nahda Society, registered as number two, and not older welfare associations that were headed by men and that had preceded the establishment of the ministry. For example, the first Charity Society (Jamʿiyyat al-Birr), founded in 1953, registered with the ministry only in 1972, as number 14.77 This could also reflect the fact that the state saw the need to regulate and govern women’s associations more closely than the older associations headed by men.78 The Saudi state supported women’s welfare associations through government policies and financial subsidies, and King Faysal in particular encouraged women’s welfare activities through his close female relatives. Upon registering with the Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs in 1963, King Faysal’s favourite wife, Princess Effat bint Muhammad bin Saʿud al-­ Thunayan (1916–2000), known as Queen Effat, joined the First Women’s Welfare Association as honorary president. To this day, Queen Effat is credited with playing a leading role in fostering women’s education and empowerment. Queen Effat was born in Istanbul, where her father was a military officer with close familial ties to the Ā l Saʿud.79 Queen Effat’s biographers suggest that her education in the modern Turkey of Kemal Atatürk gave her the aspiration to transplant the “Turkish modernization model” to Saudi Arabia.80 She counts as the founder of the first private primary school for girls in Saudi Arabia, Dār al-Hanān, which opened in Jeddah in 1955. Until her death, she lobbied for the first private women’s college, founded in her name in 1999, which became the first private  Ministry of Social Affairs, Dalı̄l al-Jamʿiyyāt al-Khayriyya.  Since the historical sources tend to be quiet about women, it is difficult to estimate the extent to which they were also involved in these earlier associations. Today, associations like the Al-Birr Charity Society are headed by men, who run the administrative and financial affairs, but the actual work with the beneficiaries is often done by social workers who tend to be women, given that cultural norms allow them easier access to families and their female members. 79  Joseph A.  Kéchichian, “Self-Assurance in the Face of Military Might,” Gulf News: Weekend Review, 20.01.2012, http://gulfnews.com/life-style/people/self-assurance-inthe-face-of-military-might-1.967216 (last accessed 02.05.2016). 80  Joseph A.  Kéchichian, “Pioneer Who Gave Wings to Saudi Women’s Dreams,” Gulf News: Weekend Review, 07.08.2008, http://gulfnews.com/pioneer-who-gave-wings-tosaudi-women-s-dreams-1.40588 (last accessed 02.05.2015). 77 78

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women’s university in Saudi Arabia in 2009. Whereas older accounts of the origins of the First Women’s Welfare Association describe the initiative as a collective effort of Jeddah’s nobility, spearheaded by Jihan al-Amawy, today’s representation of the association ascribes its origins to Queen Effat.81 Equally, the Al-Nahda Society presents King Faysal’s female relatives as the founders of the association, namely his daughters, Sarah and Latifa, together with Muzaffar Adham, the younger half-sister of Queen Effat, offspring of their mother’s second marriage and sister of Kamal Ibrahim Adham, a close advisor to King Faysal, along with the director Samira Khashogji, who was mentioned above.82 The First Women’s Welfare Association in Saudi Arabia exemplifies a rhetoric that combines an emphasis on the women volunteers’ capacity to assist the development agenda of the state, while in theory remaining faithful to the official discourse and the role the state ascribed to women. Accordingly, al-Amawy’s explanations above stressed that the volunteers were married women with children and the responsibility of running households. Yet, in practice, women’s welfare associations transgressed common gender norms, for instance, in bringing together unrelated women and men who interacted at the association for the sake of the humanitarian cause. Although women’s associations were registered as women-only organizations, men were also involved in their daily affairs. The legal environment of the kingdom required that men were employed, for instance, as drivers and as intermediaries with ministries, given that women were usually denied personal access to the state bureaucracy. Welfare associations assumed the legal status of charity organizations (jamʿiyyāt khayriyya), which, by law, were supervised by the Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs, which initially had no women’s branches. Given that most women volunteers lacked adequate professional training and education, the founders of the First Women’s Welfare Association hired a company, named Sabah and presumably run by men, which, according to the association’s commemorative publication, kindly undertook to prepare the administrative and financial systems concerned with organizing and classifying work as well as distributing tasks and 81  For instance, in the documentary prominently displayed on the association’s website, see First Women’s Welfare Association, al-Jamʿiyya al-Nisāʾiyya al-Khayriyya al-Ū la bi-Jidda [The First Women’s Welfare Association in Jeddah], YouTube, 2012, https://www.youtube. com/watch?v=E9b6Q3T54Sg (last accessed 04.10.2018). 82  Al-Nahda Society, “ʿAn al-Nahḍa [About al-Nahda].”

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responsibilities, and defining them in a way that guarantees avoiding dualism and devising patterns for  […]  documents to organize work inside the society.83

Both men and women donated to the association.84 Men have also been among the beneficiaries of the association, where its programmes supported families in need. However, women in need and female-headed households were the initiative’s target group. Another area of tolerated transgression from official state policy was the welfare associations’ support for non-Saudi nationals. Despite its rhetorical emphasis on improving the level of the Saudi family, poor Saudi nationals appear to have been a minority among the First Women’s Welfare Association’s early beneficiaries. According to the association’s long-­ standing director, Nisrin al-Idrisi, when first established the association mostly aided foreigners.85 By contrast, today, the large majority of the association’s registered ca. 3000 families—between 70 and 75%—are Saudi citizens.86 Rather than empowering their beneficiaries, welfare associations have been criticized for establishing networks of support which turned into networks of dependence.87 The associations’ shelters (arbit ̣a) have been particularly criticized for housing beneficiaries for generations without offering the prospect of improvement. Suʿad bin ʿAfif’s research suggests that the inhabitants of the shelters of the women’s welfare associations in Jeddah have been largely non-Saudi citizens.88 Her 1993  First Women’s Welfare Association, Murūr 20 Sana, 41.  Islamic laws grant women substantial rights to own property and inheritance from relatives, yet they are in theory exempted from contributing financially to the household. On women and property in the context of charity, see Mary Ann Fay, “Women and Waqf: Property, Power, and the Domain of Gender in Eighteenth-Century Egypt,” in Madeline C. Zilfi, ed., Women in the Ottoman Empire: Middle Eastern Women in the Early Modern Era (Leiden: Brill, 1997), 28–47. 85  Nisrı̄n al-Idrı̄sı̄ (director of the First Women’s Welfare Association), interview with the author, at the headquarters of the association, Jeddah, 13.01.2010. 86  Nisrı̄n al-Idrı̄sı̄ (director of the First Women’s Welfare Association), follow-up interview, at the headquarters of the association, Jeddah, 26.03.2013. 87  Summarized in Natasha M. Matic and Banderi A. R. Al-Faiṣal, “Empowering the Saudi Social Development Sector,” The Fletcher Forum of World Affairs 36, no. 2 (2012), 11–18. 88  Her research analyses data of the inhabitants of the 34 shelters of the First Women’s Welfare Association and the Faysaliyya Welfare Association (Jamʿiyyat al-Faysaliyya al-Khayriyya) gathered in 1993, see Suʿād ʿUbūd Bin, ʿAfı̄f, Mujtamaʿ al-Rubut ̣: Dirāsa Waṣfiyya li-Asālı̄b al-Riʿāya al-Ijtimāʿiyya fı̄ Buyūt al-Fuqarāʾ bi-Madı̄nat Jidda, al-Mamlaka al-ʿArabiyya al-Saʿūdiyya [Ribat Community: A Descriptive Study of Social Welfare Services 83 84

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investigation concluded that 73% of the inhabitants of Jeddah’s shelters were non-Saudi nationals.89 According to the association’s social workers, Saudis would not want to live in shelters because due to cultural norms, Saudi women would not be allowed to welcome guests in the shelter. Saudi families living in shelters would suffer from fierce stigmatization (waṣm).90 During my fieldwork, social workers noted the high number of Yemenis among their beneficiaries. Bin ʿAfif’s research suggests that Yemenis formed the highest share of non-Saudis assisted by associations in 1993, comprising 47% of the inhabitants of their shelters.91 Yemeni beneficiaries had arrived at a time when borders between the two countries were open for migrants seeking work. Between the 1970s and the late 1980s, such Yemeni migrants formed the “backbone of foreign labor”92 in Saudi Arabia. While Yemen had no meaningful natural resources, Saudi Arabia was experiencing the height of the oil boom. Labour remittances accounted for over 120% of Yemen’s gross national product (GNP) in the late 1970s and early 1980s.93 However, when global oil prices stabilized, the period of growth came to a temporary end, and the Saudi state’s oil revenues fell from USD 110 billion in 1981 to USD 17 billion in 1986. Relations between the countries deteriorated during the Gulf War of 1990. Yemen, then a member of the UN Security Council, opposed a resolution authorizing military action to force Iraqi military forces out of occupied Kuwait.94 In response to the Yemeni stance, Saudi Arabia closed its borders in Poor-Housing in the City of Jeddah, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia] (Jeddah: King ʿAbd al-ʿAziz University, 1993). 89  Ibid., 80–81. 90  On stigmatization and disgrace (waṣm), see Laylā ʿAbdallāh Muḥammad Jamāl, al-Ḥ ayā al-Ijtimāʿiyya wa-l-Riʿāya fı̄ al-Masākin al-Iwāʾiyya: Dirāsa Ithnūghrāfiyya ʿalā al-Masākin wa-l-Sākinı̄n fı̄ Madinat Jidda [Social and Welfare Life in Residential Housing: An Ethnographic Study of Housing and Inhabitants in Jeddah City] (Jeddah: King ʿAbd al-ʿAziz University, 2011), 257–279. 91  The other nationalities being Saudi (27%), Somali (7%), Egyptian (3%), Sudanese (1%), Pakistani (5%), Ethiopian (4%), Palestinian (2%), Syrian (1%) and Philippine (2%), see Bin ʿAfı̄f, Mujtamaʿ al-Rubut ̣, 80–81. 92  Anthony H. Cordesman, Saudi Arabia: National Security in a Troubled Region (Santa Barbara et al.: Praeger Frederick, 2009), 31–32. 93  Although this high number raises doubts, it is mathematically possible if a high share of remittances were sent home illegally or earned on the black market. Statistics from ibid., 31–32. 94  William Thomas Allison, The Gulf War, 1990–91 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), 81–83.

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and expelled Yemeni labour migrants.95 The Saudi–Yemeni border has remained a point of conflict, with sporadic disputes over territory and continuous trafficking of people, weapons, and drugs. Despite the sombre political climate, Yemenis still account for a large part of the inhabitants of Jeddah’s shelters. According to a First Women’s Welfare Association social worker, “[t]he shelter has become their home”, thus they could not simply “expel” them.96

Conclusion The practices of the women’s associations discussed in this article highlight the ambivalent relationship between the state and women’s welfare associations. The rhetorical emphasis of the early women volunteers affirmed an official discourse perpetuated through public educational institutions that propagated the ideal Saudi woman as a housewife and mother and stressed such women’s contribution to the development of the nation state, the prime agenda of King Faysal’s government. However, the actual practices of these associations often went beyond the state’s official policies by assisting those whom the state excluded from public social welfare, such as the increasing number of non-citizens in the country and women with no legal guardian who could not access the state’s welfare programmes due to the guardianship system enforced by the laws of the state. Given the involvement of King Faysal’s relatives in the women’s initiatives, we can assume that at least parts of the royal family were well aware of and tolerated these transgressions. By maintaining a protective hand over women’s associations, the royal family could not only monitor women’s activities but also benefit from their freely-provided social services. Women’s welfare associations were equally useful to the state in so far as they showcased its seemingly “developed” and “modern” nature by offering a context for women’s civil society initiatives.

95  The practice of expelling guest workers over larger political differences with their countries of origin is not unique to the Yemeni case. Earlier, similar reactions have been directed toward Egyptian laborers in opposition to the Nasserist politics of Egypt in the 1960s. At the time of writing, such measures target Pakistanis, 40,000 of whom had to leave Saudi Arabia within a few months after a Pakistani blew himself up in front of the US consulate in Jeddah in July 2016, in the name of the so-called Islamic State. 96  Tahām (social worker at the First Women’s Welfare Association), conversation, 20.01.2010.

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For the women volunteers, on the other hand, women’s welfare associations opened a novel female public—comparable to the gender-­ segregated field of education—in which women who were unrelated by blood or family increasingly interacted with one another in the wake of the oil boom. By emphasizing the care of the nation’s children, women’s welfare associations negotiated a legitimate avenue for activity that allowed women volunteers to engage outside the home and to contribute, as the early women volunteers argued, to the advancement of the nation. The boredom (al-ḍıq̄ ), which these volunteers described suffering from, reflected a model of femininity that limited their interactions to the private home, household, and family and of the radical lifestyle changes introduced by the new oil wealth. Yet, through identification with these prevalent ideals of femininity, the women volunteers garnered public support for their social-welfare projects. For a generation of women volunteers, “going to the jamʿiyya” offered a new field of socially acceptable activity, and also provided an escape from confinement to the private home. Women’s social work programmes in Saudi Arabia have enjoyed a remarkable longevity, but the discourses through which these practices have been presented have shifted considerably. While the early volunteers described their engagement in terms of caretaking and social service for the advancement of the nation, this language shifted during the 1980s— reflecting the heightened religious climate of the time—towards charity (ʿamal al-khayr) and pious good works (ṣadaqa, al-birr). In our day, the same programmes are often discussed in a development-oriented discourse, emphasizing capacity-building and the empowerment of beneficiaries. Hence, women’s welfare associations also illustrate how some women have been able to successfully negotiate and mobilize shifting cultural and social constructions of femininity in Saudi Arabia.

PART III

The Power of Gendered Representations

CHAPTER 8

Perilous Beginnings: Infant Mortality, Public Health and the State in Egypt Beth Baron

“There are now probably few countries in the world that offer so attractive and untouched a field of scientific investigation as does Egypt”, penned W.P.G. Graham, Director-General of the Egyptian Department of Public Health in the Ministry of Interior in the 1909 Annual Report. Many diseases awaited deeper study, generating a long list of objectives for the bacteriological and pathological laboratory—the Hygienic Institute—that the British had set up in Egypt in 1896, 14 years into their occupation of the country. Among those diseases scientists identified as calling out for greater attention were infectious diseases; trachoma; pellagra; ancylostomiasis and bilharzia; typhus; relapsing fever; and malaria. Not on the list, and seemingly not high in the list of priorities, was the number one killer of Egyptians: gastroenteritis.1 1  Ministry of Interior, Department of Public Health, Annual Report for 1909 (Cairo: National Printing Department, 1910), 89.

B. Baron (*) City College and Graduate Center, City University of New York, New York, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 E. Möller et al. (eds.), Gendering Global Humanitarianism in the Twentieth Century, Palgrave Macmillan Transnational History Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-44630-7_8

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The year 1909 had seen an apparent spike in the spring and early summer in infant mortality, which was already high in Egypt: in the principal towns of Egypt, 69,339 babies were born and 61,474 people died, of which 22,942 (37.3%) were infants under the age of one year and 19,630 (31.9%) were children between the ages of one to ten years. One in three infants died before reaching their first birthday, with the total rate of infant mortality coming close to 70%.2 It is not clear whether and how the spike in infant mortality was connected with the cotton disaster of 1909 (which ran into 1910).3 What is clear is that the ecological transformation of the Egyptian countryside by British engineers, who expanded the network of canals and dams, had multiple unintended consequences on the health of adults and children.4 This article looks at infant mortality in Egypt, which was defined by British colonial public health officials as the death of infants and children from birth to 10 years of age.5 Focusing on the period from roughly 1900 to 1930, it examines the alarming rates of infant mortality, which surpassed those of infectious diseases, accidents, and other causes of mortality combined,6 and considers the humanitarian responses to the crisis by a range of actors. Among them were state and private, foreign and local, missionary and non-missionary personnel, who framed and addressed the problem of high infant mortality and its gendered dimensions in different ways. This article will consider these different actors as they addressed the problem of infant mortality. That Egypt had such a precise accounting of health statistics was something new, a product of a new statistical regime put into place by the British in the early 1900s to better control the Egyptian population.7 The regime was at the heart of a public health project that first and foremost sought to protect British soldiers and civilians in Egypt and that also  Ibid., 43.  See Casey Primel, “Through a Camera Obscura: Economic Science and the Emergence of the Market in Colonial Egypt,” paper given at the Surveying Modern Egypt Workshop, The Graduate Center, CUNY, 19.–20.04.2018. 4  See Jennifer Derr, The Lived Nile: Environment, Disease, and Material Colonial Economy in Egypt (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2019). 5  In global health circles today, infant mortality would apply to those under one years of age, and child mortality would apply to those from one to five. 6  Ministry of Interior, Annual Report for 1909, 43. 7  Roger Owen, “The Population Census of 1917 and its Relationship to Egypt’s Three Nineteenth Century Statistical Regimes,” Journal of Historical Sociology 9, no. 4 (1996), 456–472. 2 3

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contributed to gendered understandings of particular health problems. Although British officials did not seem interested in distinguishing between the fates of male and female children, they were keen to blame mothers for the problem. Drawing on the annual Egyptian Department of Public Health reports, accounts by foreign experts, missionary records, Egyptian periodicals, medical journals, and other sources, this article seeks to understand the new attention given to mothers and children and the promotion of linked notions of maternal and infant/child health.

Infant Mortality in Colonial Egypt: The View from the State There were various theories by British health officials as to the causes of infant mortality. Their interest in it seemed to be driven by a range of motivations, from humanitarianism to statistical precision. That the deaths followed a seasonal cycle, with the highest mortality coming over the hot summer months, led some specialists to attribute infant mortality to a form of heat stroke and others to malaria; most, however, ascribed it as, as one wrote, “chiefly the result of digestive troubles, under the form of acute or sub-acute Enteritis, or Gastro-Enteritis, ordinarily known under the name of ‘summer diarrhoea’”.8 Whether this was a single malady, or a group of maladies, was not then known. Roughly 50 years after Pasteur’s breakthrough in germ theory, scientists had yet to identify a bacillus for gastroenteritis, though they had claimed to find various bacteria associated with intestinal disease. The Department of Public Health report of 1909 found that “summer diarrhoea” was probably “due to a variety of bacillary growths, stimulated to unwonted activity by the circumstances of temperature and the reduced power of resistance on the part of the victim”.9 Experts turned to an examination of what infants were being fed: those sustained on mother’s milk seemed better able to resist, while those fed on cow or buffalo milk or milk substitutes seemed to “suffer in a particularly fatal manner, i.e., increased infant mortality is associated with the use of food exposed to bacterial infection and the resulting changes”.10 The fate of  Ministry of Interior, Annual Report for 1909, 41.  Ibid. 10  Ibid. The Hygienic Institute later performed analyses on samples of buffalo milk to test for adulteration. See Ministry of Interior, Department of Public Health, Annual Report for 1914 (Cairo: Government Press, 1916), 43. 8 9

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children was clearly linked to their mothers’ behaviour: either they breastfed their children or fed infants foods that British health officials considered unsuitable, such as melons, unripe dates, and bread. “With these conditions”, Graham wrote, “are invariably associated overcrowding, heated dwellings, squalor, and the unfavorable circumstances associated with poverty, and habits and intelligence (on the part of the parents) of a low order”.11 Yet it was not just the food or liquids that infants consumed that presented a problem in the eyes of foreign officials. Rather, habits of defecation before plumbing or lavatories had been regularized was a key concern (and would prove to be a preoccupation of American health officials tracking diseases transmitted by parasites).12 Graham noted that infants became sick due in part to the condition of being left (by their mothers, of course) on the floor of houses or the ground outside, which had been exposed to “organic soiling and which may very readily be specifically contaminated with intestinal germ life, in consequence of the lack of sanitary provisions, the absence of effective conservancy, and the long accustomed habits of the people”.13 Flies, too, it was admitted, might also carry infective germs, propagating what was known in England as a “filth disease”.14 Male experts focused on the “habits and intelligence” of the population, particularly the female portion of the population, to ameliorate the high rates of infant mortality to which they had only recently become attuned. Although admitting that the exact causes of death needed greater investigation, Department of Public Health reports repeatedly blamed mothers for bad habits and poor hygiene and continuously returned to the issue of women’s lack of education and backwardness. Yet, at the same time, the colonial government provided few funds for public education in general and girls’ education in particular. To educate mothers, the Department of Public Health distributed leaflets in dispensaries with short instructions and had these instructions printed on the back of birth certificates. Given the extremely low literacy rates at the time—0.3% for women and 8.5% for men according to the 1907 census15—it is highly unlikely  Ministry of Interior, Annual Report for 1909, 41.  Derr, The Lived Nile. 13  Ministry of Interior, Annual Report for 1909, 41. 14  Ministry of Interior, Department of Public Health, Annual Report for 1911 (Cairo: Government Press, 1912), 51. 15  Egypt Ministry of Finance, The Census of Egypt Taken in 1907 (Cairo: National Printing Department, 1909), 97. The census excluded Egyptian Jews, who were counted among the foreigners. 11 12

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that those women targeted could actually read the leaflets. Provincial governments distributed more detailed instructions in 1910 in colloquial language in their dispensaries, which if read aloud would have been more comprehensible than the literary Arabic language instructions that few women would have comprehended. Mothers may have had more success making sense of the illustrated posters distributed by the government that hung on the walls of dispensaries.16 While putting forward practical solutions, such as opening dispensaries to treat children and mothers, instructing the latter in the care and cleanliness of infants, visiting mothers at home and providing suitable milk in special cases, British officials themselves still sometimes saw these as only palliative. “The real root of the evil lies much deeper, and is closely connected with the ignorance, superstition and lethargy of the people; it is only with the cultivation and realization of the opposite characteristics which can, in the end, remove the conditions to which the evil owes its origin.”17 In short, Egyptians’ whole subjectivities needed reworking. British medical officials did not acknowledge the colonial state’s role in underfunding girls’ education, which perpetuated illiteracy and ignorance. Nor did they probe other structural impediments and environmental problems that led to passivity and poor health. Women often lived, worked, gave birth, and raised their children in homes lacking water and lavatory accommodations. These homes, or huts, were close to canals, many of which had been newly built under irrigation schemes pushed by colonial authorities and were filled with parasites and stagnant water swarming with mosquitos. Women (and men) suffered high rates of multiple diseases, including ancylostomiasis and bilharzia.18 To be sure, there was also ambivalence among colonial officials about lowering the high infant mortality rate. The situation, according to Graham, was “excessively complex”, connected as it was to economics and politics. “For these reasons it is necessary to proceed with more than ordinary care in the elaboration of measures for the reduction of infant mortality”, he wrote in the 1910 Department of Public Health Annual Report, 16  Presbyterian Historical Society (PHS), Mother-Child Welfare Center photo; see also Renate Lunde, “Building Bonny Babies – Missionary Welfare Work in Cairo 1920–1950,” in Nefissa Naguib and Inger Marie Okkenhaug, eds., Interpreting Welfare and Relief in the Middle East (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2008), 83–106. 17  Ministry of Interior, Department of Public Health, Annual Report for 1910 (Cairo: National Printing Department, 1912), 29. 18  Derr, The Lived Nile.

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continuing, “for the present, therefore, the main efforts of the Government in this connection should be directed to avoiding any serious disturbance of the balance between the birth-rate and the death-rate”. In short, fearful of fuelling population growth, he did not advocate addressing the problem of infant mortality in a meaningful way. The colonial state, as represented by such officials as Graham, did not see the problem of infant mortality as nearly acute as locals saw it. Rather, Graham urged the government to develop in Egyptians “such qualities as shall better fit them to face the more strenuous conditions of life which would inevitably ensue as the population grew more crowded in the land and competition for existence more keen”.19 Colonial medicine remained much more concerned with diseases that could spread to the British army, impacting the occupation force, and to colonial families, than a condition—infant mortality—that concerned mostly locals.20 Since gastroenteritis was not an infectious disease, it was not a priority for the colonial medical apparatus to address. Rather than have the state tackle the larger issues of a secure food and milk supply, well-built housing and sanitation, colonial officials preferred a more targeted approach by private groups, which would tackle the issue of infant mortality by providing health care and instruction to poor mothers.

The Spread of Children’s Dispensaries: Private Initiatives British officials applauded the Lady Cromer Dispensaries for their focus on the nursing and feeding of infants and urged Egyptians to do the same. Friends of the deceased First Lady Cromer, who were themselves often wives of British officials and shared their diagnoses of the situation, had gathered funds to launch the Lady Cromer Home for foundlings in a wing of the government hospital Qasr al-`Ayni in 1898.21 The group opened the doors of dispensaries in 1905, and by 1910 medical practitioners at the  Ministry of Interior, Annual Report for 1910, 29.  For a similar perspective on a larger scale, see Valeska Huber, Channelling Mobilities: Migration and Globalisation in the Suez Canal Region and Beyond, 1869–1914 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013), Chapter 7. 21  Ministry of Interior, Annual Report for 1909, 42; see also Beth Baron, The Women’s Awakening in Egypt: Culture, Society, and the Press (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994), 170; Beth Baron, “Orphans and Abandoned Children in Modern Egypt,” in Nefissa Naguib and Inger Marie Okkenhaug, eds., Interpreting Welfare and Relief in the Middle East 19 20

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facilities in Bulaq and Manshiyya were seeing large numbers of cases: 18,366 new ones and 130,000 registered attendees.22 The following year, the number of new cases was up to 23,700.23 That year, 1911, in conjunction with the Department of Public Health, the Lady Cromer Dispensaries tested the efficacy of different solutions of saline injections in treating cases of gastroenteritis (a system that had been used in London with good effect). For this purpose, the clinics procured a supply of sea water from a spot outside Alexandria.24 The Lady Cromer dispensaries, with their close connection to the colonial state, thus became part of the “colonial laboratory”, serving as sites to test new treatments. Egyptian elites were well aware of the dimensions of infant mortality and discussed it in the turn-of-the-century press.25 Indeed, rather than follow a colonial lead, locals who were intimately aware of the extent of the problem chose to tackle it head on. In 1896, two years before the Lady Cromer Home was founded, `Abd al-`Aziz Nazmi (1878–1945) left Egypt for medical studies in France as part of an Egyptian mission. At the age of six, Nazmi had lost his father, a major general in the Egyptian army who died fighting in the Battle of Tokar in the Sudan in 1884. His mother raised him, and he became close to his mother’s brother, Dr. `Ali Haydar Bey, a professor in the Qasr al-`Ayni School of Medicine in Cairo. In France, Nazmi studied medicine at Montpellier and worked in the clinic at the local hospital. He then spent close to a year in Toulouse, where he had rotations in the obstetrical clinic and clinic for infant diseases. He assisted in researching the causes of high infant mortality and low birth rates in France in anticipation of his return to Egypt, so that he would be “armed to combat the causes at their roots and to try to conserve precious lives”.26 From Toulouse, he returned to Montpellier to complete his studies, writing a thesis in the history of medicine in 1903—La médicine au temps des (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2008), 13–34, here 19–20; see Naguib Mahfouz, The History of Medical Education in Egypt (Cairo: Government Press of Bulaq, 1935), 106. 22  Ministry of Interior, Annual Report for 1910, 29. 23  Ministry of Interior, Annual Report for 1911, 52. 24  Ibid. 25  Baron, The Women’s Awakening in Egypt, 159–174; Mine Ener, Managing Egypt’s Poor and the Politics of Benevolence, 1800–1952 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003), 108–109. 26  Abdul Aziz Nazmi Bey, “La Mortalite Infantile et la Protection des Enfants en Egypte,” XVI Congres International de Medecine, Budapest, Aout-Septembre 1909. Compte-rendu (1910); Abdul Aziz Nazmi Bey, La médicine au temps des pharaons (Montpellier: Imprimerie de la Manufacture de la Charite, 1903), dedication and avant-propos.

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pharaons (Medicine in the Time of the Pharaohs)—which was published with a press in Montpellier.27 Writing on ancient Egyptians’ contributions to medical knowledge was his way of showing that Egyptians had a long pedigree of medical theory and practice.28 In 1903, Nazmi returned to Egypt, where he commenced research on the medical and social causes for the “mowing down” of poor babies in his own country. As we shall see, rather than blame their mothers, as British colonial officials more-or-less did, Nazmi was sensitive to their social backgrounds and the issue of poverty. Four years after his return, in 1907, he spearheaded the founding of the Société pour la Protection de l’Enfance d’Egypte (Society for the Protection of Childhood in Egypt). Named secretary general, he garnered support at the highest levels: Khedive Tawfiq offered his patronage, Prince Husayn Pasha Kamal agreed to become honorary president, and Minister of Justice Rushdi Pasha served as president. With an annual subvention of 26,000 francs from the Ministry of Religious Endowments (Awqaf), the Society inaugurated a clinic and Children’s Hospital in April 1908  in the popular quarter of Sayyida Zaynab. The facility had 30 beds for children along with a maternity wing of 20 beds for expectant mothers.29 The hospital proved to be a great success. Staffed by four doctors and two midwives, all paid by the Society, it drew on the volunteer labour of other doctors, who donated two hours per week of time. Every morning at nine o’clock, women lined up with their children, as the hospital opened its doors for external consultations. Those coming to seek treatment could consult with one of the two internists, a clinician, and an eye doctor; pregnant women would be examined by a trained midwife (hakima). Alongside regular check-ups for their infants, mothers could get lessons in childcare and nutrition. All internal and external services, including the provision of sterilized milk and medicine or operations, were gratis no matter the religion or nationality of the patient. The hospital proved very popular, as increasing numbers of mothers brought their children to the clinic, with new cases averaging 100 to 150 a day, and follow-ups averaging 150 to  Ibid.  There are similar attempts on the part of contemporary physicians and surgeons to point out the important history of Arab medical practitioners in the medieval period. 29  Nazmi, “La Mortalite Infantile,” 280; Ener, Managing Egypt’s Poor, 110; Smith College, Sophia Smith Collection (SSC), Ruth Woodsmall Papers, Box 24, Folder 2, “Survey of Welfare Work for Mothers and Infants in Cairo, February 1927.” 27 28

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200 a day.30 Within a few years, the clinic had taken root within the community, with approximately 29,000 Egyptians visiting it in 1910.31 Shortly after the opening of the Children’s Hospital in Cairo, elites in Alexandria founded a Society for the Protection of Infants there and opened two dispensaries, with one providing childcare for working mothers. Both protection societies worked to propagate notions of hygiene and instructions on childraising through conferences, articles, notices, and classes. Nazmi was a great advocate and activist on this front: he wrote materials for the School of Midwifery at Qasr al-`Ayni; gave lectures on medical topics; and published articles in Arabic, English, and French in such journals as al-Nahda al-Nisa’iyya (The Women’s Awakening). Rather than berate mothers for high rates of infant mortality due to their ignorance and unclean habits, Nazmi saw the problem as a medico-social one and took a less condemnatory tack than the British public health officials in the colonial government.32 Drawing from his personal observations, a study he had conducted among doctors in Egypt and also from statistics in hospitals and clinics (including the demographic tables of his colleague, the German Dr. Engel Bey, who was director of Statistics in the Sanitary Administration), Nazmi identified certain patterns concerning infant mortality. He shared his findings at the International Congress of Medicine in Budapest in August– September 1909, noting that his conclusions correlated with those of Dr. LeGrand, a French public health specialist. To start, according to Nazmi, the degree of infant mortality of Egyptians from birth to ten months was basically less than that of European infants of the same age. Mortality rose precipitously at one year, however, reaching its maximum between the second and fourth years. This pattern could be directly linked to Egyptian mother’s breastfeeding patterns. In spite of the heat and the supposed “profound ignorance” of women, babies did quite well until ten months precisely because local women tended to breastfeed them even well past that age, until the age of two. The rise in mortality seen at ten months came because mothers started to feed their infants solid foods around that  Nazmi, “La Mortalite Infantile,” 280.  Ministry of Interior, Annual Report for 1910, 29. 32  Ener, Managing Egypt’s Poor, 109–110. See Nazmi, “La Mortalite Infantile” and his articles in “La protection de l’enfance au point de vue medical et social,” L’Egypte Contemporaine (1911), 81–93;`Abd al-`Aziz Nazmi Bey, “Nazafa al-Tifl,” al-Nahda alNisa’iyya 1, no. 1 (1921); 7–10. See “Infantile Mortality in Egypt and the Native Practitioners,” The Lancet (1911), 1151. 30 31

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age, when most of their first teeth had appeared. And the even steeper rise at two to four came because the babies by then had been weaned and had replaced breast milk with solids and other liquids.33 Nazmi also observed among his private clients and those at the public dispensaries that infant mortality rose significantly with the Nile floods, which ran roughly from May 15 to August 15. He attributed this increase to a number of factors: the Nile carried from its sources to its mouth “immense rot of all sorts” of things thrown into it or lying in its bed; the dirty water was then given by almost all mothers, but especially the poor, to their infants without the precaution of boiling or filtering it. (Nazmi noted that during the floods, typhoid and typhus also increased.) With the floods appeared mounds of fruit, such as melons and dates, that mothers, “so tender but ignorant”, gave to their infants before realizing that these fruits were difficult to digest even when ripe. The floods also corresponded with the summer months, when the heat exacerbated intestinal infections produced by drinking unsafe water and eating inappropriate foods.34 If infant mortality was much higher among the indigenous population than that of resident foreigners, Nazmi pointed out, it was because of the better maintenance by the government of European quarters, the better education of European women, and the greater wealth and fewer children of Europeans resident in Egypt.35 So what caused infant mortality? Nazmi concluded that gastroenteritis was the main culprit in more than 70 per cent of the cases. And he estimated that more than 80 per cent of infants in Egypt presented symptoms more or less severe of gastroenteritis in summer. What saved them “without doubt” was breastfeeding by Egyptian women.36 Here, Nazmi turns the colonial critique of Egyptian mothers on its head, crediting women for saving infant boys and girls by clinging tenaciously to the valued practice of breastfeeding. Yet, he pointed out that the numbers dying from gastroenteritis in the past four years had gone up, not down, and averaged 109.6 per 10,000. Why was that? And if gastroenteritis accounted for 70 per cent of the deaths, what accounted for the other 30 per cent? Measles and its complications took a toll, followed by other infectious diseases, such as diphtheria, whooping cough, smallpox, scarlet fever, influenza, typhus,  Nazmi, “La Mortalite Infantile,” 276–277.  Ibid., 278. 35  Ibid., 277–278. 36  Ibid., 278. 33 34

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and dysentery, which broke out in small epidemics in Egypt and attacked regardless of gender. To these, Nazmi added two more diseases—tuberculosis and hereditary syphilis—which he thought caused a great deal of infant mortality, though he found that these deaths were often registered under different categories by doctors for a variety of reasons.37 “In my opinion, the best way to battle infant mortality in Egypt,” wrote Nazmi, “is to instruct young Egyptian women and teach them to comprehend notions of hygiene and the art of raising infants (puericulture)”.38 Pushing puericulture, Nazmi established his own clinic in the popular Cairene quarter of Darb al-Ahmar, and he later became the director of the medical division of the Ministry of Religious Endowments (Awqaf), which had hospitals and its own dispensary at Bab al-Luq.39 The appointment was a great perch from which to influence childcare in Egypt. Shortly after the founding of the Société pour la Protection de l’Enfance d’Egypte, another similar society emerged. Princess `Ayn al-Hayat Ahmad, who was alarmed by the high wave of infant mortality in 1909, brought friends and relatives together to launch the Mabarat Muhammad Ali the following year. Named after the founder of the dynastic family and known in French as L’Œuvre Mohamed Aly El-Kebir, the organization had as its goal the propagation of the principles of elementary hygiene among the popular classes to reduce infant mortality. Opening its first dispensary in `Abdin, close to the palace of the khedive, it served women and children in the popular quarters of `Abdin, Sayyida Zaynab, and Darb al-Ahmar. Drawing support from donations by royals and the local elite, it was staffed by European and Egyptian volunteer physicians. The group went on to found two other dispensaries, two hospitals and 11 mobile units, and it played a critical role in combatting the epidemics that ravaged Egypt during World War II.40 Whereas male doctors such as Nazmi worked the  Ibid., 279.  Ibid. 39  Ener, Managing Egypt’s Poor, 109–110; Ministry of Interior, Department of Public Health, Annual Report for 1915 (Cairo: Government Press, 1917), 26; “`Abd al-`Aziz Nazmi,” in Khayr al-Dı̄n al-Zirikly, ed., al-`Alam: Qamus Tarajim 4 (Beirut: Dar al-`Ilm lil-Malayin, 2002), 21. 40  Mubarat Muhammad `Ali Pasha al-Kabir (Cairo: Matba’at Misr, 1946); Oeuvre Mohamed Aly El Kebir (Le Caire: Imp Misr, 1946), 1; Emine Foat Tugay, Three Centuries: Family Chronicles of Turkey and Egypt (London: Oxford University Press, 1963), 105–109; Afaf Lutfi al-Sayyid Marsot, “The Revolutionary Gentlewomen in Egypt,” in Lois Beck and Nikki Keddie, eds., Women in the Muslim World (Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press, 1978), 261–276, here 271–275; Baron, The Women’s Awakening, 170–174; 37 38

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medical side to address the problem of infant mortality, female elites (who were barred from obtaining medical degrees until the 1920s) mobilized on the humanitarian side. They brought different skill sets to the problem—scientific and administrative—but tended to share a similar approach and networks.

Rural Programs: Provincial Dispensaries Take Off In the wake of the issuance of sanitary recommendations by the Department of Public Health, Egyptian provincial councils started launching their own children’s dispensaries. While lukewarm about many of the Department of Public Health’s recommendations, the councils responded enthusiastically to the charge to open clinics for children. Minya led the way, with other provincial towns following rapidly. Set up by provincial or municipal authorities, the new children’s dispensaries were almost all headed by English matrons, who thus found employment opportunities in colonial public health at a time when nursing education was still being institutionalized in Egypt. As we shall see, that the matrons were English did not seem to trouble Egyptian women, who came to the dispensaries in large numbers. The matrons drew on the assistance of private doctors, who visited regularly to help with the more serious cases, and a British women doctor periodically inspected the dispensaries. The latter sent reports to the Cairo Central Ladies’ Committee, which was made up of a small private group of Egyptian and British women who had opened a maternity house in Cairo to create a uniform training and certification process for midwives and then became charged with managing the dispensaries to which subsequent maternity houses were attached. These state–private partnerships relied on volunteer doctors and donations of clothing from local women’s groups and the Cairo Central Ladies’ Committee itself.41 Margot Badran, Feminists, Islam, and Nation: Gender and the Making of Modern Egypt (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995); Nancy Gallagher, Egypt’s Other Wars: Epidemics and the Politics of Public Health (Syracuse and New  York: Syracuse University Press, 1990); Nancy Gallagher, “Writing Women Medical Practitioners into the History of Modern Egypt,” in Arthur Goldschmidt, Jr., Amy J. Johnson and Barak A. Salmoni, eds., Re-Envisioning Egypt 1919–1952 (Cairo: American University in Cairo Press, 2005), 351–370; Ener, Managing Egypt’s Poor, 111. 41  Ministry of Interior, Department of Public Health, Annual Report for 1913 (Cairo: Government Press, 1915), 36; Ministry of Interior, Annual Report for 1914, 20; Ministry of Interior, Annual Report for 1915, 26. For more on midwifery in this period, see Hibba

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The medical work was not without its risks. Miss Owens, who headed the dispensary in Mansura from its opening in 1912, succumbed to a severe form of typhoid in 1917 after a short illness.42 The popularity of the dispensaries among poor Egyptian women was attested to by the long distances they travelled to get to them and their repeat visits. They learned about the clinics through word of mouth and spread information about them to family and friends, and they continued to come with additions to their own families. Even though they may have had responsibilities to attend to in the fields or at home, mothers walked or rode as much as 30 kilometres from their villages to attend dispensaries. The fact that they visited the dispensaries repeatedly (on average five times from the opening of the clinics), though not quite as often as town or city women (the average number of visits in Cairo was nine), further proved the commitment of these village women to improving the health of their children.43 In 1914, attendance at the dispensaries was close to 250,000. By 1920, that figure was over 390,000 total attendances and continued to climb.44 Depending on the season, children who were brought to the dispensaries often suffered from different illnesses, whether abdominal, chest, or skin, with abdominal being far and away the most common. Eye diseases were also common, so much so that the Director of the Ophthalmic Hospitals arranged for a mobile unit to attend to paediatric patients at the dispensaries when hospitals were located far from those services. There was geographic variation of disease as well as seasonal variation: bilharzia and rheumatism with heart complications were frequent in Beni Suef district, malaria in the Fayyum, and skin diseases in Asyut. Private physicians and medical officers from the government hospitals often saw and treated the most serious cases at the dispensaries, and in some places serious cases

Abugideiri, Gender and the Making of Modern Medicine in Colonial Egypt (Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate, 2010), Chapter 5. 42  Ministry of Interior, Department of Public Health, Annual Report for 1917 (Cairo: Government Press, 1919), 25. 43  Ministry of Interior, Department of Public Health, Annual Report for 1916 (Cairo: Government Press, 1918), 33; Ministry of Interior, Annual Report for 1917, 25; Ministry of Interior, Department of Public Health, Annual Report for 1915 (Cairo: Government Press, 1917), 26. 44  Ministry of Interior, Annual Report for 1914, 20; Ministry of Interior, Department of Public Health, Annual Report for 1920 (Cairo: Government Press, 1922), 40.

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were sent to the government hospitals.45 Yet, this could also be problematic, as Egyptian women—and it was mothers who most often accompanied the children—feared that in going to the hospital, they would be sent to cordon. What they really wanted was care and the medications that the Department of Public Health provided.46 What they really needed, too, was purified running water and lavatories. In 1914, on the eve of the war, there were 10 provincial dispensaries in total. Given the attendance figures, the dispensaries were considered a success and more were added on, with two in Beni Suef province in 1915, and another one in Damanhur in 1917, for a total of 13. But because their maintenance was in the hands of the provincial councils, which were run by Egyptian officials, and not the Department of Public Health, which was run by British officials, they could be easily closed down, ostensibly for lack of funds or for other reasons. This happened in Asyut in 1920, much to the chagrin of Department of Public Health officials, who decried this “retrograde step” in what was considered a wealthy province.47 In the face of continuously high infant mortality rates, the aim of the Department of Public Health was “to encourage the establishment of children’s Dispensaries throughout the country”.48 At the same time, colonial state policy was to close down a public clinic the moment a private one was founded, shifting as many social welfare costs as possible to the private sector: “The policy of the Department of Public Health is only to have dispensaries in the towns in which there is no good private dispensary. When a satisfactory private dispensary opens in a town the Department closes its dispensary.”49 This stress on the private nature of health care for children grew out of the perception that it was “essentially women’s work”, which was meant to be supported by voluntary workers.50 War and the unrest in its wake presented new challenges to the health of poor children in Egypt. In 1917, the high price of bread negatively impacted the nutrition of children throughout the country; the following year the influenza pandemic kept mothers from bringing their children to  Ministry of Interior, Annual Report for 1916, 33.  Ministry of Interior, Annual Report for 1917, 25 47  Ministry of Interior, Annual Report for 1920, 39; Ministry of Interior, Annual Report for 1914, 20; Ministry of Interior, Annual Report for 1915, 26. 48  Ministry of Interior, Annual Report for 1920, 83. 49  Ministry of Interior, Annual Report for 1914, 18. 50  Ministry of Interior, Department of Public Health,  Annual Report for 1919  (Cairo: Government Press, 1921), 37. 45 46

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the dispensaries.51 In March 1919, anti-colonial protests and British attempts to suppress the demonstrations resulted in the closing of some of the dispensaries for weeks or even months. At the same time, the British Red Cross Society attempted to show its concern for an informal colony and assert British humanitarian sovereignty by sending a gift of supplies for the dispensaries.52 Within the Department of Public Health, there seemed to be differing views on how to proceed after the war and the 1919 Revolution. Some officials called for the formation of ladies’ benevolent societies in each province to help the matrons meet the distress of those attending the infant welfare centres, for mothers bringing sick children often needed clothing and funds for their families. This private–public partnership was meant to help address the medical and social needs of dispensary visitors, making them more like infant welfare centres in the United States and Europe at that time, though it would not have addressed the underlying poverty and lack of infrastructure that exacerbated the need.53 Others strove to convert the provincial infant welfare centres into hospital outpatient clinics under the supervision of a doctor who could charge small fees. They would then look more like the general outpatient clinics affiliated with provincial hospitals that already existed. The latter, which were more numerous, were geared mostly towards men, while the current dispensaries provided free services to poor mothers, instructing them in hygiene and feeding methods and giving out suitable clothing and simple remedies for sick children. For the moment, the existence of separate provincial infant welfare centres serving mothers and their children prevailed. At the same time, those whose families could afford doctor’s fees were pushed towards–or chose to visit—private doctors.54

Medical Missionaries: Clean Hearts, Clean Bodies Medicine, or more properly healing, was also at the heart of the missionary enterprise, with medical professionals making up a sizeable portion of missionary personnel in Egypt in the late nineteenth and early twentieth 51  Ministry of Interior, Annual Report for 1917, 25; Ministry of Interior, Department of Public Health, Annual Report for 1918 (Cairo: Government Press, 1920), 27. 52  Ministry of Interior, Annual Report for 1919, 37. The Egyptian Red Crescent Society was not recognized internationally until 1923. 53  Ibid., 39. 54  Ibid., 37, 39; Ministry of Interior, Annual Report for 1920, 40.

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centuries. In the first instance, missionary boards charged the doctors they dispatched into the field—and they sent female doctors as well as male ones—with caring for the members of the mission; but their mandate extended beyond that. Medicine was seen as an effective way of reaching the indigenous population, fusing Christian notions of cleanliness and healing with modern medical practices. Missionaries put great stock in cleanliness and practices of good hygiene, targeting women as the custodians of the home and the health of young boys and girls. This obsession with hygiene and women as the key to improving it grew out of nineteenth century middle-class concerns with epidemics that spread in poor and overcrowded working-class neighbourhoods in industrialized cities such as London. Over the course of the nineteenth century, a new hygiene regime developed, that of regularly washing the body with soap and water, as living a clean life also came to mean living a moral and disciplined one.55 Notions about hygiene were reinforced by the late nineteenth century revolution in bacteriology. European and American missionaries recognized the dearth of medical institutions in colonial Egypt and set about filling the void, with the support of British authorities, who had limited the allotment of state funds for public health. The three largest Protestant missions in Egypt—the American Mission, the Egypt General Mission (EGM), and the Church Missionary Society (CMS)—each started a hospital, with the Americans starting two, one in Asyut, the other in Tanta. The CMS hospital in Old Cairo, known as the Harmal after its founder Dr. Harper, grew to become the largest missionary hospital in the world. The EGM hospital in Shibin al-Qanatar became the centrepiece of a network of schools, orphanages, and workshops. A smaller mission, the Sudan-Pionier Mission, launched a hospital in Aswan.56 To staff hospitals, the missionaries relied on medical professionals trained in medical schools in their home countries. Doctors periodically 55  Samir Boulos, “‘A clean heart likes clean clothes’: Cleanliness Customs and Conversion in Egypt (1900–1956),” Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations 21, no. 4 (2010), 315–330, here 317. 56  On missionaries in Egypt, see Heather Sharkey, American Evangelicals in Egypt: Missionary Encounters in an Age of Empire (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008); Boulos, “‘A clean heart likes clean clothes’,” and his book European Evangelicals in Egypt (1900–1956): Cultural Entanglements and Missionary Spaces (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2016); Paul Sedra, From Mission to Modernity: Evangelicals, Reformers, and Education in Nineteenth Century Egypt (London: I.B.  Tauris, 2011); and Beth Baron, The Orphan Scandal: Christian Missionaries and the Rise of the Muslim Brotherhood (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2014).

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came out to the field to replace those who had fallen ill or retired. But they also made accommodations in the field: the American Mission started a nursing school in Tanta to train medical workers, with former slaves being some of the first nursing pupils (much as female slaves had been some of the first students in the School for Midwifery established by Clot Bey).57 Given the paucity of health institutions in early-twentieth-century Egypt, missionary medicine played an important role in the country. The missionaries were, for their part, very proud of the medical side of their missions, claiming in particular that they had been pioneers in infant care. The claim does not hold up, however, when examining the timing of the foundation of child welfare centres, as we shall see. Missionary doctors and colonial health officials had their differences. Both sets of professionals collected data, yet they were motivated by a different purpose. Public health officials were first and foremost scientists keen on making medical breakthroughs, and the laboratory played a central role in their operations. Research proved pivotal as colonial doctors and scientists sought to make discoveries, identify microbes, and find cures for diseases. Missionary medical professionals, on the other hand, prioritized a clinical practice that would heal bodies and save souls. Starting up laboratories in mission hospitals proved controversial, with boards back home balking at funding them. Contact with patients was thought to be the way to win converts, not the analysis of tissue or blood samples. This is not to say that medical missionaries did not innovate. They occasionally did, being the first to practice certain procedures: a female EGM physician and surgeon who had graduated from Glasgow University in 1904, for example, performed some of the first skin grafts in Egypt on women’s legs and ankles. Yet their innovations came more from the clinical side of their practices and work in surgery rather than a research agenda.58 For the most part, colonial doctors seemed much more attentive to the health and contagious diseases of the male population—driven by concerns about the male labour force and the safety of the colonial army— than with reproductive health and the well-being of the female population. 57  See the story of Halima in Beth Baron, “Liberated Bodies and Saved Souls: Freed African Slave Girls and Missionaries in Egypt,” in Ehud R. Toledano, ed., African Communities in Asia and the Mediterranean: Identities between Integration and Conflict (Trenton and London: Max Planck Institute and Africa World Press, 2012), 215–235. 58  MECO, Egypt General Mission Archives, Argyull, Scotland, 31.10.1904, “June Cooke to Thomson.”

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Missionary doctors, some of whom were women, tended to cater to women and children, seeing them as key to conversion. Missionary records capture more information about their male and female patients’ spiritual journeys than their medical conditions. When the staff got ready to discharge a patient at the EGM Hospital in Shibin al-­ Qanatar, which handled an array of adult and children’s cases, the nurse handed the evangelist the patient’s card. The evangelist was charged with speaking with patients before they left the hospital and then conducting follow-up visits at home to reinforce spiritual teaching at the hospital. On the front of the card appeared the patient’s name, age, village, date of admission, number in out-patient register, number of the bed, diagnosis of disease, result and payment. On the back was recorded the spiritual record of the patient, including date of discharge, whether literate or not, a grade given for spiritual response, other remarks and spaces to record dates of visits to the patient at home in the village and the results of these visits. Religion was recorded when it was not clear from the name of the patient. Data collected by medical missionaries privileged patients’ receptivity to the gospel message over the curative power of medical procedures.59 Of the missionary hospitals started in Egypt, the Tanta Hospital stands out as the one that most actively targeted women and children. In December 1896, two women missionary doctors—Dr. Anna Watson, who had done post-graduate work at Johns Hopkins Medical School, and Dr. Caroline Lawrence—arrived in Egypt and settled in Tanta, in the heart of the Delta region. Like all members of the American Mission, they were required to go through a rigorous training in Arabic before devoting full-­ time to mission work. In their case, they asked for special permission to read the Arabic medical journal, possibly al-Shifa’ (Healing), rather than the Qur’an. Permission was granted, though studying 50 pages of the Qur’an was still required. The women quickly began seeing patients in the city and also opened clinics in Benha, Kafr Zayyat, and Mahalla al-Kubra. By 1904, Watson’s clinic in Tanta had become a women’s and children’s hospital, which was notable because at that time no maternity or children’s hospitals existed in Egypt. The first women’s hospitals were, in fact, lock hospitals, where patients with venereal disease were kept until they were ostensibly “cured”. Ten years later, on the eve of World War I, the Tanta Hospital was turned into a general hospital.60 59  MECO, Egypt General Mission Archives, The Complete Circle: A Story of Medical Work in Egypt, 47. 60  Susannah Hutchison, “Heal the Sick,” American Mission Papers, Presbyterian Historical Society (PHS).

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It was only in the 1920s that Protestant missionaries began opening special children’s dispensaries. The CMS opened its first centre in Old Cairo, where their hospital was located, in 1921, and established a second infant welfare centre in Bulaq, another poor neighbourhood in Cairo, in 1927.61 With women like Jane Smith playing a central role, the American Mission started four children’s dispensaries in Cairo (Husayniyya, 1922; Bab al-Sha’ria, 1923; Darb al-Ahmar, 1923; and Ezbet al-Muslimin, 1927), and one in Benha. The missionaries reached mothers through verbal instructions as well as visual and literary material. The walls of the CMS dispensaries were covered with picture posters made by Miss (I.M.) Scott-Montcrieff on feeding, hygiene, and danger of fly-borne diseases.62 The government purchased copies of the posters for its own welfare centres, and these may well have been the same posters hanging on the walls of an American Mission mother–child welfare centre. A photograph of that Cairene clinic shows a set of six English-language posters hanging on a white wall, juxtaposed with two bilingual posters by another artist. Six women hold seven children on their laps or between their legs, and an open cabinet reveals some of the instruments and ointments of the nurses’ trade. It is doubtful that many of the women attending the clinic could read posters emboldened with edicts in English such as “Cultivate Self-Reliance” or giving instructions on “Second Year Food”, “The Hour of Sleep”, and “Bathing the Baby”, though some could have attended American or other missionary schools and thus might have been literate.63 Likewise, Scott-­ Montcrieff’s al-Umm al-Hakima Sihhat Awladha Salima (The Wise Mother’s Children Are Healthy), which was published in Cairo on the Nile Mission Press in 1932 and distributed by missionaries, would probably have been inaccessible to many of these women.64 The pictures and verbal instructions to bath their babies regularly were much more legible. In writing about the CMS welfare centres (and her argument holds true for American Mission, EGM, and Sudan-Pionier dispensaries), Renate Lunde points to “a dynamic dialogue” between missionary women and 61  For more on this dispensary, see Lunde, “Building Bonny Babies – Missionary Welfare Work in Cairo, 1920–1950,” 83–106. 62  Ibid., 91. See I.  M. Scott-Montcrieff, al-Umm al-Hakima Sihhat Awladha Salima (Cairo: Nile Mission Press, 1932). 63  “Mother-Child Welfare Center Photograph,” American Mission Papers, Presbyterian Historical Society (PHS). 64  Boulos, “‘A clean heart likes clean clothes’,” 330.

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lower-class mothers, whose actions “in relation with each other were thus possibly strategic engagements where the terms, aims and meanings were first of all gendered, but also negotiated and changed over time”.65 By stressing that they were gendered, she acknowledges the maternal roles assigned to mothers by missionaries and the ways in which Egyptian mothers read their own and missionary women’s work. Lunde also notes that the CMS missionaries saw themselves as “pioneers in infant welfare in Egypt”, and the same holds true for the way American missionaries perceived themselves. It was not that either were first into the field but rather that their approach was different: “In comparison with government centres and philanthropic agencies, which they praised for excellent results, the missionary women underlined that the missionary welfare work catered for the whole man, not only bodily and mental healing, but spiritual healing of the soul as well.”66 The spiritual healing was accomplished through exposing the mothers and children to repeated opportunities to hear the gospel message: those women waiting outside clinics and dispensaries might be met by a Bible woman, those going into surgery could hear the medical staff pray beforehand, physicians might inquire into a patients’ spiritual as well as physical well-being, those recovering in hospital could attend Bible lessons, and follow-up visits by a physician or Bible woman included checks about spiritual health. That medical missionaries believed that in healing they could not separate the body and soul, something integrative Western medicine is just now coming to understand about the body/mind connection, may have been pioneering in a sense, just not in the sense that the missionaries imagined.

The 1920s: An Array of Options By the 1920s, colonial officials argued that the work of the provincial infant welfare centres was beginning to bear fruit but admitted that progress was slow “on account of the primitive housing conditions still prevailing throughout the country. The lack of a proper water supply, the absence of any system of sanitation, the mud brick homes of the fellaheen, must all be borne in mind when judging results”, for, as the director of the Department of Public Health explained, “such adverse conditions  Lunde, “Building Bonny Babies – Missionary Welfare Work in Cairo 1920–1950,” 104.  Ibid., 97.

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necessarily must seriously handicap the efforts of the dispensary matrons to instruct the mothers in clean methods”.67 Yet, the recognition of inadequate sanitation did not translate into a change in policy in tackling infant mortality. The stress was still on educating mothers through collective and individual training. And while the Public Health Department aimed “to encourage the establishment of children’s dispensaries throughout the country”, it did not consider it the duty of the central administration to maintain or fund such health institutions. Rather, it charged local authorities and provincial councils with running and allocating funds for them.68 In a new initiative, the new child welfare clinic in the government hospital of Qasr al-`Ayni started to hand out fresh milk daily to mothers of babies over one year to help them wean the babies from breastfeeding. Medical professionals now recognized, as mothers knew, that gastrointestinal problems arose in the “second period of infancy”, after a child had been weaned. This usually occurred at a year-and-a-half or older, when a woman might spread myrrh or something similar on her breasts and put the baby on a diet of whole foods. The solution of colonial officials was to encourage weaning gradually, which would accustom the child to animal milk. Yet, given a working-class Cairene family income of seven or eight PT a day, supplying an infant with the necessary amount of milk would cost 30 to 40 per cent of their income, or roughly two and a half to three PT a day, which was impossible. Distribution of milk at the Qasr al-‘Ayini centre was subsidized by Egyptian women who had visited the clinic and appreciated its work.69 Mothers might also attend the milk kitchen in Dr. Forcart’s free weekly clinic on Sharia al-Madabagh.70 Whether the milk supplements helped or simply created more problems is not clear: could the mothers get a regular supply of healthy cow’s or buffalo’s milk apart from these clinics? Were milk supplies available in Cairo of good quality? In testing milk for adulteration, the Hygienic Institute of the Department of Public Health found that some milk was watered down or contained other substances. Government officials used Qasr al-`Ayni as a place to 67  Egypt Ministry of Interior, Department of Public Health, Annual Report for 1921 (Cairo: Government Press, 1923), 3. 68  Egypt Ministry of Interior, Department of Public Health, Annual Report on the Work of the Public Health Department for 1922 (Cairo: Government Press, 1925), 83. 69  Egypt Ministry of Interior, Annual Report for 1921, 33. 70  Smith College, Sophia Smith Collection, Ruth Woodsmall Papers, Box 24, Folder 2, “Survey of Welfare Work for Mothers and Infants in Cairo, February 1927.”

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experiment, and frankly admitted that the “large Foundling Home, with 160 children in 1927 […] serves as an excellent child welfare Laboratory for the student midwives and nurses”.71 Egyptian mothers could find a number of dispensaries located in different neighbourhoods in the capital. A survey of welfare centres for mothers and children in Cairo in February 1927 noted the presence of 20 such clinics offering different services. In addition to the clinic at the government hospital at Qasr al-`Ayni, which had started home visits, two other hospitals provided in and outpatient care: the Kitchener Hospital and the Royal Hospital. The list also included three centres for infant care opened in January 1927 by the Department of Public Health, one each in Bulaq, Old Cairo and Darb al-Ahmar. Each had two doctors and five midwives examining mothers and babies, treating simple cases and referring complicated ones to the hospital.72 Other clinics also ran out-patient services. The Society for the Protection of Childhood continued to sponsor its clinic in Sayyida Zaynab. A group of clinics started by women’s organizations also offered out-­ patient care, including Mabarat Muhammad Ali’s dispensary in `Abdin, the Société de la Nouvelle Femme (Society of the New Woman) in Sayyida Zaynab, and the Work for Egypt clinic in Saptia.73 The latter group also opened a branch in Alexandria, where they started a clinic in May 1927, after having started a second one in Cairo in March 1927. That clinic, like others, featured posters of healthy and sick children that were presumably easily understood by those attending the clinic or so a reporter in an Egyptian weekly newspaper claimed.74 The Egyptian Feminist Union also had a dispensary for women and children in Sayyida Zaynab, started in 1924, with the group raising funds through festivals and lotteries. It relied on the aid of doctors who gave services, including Dr. Sami Kamal, a specialist in children’s diseases, and like some of the other clinics, also treated eye diseases in children.75 (Their clinic may 71  Smith College, Sophia Smith Collection, Ruth Woodsmall Papers, Box 25, “Changing Status of Muslim Women, Manuscript, Section I.” 72   “Ra’iyya al-Tifl bil-Qatr al-Misri,” al-Majalla al-Tibbiyya al-Misriyya 10, no. 1 (1927), 72–73. 73  “Survey of Welfare Work for Mothers and Infants in Cairo, February 1927.” 74  Smith College, Sophia Smith Collection, Ruth Woodsmall Papers, Box 24, Folder 5, “Annual Report of Labor Society to Egypt.” 75  Bahiga Arafa, The Social Activities of the Egyptian Feminist Union (Cairo: Elias Modern Press, 1973), 34–36.

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have been the same one as that of the Society of the New Woman listed above.) Because the same male doctors were practicing across these different sites—in government and private hospitals, clinics and dispensaries—it is hard to discern differences in medical practice. At the same time, the elite Egyptian women who stepped up to expand the options for women’s and children’s health took this expansion as a particular charge, especially as they were well aware of the limitations of the state in providing services to women and children. One approach that seemed to be shared across institutions was serving the whole child. The clinics of the missionaries, for example, also used to combine infant welfare with eye care. There were at least five Protestant missionary dispensaries at the time of the 1927 survey—two organized by the Church Missionary Society, two by American Mission, and one by American University—as well as a number of Catholic ones. The Home de la Providence in Ghazira Badra took in mothers and babies, too, and the Asile St. Louis in `Abbassiyya served as an orphanage, taking in babies.76 The difference in the approach of the missionaries as compared to elite Egyptian women was the emphasis on the gospel message. Wives of British officials had sponsored the Lady Cromer dispensary in Bulaq, the oldest of the mother and infant clinics, having started in 1907, and a year after the 1927 survey of welfare work for mothers and infants, the Society for the Welfare of Mothers and Babies in Egypt was started under the presidency of Lady Loraine Lloyd, the wife of the then current British high commissioner. Its central committee included a roster of Egyptian elites, notably the eminent obstetrician-gynaecologist Dr. Naguib Mahfouz Pasha. The society trained Egyptian girls for welfare work among the poor in Madbuli and elsewhere.77 Still, even with the emerging array of private and public dispensaries, the rates of infant mortality did not seem to be coming down: indeed, they seemed to be rising. Infant mortality of those under one year per 1000 births in 1919 was 128, up from Nazmi’s average figure of 109 ten years earlier; in 1924 it was 150; and in 1925, it peaked at 155. By comparison, the rates in England were 89 and 75, respectively. The commonest cause of death at any age in Egypt remained gastroenteritis of children below the  “Survey of Welfare Work for Mothers and Infants in Cairo, February 1927.”  “Egyptian Mothers and Babies: Welfare Society’s Work Excellent Progress,” Egyptian Gazette (09.06.1933), 2. 76 77

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age of 5, making up 31 per cent of deaths from all causes.78 At the children’s dispensaries in the countryside, the numbers of children presenting with abdominal problems continued to exceed all other problems combined.79 Some suggested that high infant mortality coincided with large family size. Yet, other factors were at play, including questions of the security and purity of milk and food and increasing rates of syphilis. Syphilis helped to shape the Egyptian health care system and misshaped the bodies of men, women, and children. The disease could be devastating, destroying cartilage and tissue, and could lead to insanity and death. It could also be passed on to a foetus. Syphilis, which was on the rise after the war with the return of the labour corps deployed abroad and with greater contacts with Europeans, including infected soldiers, was given as the chief cause of still-births in Egypt, and numbers of children were born with it and may have died of it. The disease only exacerbated already high rates of infant mortality in Egypt.80

Conclusion While colonial health officials kept increasingly detailed statistics on birth, disease, and death, they were less effective at implementing programs to address the problem of infant mortality or to delve into the structural issues, including poverty, underlying it. Rather than look at food and water security as the sources of the problem, they blamed infant mortality on Egyptian mothers, who through their “ignorance and backwardness” were seen as the root cause, and by way of education, the main solution. Good at counting and apportioning blame, public health officials turned to the private sphere for programs to reach these mothers. Wives of colonial officials, local female elites, and female medical missionaries, among others, were given a special gendered charge to help educate poor mothers in proper hygienic practices and feeding methods to combat high infant mortality rates. This attention may have inadvertently empowered poor Egyptian mothers, who now had more health care options, though partaking of them sometimes came with a price. 78  Ministry of Interior, Department of Public Health, Annual Report on the Work of the Department of Public Health for 1924 (Cairo: Government Press, 1927), 3–4; see also “Changing Status of Muslim Women, Manuscript, Section I.” 79  Egypt Ministry of Interior, Annual Report for 1921, 70; “Changing Status of Muslim Women, Manuscript, Section I.” 80  Ibid., 106–107.

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The collective actions of these colonial wives, local elite women, and medical missionaries, and their interactions with state authorities and medical professionals, made a contribution to aiding sick children and eventually lowering the infant mortality rate. But meaningful change would only come with broad education for Egyptian girls and women, which the colonial state was extremely slow to develop, and the addressing of environmental and socioeconomic issues that underlined or exacerbated health problems. Egyptian doctors, with their clinical experience, sometimes had different analyses from colonial public health officials as to the exact causes of high infant mortality and more clearly identified the larger structural problems. Really meaningful change depended upon mothers and children, who were not necessarily passive targets of the colonial state, Egyptian doctors, or others. Instead, they took the initiative, carrying sick infants to local and distant dispensaries to get medicine and to learn new ways to fight illnesses. That peasant and working women came long distances by foot and train to the new dispensaries to seek advice and medicine for their newborns, not just once but repeatedly, spoke to their desire to raise healthy children. In frequenting the dispensaries, these mothers took what they wanted materially, intellectually, and spiritually, and left what they did not want, speaking to their desire for a good life for their offspring. More than the objects of public health officials, they were gendered subjects in their own right. Meanwhile, Egyptian children, in large numbers, strove to survive amidst challenging odds.

CHAPTER 9

Parenthood as Aid: “Fathers”, “Mothers” and International Child Welfare from the Late 1940s to the 1970s Katharina Stornig and Katharina Wolf

In 1987, a small booklet entitled “My daughters, my sons” appeared in the SOS-Kinderdorf-Verlag, the in-house publisher of the international aid and development organization of the same name.1 The text was authored by Herman Gmeiner (1919–1986), an Austrian philanthropist and humanitarian. Gmeiner was one of the founders and also the long-­ term head of SOS Children’s Villages; moreover, he served as the main public face of the organization for decades. After Gmeiner’s death in 1986, the organization started to publish his literary legacy. It chose “My daughters, my sons” as a starting point, for it considered the text to be of 1  Hermann Gmeiner, Meine Töchter, meine Söhne (Innsbruck and München: SOSKinderdorf-Verlag, 1987).

K. Stornig (*) • K. Wolf University of Giessen, Giessen, Germany e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 E. Möller et al. (eds.), Gendering Global Humanitarianism in the Twentieth Century, Palgrave Macmillan Transnational History Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-44630-7_9

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great significance for the organization and its supporters.2 The booklet, indeed, not only provides remarkable insights into the assumptions, ideas and ideologies connected to need and aid as perceived by SOS Children’s Villages but also reveals much about the influence of gender in this humanitarian enterprise. Most importantly, it points to gendered parenthood as a key concept underlying the organization’s theoretical and practical take on global aid for children: already in the opening passage, Gmeiner addressed all of the children in SOS Children’s Villages worldwide, introducing himself as their “father” and framing the relationship of institutionalized aid in terms of a family: My daughters, my sons! I am not your biological father. Yet I am your father. That means among other things that I feel responsible for all that has and will become of you, for your successes and disappointments, for your probation in life, your failures and your defeats.3

By representing his relationship to beneficiary children in the naturalized terms of fatherhood, Gmeiner evoked social constructions of family, gender and age. He avoided the issue of the children’s lack of choice in accepting institutionalized aid but instead claimed a position of paternal authority, referencing fatherly love. Gmeiner stated that he felt a strong emotional bond and sense of responsibility towards the children raised in SOS institutions. At several points, the narrative in “My daughters, my sons” displays the author’s paternalistic attitude: Gmeiner explained the world as he saw it to his self-proclaimed “daughters and sons” and gave them comprehensive (moral) advice for their adult lives.4 In addition, he depicted SOS Children’s Villages as a “large, vivid family” that had emerged across generations and geographical distances, a familial bond that held the organization and its beneficiaries together. Claiming the position of a universal father in the global humanitarian enterprise of SOS, Gmeiner not only legitimized severity in his relationship to beneficiary children but implicitly also called for male authority over the many unmarried women who had served in the organization as motherly aid workers since its foundation in 1949. Representing aid as practiced in SOS 2  The editors qualified the texts as “some sort of testament” that allows readers to understand the thoughts and ideas of the founding generation. Ibid., the editorial note on the inner side of the binding. 3  Ibid., 2. 4  Ibid., 30–31.

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Children’s Villages as “a form of cohabitation similar to the natural family”,5 Gmeiner naturalized – and thus universalized – highly gendered institutional structures and cultural patterns, claiming that most human communities would share his “natural sense of responsibility towards others”.6 This chapter analyses aid for children as developed, promoted and internationalized by SOS Children’s Villages and situates this conception of aid in the longer history of international child welfare. Founded by a group of socially engaged women and men around Gmeiner in response to the difficult supply conditions in postwar Tyrol, Austria, SOS Children’s Village was at first oriented strongly toward Catholic conservative ideals. This included the promotion of a specific concept of aid based on the idea of maternal love  – understood as a natural disposition of women and assigned a healing quality – which was to be complemented by a paternal element introduced through male leaders.7 Indeed, Hermann Gmeiner, who was soon considered both founder and face of the organization, not only presented himself as a universal father to all the children in SOS Children’s Villages across the globe but was also represented as such by biographers.8 In the following, we discuss the history of SOS Children’s Villages and particularly examine its gendered concept of aid between 1949 and the 1970s, a period in which the organization experienced a phase of enormous growth and geographic expansion across Europe and into South America and Asia. We argue that the gendered setup of SOS Children’s Villages was characterized by fundamental ambivalences: on the one hand, shared gendered understandings, representations and values around parenthood and the family, such as parental love, contributed to the success of the promotional activities and institutional growth of the organization in postwar Austria and Europe. As historians have shown, despite initial  Ibid., 20.  Ibid., 14. 7  Horst Schreiber, Dem Schweigen verpflichtet: Erfahrungen mit SOS-Kinderdorf (Innsbruck et  al.: StudienVerlag, 2014), 9; Regina Jankowitsch, “Hermann Gmeiner: Die Schaffung neuer Strukturen am Beispiel der Gründung des SOS-Kinderdorfes im Tirol der Nachkriegsjahre,” in Ernst Bruckmüller and David M.  Wineroither, eds., Biographie und Gesellschaft (Wien: New Academic Press, 2012), 180–201, here 182. 8  Hermann Gmeiner, Alle Kinder dieser Welt: Die Botschaft des SOS-Kinderdorf-Vaters (St. Stefan im Lavanttal: Styria Verlag, 2006); Claudio J. Honsal, Hermann Gmeiner: Der Vater der SOS-Kinderdörfer: Die Biografie (München: Kösel Verlag, 2009). 5 6

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troubles, SOS Children’s Villages was well received by the Austrian public already by the mid-1950s and, due to rising donations, faced no significant economic difficulties.9 Its international expansion during the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s likewise points to a broadly positive reception and to general public support: by the time “My daughters, my sons” appeared in 1987, SOS maintained 203 children’s villages in 90 countries in Europe (51), Africa (33), Asia (11), the Caribbean (6), Latin America (65), the Middle East (6) and North America (1).10 On the other hand, however, the sources show that the SOS model of aid not only encountered substantial critique by experts on child welfare and education but also facilitated the growth of authoritarian structures. This concept of “parenthood as aid”, we argue, turned out to be an influential idea and allowed for powerful gendered representations, yet it generated a range of ambivalences, problems and critiques from various sides. By placing the example of SOS Children’s Villages within a larger history of femininity and masculinity, we contend that ideals of motherhood and fatherhood functioned not only as important cultural signifiers that produced meaning in international aid but also, at times, worked in a contradictory manner: as naturalized concepts they facilitated powerful representations of men, women and children. Yet, as will be shown, as part of stereotypical and unidimensional constructions of gender and sexuality, they failed to meet the complexities of need and contributed to the (re)production of gender inequality. We will first discuss aid as it was introduced by SOS Children’s Villages. We then go on to analyse the influences of gendered ideas and representations of family in the longer history of (international) child welfare: we will show that, unlike the claims of SOS and some historians, parenthood as aid did not emerge from scratch in the late 1940s but had a history reaching back to the mid-nineteenth century. In the third part of the chapter, we analyse how parenthood as aid functioned in the field of fundraising and donor communication. In our conclusion, we point to both the power and limits of gendered parenthood as aid: although a naturalized vision of juvenile need and aid in terms of family obviously convinced many, the universal application of a highly gendered and culturally and religiously situated concept also produced ambivalences and conflicts.  Schreiber, Dem Schweigen, 85; Jankowitsch, “Hermann Gmeiner,” 183.  In addition, 45 villages were in planning or under construction. See the overview provided on the back binding, in Gmeiner, Meine Töchter. 9

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The Beginnings of SOS: Propagating Parenthood as Aid

In 1949, a group of young women and men founded an association called Societas Socialis (SOS) in Innsbruck, Tyrol.11 They did so to provide relief to the many orphaned and destitute children suffering from the consequences of the war or parental neglect due to divorce or illegitimate birth. The founders of SOS were convinced of the need to establish a different form of aid for parentless children than that provided by church and state institutions. Their critique was first due to the situation after the Second World War, when public welfare in Tyrol lacked accommodation, qualified personnel and funds. Homes were overcrowded and violence and exploitation occurred.12 Second, the founders of SOS rejected foster homes more generally. In their eyes, foster homes failed to cater to what they assumed to be a child’s primary needs, namely, the “normal” and “natural” features of family life and a family home.13 After discussing a range of ideas, the founders decided that every child had four “simple” and basic needs: a mother, siblings, a house, and a village.14 With these four needs recorded, a powerful idea was formulated, and it was soon realized with the opening of the first SOS Children’s Village near the Tyrolean town of Imst in 1951.15 11  The question of who exactly belonged to the group of founders has been answered in different ways. While the minutes of the founding meeting list eight persons, other sources suggest that more were involved in the founding process. See Horst Schreiber and Wilfried Vyslozil, SOS-Kinderdorf: Die Dynamik der frühen Jahre: Eine Spurensuche jenseits des Klischees (Innsbruck and München: SOS-Kinderdorf-Verlag, 2001), 52–53. 12  See ibid., 16; see further Maria Ralser et al., Heimkindheiten: Geschichte der Jugendfürsorge und Heimerziehung in Tirol und Vorarlberg (Innsbruck et al.: StudienVerlag, 2017). 13  The notions of the “normality” and “naturality” of the family thereby pointed to both social norms and children’s supposedly natural needs. Different texts by Gmeiner promoted the family as the “seed for a happy life” or the “natural surroundings” of a child “that God assigned to him”. Hermann Gmeiner, Das SOS-Kinderdorf: Eine moderne Erziehungsstätte für verlassene Kinder (Innsbruck and Wien: SOS-Kinderdorf-Verlag, 1954), 17; Hermann Gmeiner, Die SOS-Kinderdörfer (Innsbruck et  al.: SOS-Kinderdorf-Verlag, 41960), 88. Similarly, co-founder Fritz Haider depicted the family as the “natural living space of children” in 1961. Manfred Vollert, Erziehungsprobleme im Kinderdorf (Stuttgart: Klett Verlag, 1970), 13. 14  SOS adjudicated these four elements to be “pedagogical principles” that were essential to the positive development of any orphaned child. 15  See Schreiber, Dem Schweigen, 20, 33. Historically, the idea of a children’s village was not a new invention. Gmeiner had informed himself about various models before founding

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In 1951, the founders of SOS claimed to have instituted a revolutionary model of child welfare.16 Unlike state care, they placed children in what they defined as family-like structured communities, so-called “Children’s Village Families” (“Kinderdorffamilien”): up to nine children of different ages and of both sexes were raised by one woman (the socalled “SOS Children’s Village mother”) in a single-family dwelling, which, in turn, formed part of a larger estate of several houses, the socalled “children’s village”. Significantly, work and life in the village were marked by a strict gender order: while the individual houses were headed by single women acting as substitute mothers of up to nine boys and girls, the village was headed and supervised by a male leader (“Dorfleiter”). He resided in the village and represented what was seen as a necessary paternal element. Contrary to the SOS mothers, Dorfleiter were allowed to get married and to have a biological family. In the eyes of the founders, the SOS model should provide what they called “normality” to the children and facilitate their integration into society at large: while the village had its own kindergarten, the children attended public schools and were encouraged to establish contacts and to make friends also beyond the Children’s Villages.17 Growing up under the conditions of what SOS called “healthy, orderly family life” in 1960, beneficiary children were expected to mature into “healthy and valuable human beings”.18 In the promotion of the SOS concept of child welfare, ideas of children’s need were reflected more generally and discussed in relation with a specific notion of good parenthood. Although the organization represented the family as the “natural living space” for the positive development of every human being, it presented parenthood as determined not by nature or blood relations, but by an attitude of devotion. Accordingly, biological parents could and should be replaced by foster parents when the former had passed away or were regarded as unable or unwilling to

SOS.  Still, he claimed to have implemented the most pedagogically and organizationally consistent model. See Erwin Hegel, Vom Rettungshaus zum Kinderdorf: Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte des Familienprinzips in der fürsorgenden Erziehung (München and Basel: Ernst Reinhardt Verlag, 1968), 81–82. 16  Hermann Gmeiner, Die SOS-Kinderdörfer (Innsbruck: SOS-Kinderdorf-Verlag, 33 1994), 7; Vollert, Erziehungsprobleme, 9. 17  Schreiber, Dem Schweigen, 34; Fritz Haider, “Die Schulsituation in den SOSKinderdörfern,” Neue Wege: Beiträge zu aktuellen Erziehungsproblemen 1, no. 5 (1960), 1–7. 18  Gmeiner, Die SOS-Kinderdörfer, 1960, 7–8.

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provide what the SOS founders considered appropriate care.19 In fact, most of the children in the first SOS Children’s Villages were not orphans in the literal sense but what the organization and welfare offices considered as children of “highly degraded parents or parents incapable of providing education”.20 Though the basis for SOS has to be seen within legal frameworks of the withdrawal of custody and educational rights, the organization produced and used notions of good parenthood in order to generate support and to strengthen its position as a legitimate player (and later also expert body) in the field of child welfare. As a result, SOS tended to see biological parents who had been deprived of their parenting rights by the state as a problem, especially when they sought contact with institutionalized children.21 The SOS understanding of good parenthood was deeply shaped by Christian conservative notions of family, parent-child relationships and gendered family roles. It spoke to the widespread postwar ideal of the nuclear family yet centered particularly on the figure of the loving and caring mother.22 “Every child innately needs motherly care”, Gmeiner stated in a booklet printed in 1960, linking this claim to a child’s other basic requirements: “It needs the loving mother at least as urgently as it needs a place to sleep, clothes and daily bread.”23 Providing orphaned or neglected children with a foster mother was thus promoted as a humanitarian act.

19  See Fritz Haider, “Die SOS-Kinderdörfer: Idee und Verwirklichung,” Neue Wege: Beiträge zu aktuellen Erziehungsproblemen 1, no. 4 (1960), 1–16, here 4; Ulrich Lange, Das alleinstehende Kind und seine Versorgung (Basel and New York: Karger, 1965), 79–80. 20   Ulrich Lange, “Die Aufgaben der SOS-Kinderdörfer im Rahmen der modernen Jugendhilfe,” Neue Wege: Beiträge zu aktuellen Erziehungsproblemen 2, no. 4 (1965), 103–125, here 113. 21  The German child psychiatrist Ulrich Lange, who was involved as consultant in the German SOS Children’s Village association and conducted training courses for employees, argued 1964 against allowing contact between a child and his or her biological parents. Accordingly, every child had the aspiration to belong to one motherly reference person; keeping contact with a “second mother” would thus disturb its development. See Lange, Das alleinstehende Kind, 71–74; see further Fritz Haider et al., “Die Beziehungen der Kinder in den SOS-Kinderdörfern zu ihren Eltern,” Neue Wege: Beiträge zu aktuellen Erziehungsproblemen 2, no. 2 (1964), 21–58. 22  The ideal of the nuclear family served as an important principle in postwar society despite a surplus of women and the social normality of female-headed households. See Gisela Notz, Kritik des Familismus: Theorie und soziale Realität eines ideologischen Gemäldes (Stuttgart: Schmetterling Verlag, 2015), 73–99. 23  Gmeiner, Die SOS-Kinderdörfer, 1960, 30.

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Gmeiner, who had himself lost his mother at a young age,24 derived the importance of a motherly figure for the positive development of children not from religion, society or culture, but from human nature. For Gmeiner and SOS, a child’s need to have a mother derives from its physical, psychological and mental incompletion. The child is not born as a viable human being. Just as it is unable to take care of its bodily needs, it is unable to develop its mental capacities from within itself.25

Accordingly, good mothers and motherly love in particular were needed to ensure that children were provided with their basic needs and given a fair chance in life. As late as 1994, SOS Children’s Village reprinted a text by Gmeiner that assigned greater importance to motherly care for the positive development of children than pedagogical insights or paternal influences: The best pedagogical systems and methods achieve little compared to the effects that a good mother can have on her children. More tender and loving than the male educators, she deals with the key problems of the child. Her contact to the child leads directly from heart to heart.26

In SOS thinking, good parenthood was gendered female, for it was the motherly element embodied by the woman aid worker that was granted the power to turn a group of children living in a house into a family. In addition, a gendered model of domesticity played an important role in the making of SOS families as ideal spaces in which orphaned and destitute children found relief. A promotional booklet from 1954 thus launched the principle of “every family its own hearth” and promoted the “domestic hearth” as a tool and symbol of “peaceful and cosy domesticity”, which would provide needy children “for the first time in their lives” with “warming support”.27 This, in turn, already points to a highly Christianconservative context in which SOS maternalism and ideas of good parenthood originated. Given this maternalistic understanding of parenthood, it is unsurprising that motherly aid workers indeed played a key role in SOS Children’s  Schreiber, Dem Schweigen, 33.  Gmeiner, Die SOS-Kinderdörfer, 1960, 30. 26  Gmeiner, Die SOS-Kinderdörfer, 1994, 31. 27  Gmeiner, Das SOS-Kinderdorf, 1954, 18–19. 24 25

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Villages from the start: Child care, education and upbringing were assigned to foster mothers, who were employed ideally for their entire lives. In this way, foster mothers could provide needy children not only a familial surrounding but also a permanent family home to which they could always return, even adults. The SOS model of aid thus related to a specific construction of femininity, which saw women essentially as mothers and valued them predominantly with reference to what was called their motherly qualities. Femininity, according to this understanding, entailed a selfless attitude and corresponding actions, and women aid workers were expected to fulfill the roles as mothers wholeheartedly and in a self-sacrificial manner. Interestingly, despite emphasizing motherhood, the founders of SOS also relied on the example of Catholic sisters (who had a long-standing tradition not only in child welfare but also in sacrificing themselves for the well-being of others28) when envisioning the ideal female aid worker: SOS mothers had to remain single, celibate, and childless and to renounce life beyond the village. The statutes held that marriage would immediately result in dismissal.29 The conception of motherhood promoted by SOS referred to an understanding of women as having naturally caring characters: they were not only well-equipped for the challenges of child rearing but, as good mothers, also found personal fulfillment in care work.30 Hence, SOS Children’s Villages not only turned motherhood into a salaried profession (a process also linked to the claims over the extended social meaning of maternalism that had been expressed by some members of the women’s movement since the nineteenth century31) but also promoted the organization’s activities as benefitting both orphaned children and single women, who, according to Gmeiner, “desired children, for whom 28  Sarah Speck, “‘Der anstrengendste Job der Welt’: Sorge- und Liebesarbeit im SOSKinderdorf,” Österreichische Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaften 24, no. 1 (2013), 80–108, here 92–93. On nuns and relief work, see: Susan L. Tananbaum, “Rescue Work: Catholic Care in Britain from the 1880s to the 1920s,” Journal of the History of Childhood and Youth 12, no. 1 (2019), 45–67. 29   See Archive of Hermann Gmeiner Akademie, Innsbruck, Sign. 01.04.00001, “Mütterstatut des SOS-Kinderdorf e.V.” (1965), 4. 30   See Christoph Sachße, Mütterlichkeit als Beruf: Sozialarbeit, Sozialreform und Frauenbewegung, 1871–1929 (Frankfurt am Main: Springer VS, 1994). 31  Sarah Speck, Mütter ohne Grenzen: Paradoxien verberuflichter Sorgearbeit am Beispiel der SOS-Kinderdörfer (Wiesbaden: Springer VS, 2014), 46. In addition, SOS Children’s Villages actually claimed to have developed a “modern female occupation”. Auguste Neubauer, Die Mutter im SOS-Kinderdorf: Ein Beitrag zu einem modernen Frauenberuf (Innsbruck et al.: SOS-Kinderdorf Verlag, 1965).

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they wanted to be there and care”.32 The representation of SOS as beneficial also to single women seeking fulfillment and employment was very visible in early media campaigns, which represented female aid work within the institution as an “ideal women’s profession” visualized through tender care for vulnerable children in need.33 In practice, this model faced many challenges and critique. Despite Gmeiner’s public statements that the organization never had any trouble finding applicants but was “swamped with hundreds of offers” by women wishing to become SOS mothers,34 the sources show that this was clearly exaggerated. The executive committee regularly discussed how to attract “suitable” candidates.35 Besides, the differences between biological and professional motherhood also created tensions. For example, while women aid workers within SOS were expected to act as substitute mothers for a life time, little was said about how this was to be achieved when aid workers raised up to three generations, each with as many as nine children, during their working lives. The questions of aging or retiring SOS mothers or the organization of the relationship between retired aid workers and former beneficiary children were heavily discussed at least up to the 1970s.36 In addition, SOS was criticized by representatives of the church, the state and welfare institutions, who feared competition or who remained unconvinced by its supposedly simple principles of aid.37 Although  Gmeiner, Die SOS-Kinderdörfer, 1994, 25.   Archive Hermann Gmeiner Akademie, Innsbruck, Sign. 01.07.000080, “Idealer Frauenberuf SOS-Kinderdorf-Mutter.” 34  Joseph Wechsberg, “A House Called Peace: Hermann Gmeiner and his SOS Children’s Villages,” The New Yorker Magazine (1962), 14. 35  See  Archive SOS Kinderdorf e.V., München, Dokumente zu den Ausschusssitzungen 1965, Sign. 001B-19650219, “Niederschrift über die 38. ordentliche Ausschußsitzung des Vereins SOS-Kinderdorf e.V. am Freitag, den 19. Februar 1965,” 24–28; Dokumente zu den Ausschusssitzungen 1964, Sign. 003B-19640523, “Niederschrift über die 33. ordentliche Ausschusssitzung des Vereins SOS-Kinderdorf e.V. am Freitag, den 22. Mai 1964 und Samstag, den 23. Mai 1964,” 7–10. 36   Archive SOS Kinderdorf e.V., München, Sign. 002A-19731107-t, St. Agathos, “Prognosen zu der zukünftigen Entwicklung der SOS-Kinderdörfer” (1973), 6; “Niederschrift über die 38. ordentliche Ausschußsitzung,” 27; Archive of Hermann Gmeiner Akademie, Innsbruck, Sign. 02.01.00575, Fritz Haider, [Letter to Ludwig Kögl], 30.11.1968; Vollert, Erziehungsprobleme, 23. 37  See Jankowitsch,  “Hermann Gmeiner,” 190–191; Waltraud Kannonier-Finster and Meinrad Ziegler, “Familiale Strukturen, Pädagogik und Rationalität,” in Horst Schreiber, Dem Schweigen verpflichtet: Erfahrungen mit SOS-Kinderdorf (Innsbruck et al.: StudienVerlag, 2014), 7–15; Schreiber and Vyslozil, SOS-Kinderdorf, 71–72. 32 33

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individual arguments varied, several critics concluded that the idealized representation of SOS families concealed the fact that the care workers actually were not biological mothers and fathers but rather employed, untrained women and men who felt no absolute obligation to children whose negative experiences required intensive and professional treatment.38 Catholic critics particularly campaigned against the mixed-sex accommodation of non-­blood-­related boys and girls, stating that SOS families were only “artificial families” and, in the end, merely constituted “a subdivision of a dispersed institution”.39 As the diocese of Augsburg put it in a published statement in 1956, SOS families lacked all relevant markers of “real families”, such as the presence of “the breadwinner”, “blood ties with the important forces of love, care and absolute connectedness growing from them” and the “absolute responsibility” of the particular relationship between mothers and fathers and between parents and children.40 Hence, these critics did not question the idea that aid and relief could be provided by the parental relationship: they suggested merely that only blood ties could enable them. In any case, critiques of the SOS model of aid were ultimately justified, for it indeed led to multiple demands and conflicts.41 We can thus hold that the representation of women as contented and satisfied motherly aid workers tells us more about the organization’s gendered ideas and ideologies than about the experiences and practices in humanitarian work and life. The SOS conception of women as natural care workers meant that, until the 1970s, pedagogical or social training was regarded as having little importance. This corresponded to widespread ideas and practices in Tyrol and elsewhere, where women care workers generally received only minimal training.42 Gmeiner and his fellows instead relied on what they called 38  Archive SOS Kinderdorf e.V., München, Sign. 027C-19560820-t, A. Schilcher, “SOSKinderdorf. Bedenken der Kath. Jugendfürsorge gegen das Kinderdorf Dießen,” Schongauer Nachrichten, 20./21.08.1956; Sign. 003-19,640,709, D. Wolff, “Die unkritische Einstellung der Öffentlichkeit zu pädagogischen Fragen – und das SOS-Kinderdorf: Stellungnahme des Allgemeinen Fürsorgeerziehungstages zur Tätigkeit des SOS-Kinderdorf-Vereins in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland,” Unsere Jugend (1964), 457–459. 39  Schilcher, “SOS-Kinderdorf.” 40  Ibid. 41  “Niederschrift über die 38. ordentliche Ausschußsitzung,” 25. See also Speck, Mütter ohne Grenzen. 42  Schreiber, Dem Schweigen, 39. The lack of professional training has also been emphasized for welfare workers in confessional institutions in West Germany during the 1950s and 1960s.

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women’s instincts, talents, and emotional capacities (i.e. “great love for the child”43) to be a good mother in order to find “real feminine life fulfillment”, as they stated in a promotional book from 1960.44 Intellectual or psychologically educated women were largely considered unsuitable.45 According to Gmeiner, SOS mothers “should be life-affirming and mentally healthy, religiously motivated women”.46 In practice, the leaders of SOS selected whom they considered suitable through interviews, followed by a five-week “mothers training course” and an internship, the duration of which was gradually extended during the 1950s.47 As indicated, SOS Children’s Villages also named religion as a key requirement for the employment of mothers: the founding generation saw Christian instruction as a crucial part of training in order to ensure that the children were educated in a Christian spirit. This was regarded as a guarantee for the transmission of ethical feelings and morality to the children. In order to avoid confessional competition or struggles, Gmeiner held in 1960 that the villages should be setup as confessionally homogenous and thus as either Catholic or Protestant.48 As a consequence of this Christian confessional foundation of SOS, its notion of motherliness was not only mystified but also charged with religious meaning.49 In addition, it is important to see that motherhood was essentially conceived as a complementary concept and constructed in relation to contemporary notions of fatherhood. Although the politics of aid explicitly rejected fathers or couples heading SOS families, they nonetheless stressed the importance of a male  Gmeiner, Die SOS-Kinderdörfer, 1994, 26.  Gmeiner, Die SOS-Kinderdörfer, 1960, 27. 45  Vollert, Erziehungsprobleme, 133–134. 46  Gmeiner, Die SOS-Kinderdörfer, 1994, 30. 47  Up to the late 1950s, the women who were selected had to complete a five-week “mothers’ training course” (although many women were exempted from the obligation to participate) as well as an internship in an SOS family prior to their employment as mothers or aunts (who functioned as assistants). After 1959, the courses were gradually extended. In 1965, a mothers’ school was established in Mörlbach, Bavaria, and in 1967, the training was extended to one year. Lilo Weinsheimer, “Kritische Anmerkungen zu einer notwendigen, guten Sache,” Die Zeit 38 (1967), https://www.zeit.de/1967/38/sos-kinderdorf-ohne-traenen (last accessed 13.08.2019). Bettina Hofer and Christina Lienhart, Idealistisch und wagemutig – Pionierinnen im SOS-Kinderdorf (Innsbruck et al.: StudienVerlag, 2016), 56. Vollert, Erziehungsprobleme, 108–112. 48  Gmeiner, Die SOS-Kinderdörfer, 1960, 26. 49  See ibid. Father Erwin Hegel described the “SOS children’s mother” in 1968 as a newly created diaconal profession, which, in addition to religious ties and the personal renunciation of a private existence, required devotion. Hegel, Vom Rettungshaus zum Kinderdorf, 87. 43 44

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authority figure. The presence of men in the families was seen as a threat to the village structure and particularly to its gender order, because prevalent social constructions of masculinity valued fathers primarily as breadwinners and heads of the family. Consequently, men in SOS families would either have to find employment outside the village or  – as unemployed fathers and heads of family – lack authority.50 This again points to the conservative ideal of gender providing the basic fabric of SOS community and organizational structure. Yet, in the eyes of SOS, a male element was still needed, which is why the organization employed men as village leaders. These village leaders acted as supervisors, superiors, and educators beyond the family level. They were superiors to both the mothers and the children. Good village leaders, according to Gmeiner, were hard to find yet indispensable, because their presence would matter especially to older children who would need a male reference person. According to SOS standards, village leaders should be moved by idealism and equipped with organizational talent.51 Gmeiner expected male aid workers to assume the functions and duties of a father and head of family. As he put it in a promotional booklet in 1960: He [the village leader] is the male head of the village, authority in all matters of education and personnel management and tireless counselor of the mothers. Clever and prudent he directs the fates of the village. For the children, he portrays the image of the adult, the image of the man who knows the world and life and who masters the difficulties and problems of everyday life.52

Often supported by a male assistant, who was in charge of the manual tasks in the villages, the village leader embodied authority based on gendered ideas of leadership, masculinist institutional structures, and visions of social relations that built upon male capacities and privileges. Their superior role was codified in the statutes for SOS mothers, which held that the latter “were responsible” to the village leader “in all educational and economic measures adopted”.53 Generally speaking, in the SOS context, male aid workers emphasized professional achievement. Vinzenz  Gmeiner, Die SOS-Kinderdörfer, 1960, 37–39.  See ibid., 40–41; see also Vollert, Erziehungsprobleme, 25–27; Wechsberg, “A House Called Peace,” 18. 52  Gmeiner, Die SOS-Kinderdörfer, 1960, 40–41. 53  See “Mütterstatut des SOS-Kinderdorf e.V,” 2. 50 51

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Neubauer, professor of psychology at the University of Innsbruck, backed the SOS model of aid academically and headed its research institute established in 1964, responded to critics of a feminized education that indeed “a number of men” were systematically installed in the SOS villages. Pointing to the omnipresence of Gmeiner as well as to the activities of village leaders, teachers, tutors, and craftsmen, Neubauer argued that beneficiary children “have better male models that many children of so-called sound marriages”, which were marked by absent fathers.54 The presence of male aid workers in the villages was considered essential only for male adolescents, who were to be introduced into working life. Within a binary gender structure and in line with heteronormative views, male aid workers represented the complementary counterpart to the naturally good, loving, and self-sacrificing mother, who acted out of nature and idealism (and thus not professionalism) and put her entire life and heart into her service towards children in need. Unlike SOS mothers, male aid workers were allowed to get married and to have social lives beyond the village context. The gendered spheres of work as practiced and institutionalized within SOS Children’s Villages thus point not only to an essentialist understanding of gender difference but also to the power of related stereotypical representations of female and male aid workers, which entailed the systematic production and reproduction of inequality on various levels. Gender inequality was reinforced by the fact that the village leader was in charge of the village. He was the person expected to introduce in-depth pedagogical, psychological knowledge, and professionalism to the village environment.55 Up to the 1970s, the hierarchization of SOS fathers, mothers, and their polarized roles in education and aid could be found not only in the SOS context but also in Austrian and German society and culture more generally.56 For SOS, it has been argued that the strict gender hierarchy contributed to the creation of authoritarian structures that also

54  Vinzenz Neubauer, “Grundzüge einer Kinderdorf-Pädagogik,” Neue Wege: Beiträge zu aktuellen Erziehungsproblemen 1, no. 1 (1963), 53–58, here 57. 55  See Schreiber, Dem Schweigen, 36–45. 56  This was also the case in pedagogics, which foresaw polarized roles for fathers and mothers up to the 1980s, when scholars increasingly suggested equal roles for parents in education. See Hildegard Macha, “Die Renaissance des Vaterbildes in der Pädagogik,” in Barbara Drinck, ed., Vaterbilder: Eine interdisziplinäre und kulturübergreifende Studie zur Vaterrolle (Bonn: Bouvier, 1999), 11–36, here 26.

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facilitated violence and abuse.57 In order to understand why and how the organization nonetheless managed to promote its specific model of gendered child welfare and to export it to other countries and continents, we have to situate the history of the organization within the larger context of the historical spread of powerful ideas of family and gendered parenthood and consider their influence in child-centered relief and humanitarian work more generally.

Family and Parenthood in the Longer History of Child Welfare As historian Tara Zahra has pointed out, after 1945 many relief workers and child-welfare experts turned to the family as a key social institution and idealized space of human security. Relief workers from UNRRA and IRO declared the unification of families as their “central mission” and many postwar activists considered the reconstruction of the family as the key to saving war-torn Europe.58 Postwar psychologists framed the wartime separation of families – and especially children from their parents – as trauma,59 and Christian reformers soon claimed to be defending the institution of the family against socialism, state interventionism and commercialization.60 Generally speaking, in postwar Europe, large numbers of so-called unaccompanied child refugees, orphans, and fatherless children (according to historian Edward Ross Dickenson some 16 percent of children in the Federal Republic of Germany were in these categories)61 troubled social workers and reformers across the political spectrum. The restoration of the family was thus high on the agenda of humanitarians, human rights activists, scientists, and politicians. Social reformers likewise promoted the institution of the family and domestic education in the

57  Kannonier-Finster and Ziegler, “Familiale Strukturen,” 10; Schreiber, Dem Schweigen, 210–211; Jankowitsch, “Hermann Gmeiner”, 186–190. 58  Tara Zahra, “‘The Psychological Marshall Plan’: Displacement, Gender, and Human Rights after World War II,” Central European History 44, no. 1 (2011), 37–62; here 37; Tara Zahra, The Lost Children: Reconstructing Europe’s Families after World War II (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011), x. 59  Zahra, “The Psychological Marshall Plan,” 37. 60  See Edward Dickenson, The Politics of German Child Welfare from the Empire to the Federal Republic (Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press, 1996), 248–249. 61  Ibid., 250.

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name of democratization, individualism, and human rights.62 As Zahra has reminded us, Article 16 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) held “the family” as “the natural and fundamental group unit of society” and confirmed its “protection by society and the State”.63 Although this renewed focus on the family must be seen in relation with the consequences of the war as well as National Socialist and Communist attempts “to penetrate and instrumentalize the private sphere”,64 the idea of the family as a key site of aid and rehabilitation has a longer history in (international) child welfare. Indeed, notions and imaginations of family and parent-child relationships played an important role in the promotion and organization of care for needy children since the mid-nineteenth century. As we will point out in what follows, gender played a crucial role in these conceptions, which often went without saying and thus produced powerful representations relating to the idealized caring roles of women and men and to the supposed interests of girls and boys in need. Specific visions of family, domesticity, children’s needs, and gendered parenthood had been propagated by philanthropists, social workers, and reformers ever since these ideas had powerfully emerged as romanticized ideals among European middle classes in the mid-decades of the nineteenth century.65 Placing children and their upbringing in an imagined private sphere of the home, activists addressed the family and family relationships particularly in two regards. First, humanitarians denounced the forced separation of children from their biological mothers and families, perceiving it as a threat to the well-being of both children and parents. Such a critique was most prominently voiced by abolitionists in the United States, who campaigned (often in highly emotional terms) against the forced separation of enslaved children from their parents as “a brutal abrogation of both religious and natural law”.66 Similar arguments were raised in Catholic campaigns against the slave trade on the African continent that started in the second half of the nineteenth century and reached a peak in the face of the humanitarian imperialism of the 1880s: representing African  Zahra, “The Psychological Marshall Plan,” 48–50; Dickenson, The Politics, 251.  Zahra, “The Psychological Marshall Plan,” 38. 64  Dickenson, The Politics, 250. On (maternal) education in NS Germany and Austria, see Sigrid Chamberlain, Adolf Hitler, die deutsche Mutter und ihr erstes Kind (Gießen: Psychosozial-Verlag, 62016). 65  Zahra, The Lost Children, 13. 66  Ibid., 14. 62 63

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children as victims of cruel male slave hunters and traders, the campaigns depicted the forced separation of children from their mothers and parents as a particularly brutal feature of slavery and the slave trade.67 Here, parenthood and parental subject positions emerged as important themes in humanitarian campaigns. In the early twentieth century, paternalist humanitarians likewise targeted the separation of children from their biological families (and nations): this was the case during the First World War and particularly the Armenian genocide, in the course of which many thousands of children had lost their parents and subsequently become the objects of both international aid and legal intervention.68 Second, philanthropists and humanitarians often relied on a gendered discourse of parenthood in order to explain, promote and, at times, legitimize child-centered activities to their supporters and to larger audiences. In the second half of the nineteenth century, family-like institutions expanded as a new model in child welfare, and the aid workers heading these institutions were increasingly represented as foster mothers or fathers.69 Simultaneously, parenthood not only became an important metaphor in child welfare but also marked an idealized relationship between adult caregivers and child beneficiaries. About a century before Gmeiner represented himself as a father to the beneficiary children within SOS, some Catholic associations had described the relationship of activist priests or nuns to freed slave children in terms of substitute parents.70 Gender was crucial to this parental conception of aid from the start, for references to father- or motherhood featured distinct connotations. References to fatherly relationships of child savers to needy children served to communicate specific ideas connected to responsible care, guidance,

67  Still, African parents were likewise depicted as providing no or only insufficient protection to children. Katharina Stornig, “Catholic Missionary Associations and the Saving of African Child Slaves in Nineteenth-Century Germany,” Atlantic Studies: Global Currents 14, no. 4 (2017), 519–542, here 529. An overview of this type of abolitionism is provided by Amalia Ribi Forclaz, Humanitarian Imperialism: The Politics of Anti-Slavery, 1880–1940 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015). 68  See the contributions by Okkenhaugh and Maksudyan, in this volume. 69  For instance, Lydia Murdoch has shown that, in England, so-called “family cottages” became popular after the 1870s. Lydia Murdoch, Imagined Orphans: Poor Families, Child Welfare, and Contested Citizenship in London (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2006), 43. 70  See Katharina Stornig, “Figli della chiesa: Riscatti e globalizzazione del welfare cattolico (1840–1914),” Genesis: Rivista della Società Italiana delle Storiche XIV, no. 1 (2015), 55–83.

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and paternal authority.71 References to the maternal roles of women aid workers, in turn, spoke to powerful European-Christian conceptions of femininity, caring roles, and maternal love. The latter becomes particularly obvious in charity appeals, which were often addressed directly at women and, at times, addressed them as mothers.72 This framing of aid corresponded to an understanding of a child’s need that was increasingly related to what was depicted as the stable and loving environment of the family. According to this understanding, only children growing up under “right” parental guidance would become useful members of the community (i.e. the church or the nation). However, the emergence of parenthood as aid can also be observed in other historical developments such as the re-conception of (international) adoption as a humanitarian act since the early twentieth century. As Emily Baughan has shown, during the interwar years, American soldiers, diplomats, or philanthropists “rescued” individual Russian children suffering from hunger and the Bolshevik regime by adopting them into their families and thus making them “Americans”.73 Contrary to earlier understandings of adoption, which tended to stress the needs of adopting parents, families, or households, twentieth century concepts of international adoption emphasized the supposed interests of orphaned children and the humanitarian drive to provide them with homes and parental care.74 Altogether, the gendered conception of parenthood as aid clearly shows that it related both to claims about the universal applicability of certain parental attitudes toward children and to specific, normative understandings of what constituted good or normal mothers and fathers. Good parents, in the eyes of European child savers, were certainly monogamously married men and women who loved their offspring, respected gendered norms and educated their sons and daughters  Ibid., 67–68.  Stornig, “Catholic Missionary Associations,” 528–529. 73  Emily Baughan, “International Adoption and Anglo-American Internationalism, c. 1918–1925,” Past & Present 239 (2018), 181–217. 74  See for instance Signe Howell, The Kinning of Foreigners: Transnational Adoption in a Global Perspective (Oxford et  al.: Berghahn Books, 2002), 17–18; Kerry Bystrom, “On ‘Humanitarian’ Adoption (Madonna in Malawi),” Humanity: An International Journal of Human Rights, Humanitarianism, and Development 2, no. 2 (2011), 213–231; Heide Fehrenbach, “From Aid to Intimacy: The Humanitarian Origins and Media Culture of International Adoption,” in Johannes Paulmann, ed., The Dilemmas of Humanitarian Aid in the Twentieth Century (London: Oxford University Press, 2016), 207–233. 71 72

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according to European Christian principles and expectations. Since the nineteenth century, representations of good parenthood (related to specific definitions of the interests of “the child”) had emerged as a powerful argument in child welfare and, embedded in racist, imperialist or missionary politics, could even lead to the removal of children from their biological families. In many historical instances, parents, who were stigmatized and failed to meet the expectations of child savers and state institutes, often were – depending on the case and context – invited, persuaded, or forced to place their children in welfare institutions. The most prominent example of such processes occurred in Australia during the first half of the twentieth century, where the children of Aboriginal women and “white” men were forcefully removed from their biological mothers and handed over to government homes or missionaries for education with the goal of assimilating them into the Australian national body.75 As Emily Baughan has aptly put it with regard to American humanitarians in interwar Eastern Europe, talking Russian parents into giving their children up for adoption ultimately “created the very orphans that they claimed to save”.76 Christian child savers, in turn, often criticized “other” (e.g. non-Christian, nonEuropean, non-middle class, non-domestic) forms of parenting by, for instance, poor parents in European cities or non-Christian parents in turnoff-the-century colonial settings as wrong, “uncivilized” or even “barbarous”.77 In several contexts of organized aid for children, critiques of parenting functioned as a common sense argument that was used in promotional texts even beyond more complex questions of legal custody and parental rights. Mothers in particular moved into the focus of both experts and activists, who increasingly promoted the idea of good motherhood as a precondition for what they considered children’s positive development. Thus, beyond the institutional context of SOS, good motherhood was not exclusively defined as a biological or blood relationship, but seen

75  See for instance, Margaret D. Jacobs, White Mother to a Dark Race: Settler Colonialism, Maternalism, and the Removal of Indigenous Children in the American West and Australia, 1880–1914 (Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 2009). 76  Baughan, “International Adoption,” 187. 77  Katharina Stornig, “Between Christian Solidarity and Human Solidarity: ‘Humanity’ and the Mobilisation of Aid for Distant Children in Catholic Europe in the Long Nineteenth Century,” in Fabian Klose and Mirjam Thulin, eds., Humanity: A History of European Concepts in Practice from the Sixteenth Century to the Present (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2016), 249–266.

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(and conceptualized) as a set of highly gendered actions and attitudes that women apparently expressed and felt when providing care to children. In the decades after the Second World War, doctors and psychiatrists discovered motherhood as theme. As a consequence, the concept became both more complex and more rigid, as sociologist Sarah Speck has observed: in the eyes of the popular British pediatrician and psychoanalyst Donald Woods Winnicott, good or normal mothers cared for their offspring constantly; they not only devoted themselves fully to child care but also took personal pleasure from it.78 Mothers who failed to meet this ideal or who did not feel content were pathologized and confronted with guilt. This re-conception of good motherhood also related to historical developments in the fields of psychology and psychiatry, which accentuated a mother’s duty to self-sacrifice. A report on institutionalized children by the well-­known child psychiatrist and psychoanalyst John Bowlby to the World Health Organization (WHO) from 1950 warned of the severe consequences of what he called maternal deprivation. According to Bowlby, the separation of young children from their mothers caused severe risks to children, their mental health and society at large (by encouraging, for instance, delinquency).79 Yet, he not only described what good mothers would do but also how they should do it: according to Bowlby, good mothers indeed took pleasure from round-the-clock child care.80 Thus, since the early twentieth century, aid workers, state representatives and scientists have all formulated specific demands on mothers, who were expected to display devotion and to sacrifice themselves for their children (and, with them, for society at large). In particular, psychologists and psychiatrists awarded mothers enormous power over the mental development of their children.81 Needless to say, this power went hand-inhand with multiple responsibilities and pressures for women to meet what (largely male) experts defined and valued as good motherhood. In the context of this study, it is important to note that SOS Children’s Villages, despite the organization’s repeated claims to contrary, in fact acted in line with several other relief agencies at that time. In the decades after the Second World War, both relief workers and child-welfare experts had 78  Speck, Mütter ohne Grenzen, 57. Winnicott popularized his ideas through his own BBC programme. See Yvonne Schütze, Die gute Mutter: Zur Geschichte des normativen Musters “Mutterliebe” (Bielefeld: B. Kleine Verlag, 1991), 90. 79  See Zahra, The Lost Children, 64–65. 80  Schütze, Die gute Mutter, 90. 81  Ibid., 9; Speck, Mütter ohne Grenzen, 57.

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turned to the family as a space of security and simplicity and represented familial approaches and their gendered relations as down-to-earth forms of rehabilitation. As we will show in the following section, representations of good parenthood and idealized depictions of SOS mothers and fathers also became powerful tools in humanitarian campaigning and fundraising after 1945.

 Parenthood as Aid in Humanitarian Representation The representation of gendered parenthood as the most natural  – and therefore most effective and universal – form of aid for children featured prominently in the promotion of SOS Children’s Villages from the start. The analysis of promotional materials in combination with the expansion of the organization during the 1950s and 1960s suggests that this strategy was indeed convincing. The concept of motherhood as aid was, for instance, evident in the way that women were addressed as potential donors. Already the first advertising appeal was titled “Women of Tyrol! Help us build!”,82 and women were indeed crucial in supporting the early enterprise. The first fundraising campaigns in postwar Tyrol were carried out through so-called “SOS women’s circles” (“SOS-Frauenringe”). According to this model, ten women formed one circle, whereby each woman paid a monthly membership fee of one Schilling and was invited to found a new circle. Scholars have argued that these formations were founded not only to collect donations but also to create an extended network of women in order to support unmarried mothers due to the difficult social situations of single mothers in the postwar period.83 Although association-based fundraising was anything but new in international philanthropy in the 1950s, its expansion and professionalization in the SOS context took on new dimensions. Gmeiner and others constantly came up with new advertising strategies and strove for professionalization in this field; they even contacted an advertising psychologist in the United States. They aimed to address and emotionalize as many people as possible, especially women.84 SOS thus soon replaced the women’s circles by gender-neutral associations and established a magazine, the Children’s Village Messenger (Kinderdorfbote) in 1952, in order to communicate with regular donors. By reading short stories about children and  Hofer and Lienhart, Idealistisch, 56.  Ibid. 84  Schreiber and Vyslozil, SOS-Kinderdorf, 122–123. 82 83

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mothers serving as good examples for what was represented as day-to-­day life in the Children’s Villages, the supporters were to be convinced that their money would be used “rightly”. In addition, the Kinderdorfbote regularly included a payment slip for the membership fee and the request to recruit new members. Soon SOS and the Kinderdorfbote also launched programs of child sponsorship, which likewise involved imagining aid in terms of parent-child relationships.85 In terms of content, the Kinderdorfbote mainly consisted of apparently real stories, many of which served to demonstrate the success of the SOS model of aid and to witness to the transformative force of what Gmeiner and others claimed to be natural family-life in the village. In the early 1950s, the Kinderdorfbote told its readers about individual children who had once been rough and unfriendly due to parental neglect yet appeared happy and friendly since they had been housed in a SOS family. These stories implicitly or explicitly claimed that the transformation of the children was caused by the loving influence of the SOS mother: the life of children in the village was often set in sharp contrast to highly negative depictions of their previous experiences. Juvenile need was thereby either produced through parental neglect or created by the fact that children were actually orphaned. In the first case, the Kinderdorfbote depicted the children’s biological parents as examples of bad parenting and thus as a negative foil against which the loving and educational influence of SOS mothers and village leaders was emphasized. Just as good parenting was fundamentally gendered, parental neglect or failure, as depicted in the Kinderdorfbote, highlighted different kinds of failures by mothers and fathers: while failing mothers were described as prostitutes, or as careless or incapable of running a household and raising children, failing fathers were portrayed as irresponsible (having left the family), as unable to care due to working duties or as violent alcoholics.86 Hence, alternative (or deviant) models of femininity and masculinity were likewise drawn upon in order to idealize the SOS ways of doing gender. Yet, although these stories served to convince donors about the value of their donations and the desirability of their ends, they also corresponded to the SOS 85  An introduction is provided by Laura Suski, “Children, Suffering, and the Humanitarian Appeal,” in Richard Ashby Wilson and Richard Brown, eds., Humanitarianism and Suffering: The Mobilization of Empathy (Cambridge et  al.: Cambridge University Press, 2009) 202–222. 86  Der Kinderdorfbote 7, no. 4 (1953), 4–5; Der Kinderdorfbote 15, no. 4 (1955), 8.

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understanding of child development, which gave parents and particularly mothers both great importance to and responsibility for the future development of children.87 Gender also featured prominently in the visual dimension of the Kinderdorfbote. Photographs – and particularly photographs of children – formed an essential part of the magazine. Although the use of photographs of children has a long-standing tradition in (international) child welfare,88 the extensive use of color photography turned the early issues of the Kinderdorfbote into a state of the art-magazine. Right from the beginning in 1952, there was hardly any page that did not feature a photograph. Often, single articles were illustrated or even framed by photographs of children, many of which were just indicative of idyllic childhoods in rural settings, often located in the Tyrolese mountain landscape. Yet, aid workers and the specific SOS model of gendered parenthood as aid also moved into focus. Already in 1953, the black-and-white cover of the Kinderdorfbote featured a group picture (or collage) of an SOS mother together with eight children looking out of an illustrated window. The picture was ­captioned “It’s beautiful at home!” (“Daheim ist’s schön!”) and some further lines provided what we suggest seeing as a characteristic SOS interpretation of the image (Fig. 9.1): That’s how it’s written in these faces. The foster mother […] is happy with her crowd of children and the children are happy with her. The times of a joyless childhood are over. It’s hard to accommodate such a large family in a window.89

What is remarkable about Fig. 9.1 is the focus on the woman (rather than on the children), whose smiling and bright face looks directly at the viewer. All of the people depicted are not introduced as individuals but are instead represented as a SOS family, held together by mutual bonds and 87  This becomes particularly clear from an analysis of discussions within the organizations. Schreiber, Dem Schweigen, 52; Vollert, Erziehungsprobleme, 42. 88  See, for instance, Heide Fehrenbach, “Children and other Civilians: Photography and the Politics of Humanitarian Image-Making,” in Heide Fehrenbach and Davide Rodogno, eds., Humanitarian Photography: A History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 165–199; Katharina Stornig, “Promoting Distant Children in Need: Christian Imagery in the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries,” in: Johannes Paulmann, ed., Humanitarianism and Media: 1900 to the Present (Oxford and New  York: Berghahn Books, 2019), 41–66. 89  Der Kinderdorfbote 5, no. 2 (1953), 1.

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Fig. 9.1  Der Kinderdorfbote 5, no. 2 (1953), front page. Courtesy of Hermann-Gmeiner-Akademie

emotions (producing “happiness”). The pictorial composition stands in the context of a preference that had developed since the turn of the twentieth century for the depiction of children with their mothers; according to historian of childhood Martina Winkler, this trend was linked to

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classical depictions of Mary that symbolized maternal love and sacrifice.90 On her arm, the SOS mother holds one of the younger girls, who clings to her neck. The large family is represented here as an ideal fulfillment of both women and children. Especially in the postwar years, in which the restoration of Christian-conservative family structures was being negotiated in Western Europe, affirmative images of mothers with children were virtually omnipresent.91 Yet, the SOS understanding of parenthood as aid also produced distinct visual representations that particularly focused on the self-proclaimed founder and leader of SOS Hermann Gmeiner, who was one of the few men regularly portrayed in the magazine. Unlike the many women and children who were often photographed as anonymous SOS mothers and children, Gmeiner was always portrayed as a prominent individual. In 1953, he was depicted for the first time standing behind a group of nine boys and girls, all looking into the camera (Fig. 9.2).92 Gmeiner’s belonging to the densely grouped children and his protective attitude toward them were demonstrated by his hand resting on the shoulder of a girl and his posture of leaning his head toward the group. In the accompanying article entitled “A Life for the Children” (“Ein Leben für die Kinder”), his co-worker and close confidant Fritz Haider (1932–2011) described Gmeiner as a man born with love for children and the desire to help his fellow men. Haider holds that Gmeiner could not stand idly by and watch child neglect: having the suffering child always before his inner eye, he had been able to implement his great idea against all those who had doubted him.93 Similar image compositions of Gmeiner as a protective paternal figure and humanitarian professional depicted in the midst of a group of children can be found frequently. Although these images certainly link to a broader Christian tradition of promoting aid for children,94 we suggest 90  Martina Winkler, Kindheitsgeschichte: Eine Einführung (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2017), 147. 91   See Magdalena Saryusz-Wolska and Anna Labentz, Bilder der Normalisierung: Gesundheit, Ernährung und Haushalt in der visuellen Kultur Deutschlands 1945–1948 (Bielefeld: transcript, 2017), 68–69. 92  Der Kinderdorfbote 6, no. 3 (1953), 2. 93  Ibid., 2–3. 94  This imagery is also indicative of the bible passage (Matthew 18:5), in which Jesus invites the children to come to him. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, many Christian associations that promoted aid for children used this passage. See Stornig, “Between Christian Solidarity and Human Solidarity,” 255.

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Fig. 9.2 Der Kinderdorfbote Hermann-Gmeiner-Akademie

6,

no.

3

(1953),

2.

Courtesy

of

seeing them as complimentary to the numerous images showing anonymous SOS mothers and children, thus illustrating the gendered professionalism of what was commonly depicted as Gmeiner’s humanitarian enterprise. The images in the Kinderdorfbote tell readers that humanitarian work as practiced within SOS involved a gendered separation of aid work: while the magazine depicted mothers catering to the needs of children almost beyond time and space, it presented men like Gmeiner or his

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successor as head of SOS Children’s Villages, Helmut Kutin (born in 1941), as mobile activists who, dressed in suits, played with children, led assemblies, celebrated festivities, opened new villages, and conferred with politicians and construction managers. Gender (especially with regard to ideas of gendered parenthood) was also crucial to the ways in which the Kinderdorfbote depicted what SOS and its supporters saw (and valued) as the positive development of children and their transformation into cheerful members of society. The organization regarded the gender-specific distribution of “male-fatherly and female-motherly tasks”95 to beneficiary children as important in educating them to become women and men and mothers and fathers. This gendered separation of work and activities also shaped the visual representation of children in the Kinderdorfbote. Looking through the issues of the magazine from the 1950s and 1960s – which generally featured many photographs of happy and healthy children apparently living in children’s villages  – we see girls doing dishes, helping the SOS mother washing, gardening or feeding younger SOS siblings, whereas we encounter boys handling tools and carrying out heavier work. Thus, the organization, despite using a universal language of childhood and making gender-neutral claims over the nature of children, actually treated beneficiary children as gendered human beings of specific age and origin. The textual and visual representation of girls and boys in the Kinderdorfbote reflects not only gender-specific role assignments but also educational guidelines and goals. The separation of work within the organization thereby served as an example to beneficiary children, who, according to the Kinderdorfbote, learned from aid workers about their future roles as women or men. For instance, in a text published in 1960, a 17-year-old girl named Doris K., who had moved to a children’s village at the age of seven, wrote about her life as a “normal” young woman (enjoying books, dancing, nice dresses, theatre, and domestic work) and work as a secretary in a paper mill. After emphasizing at length her love of, respect for and pride in her SOS mother, Doris K. concluded her article as follows: “I will get married and have my own family, then I want to be like her.”96 The published letter by Peter, a carpenter, husband, and father of three boys who had himself grown up in a SOS village, points to a similar direction: writing to his SOS mother in 1967, he gives only very little insight  Vollert, Erziehungsprobleme, 21.  “Von meinem Leben,” Der Kinderdorfbote 35, no. 4 (1960), 2–3.

95 96

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into his family life, but first and foremost discusses his work, career, income, and promotion prospects. Significantly, Peter also inquired about the well-being of Hermann Gmeiner who certainly functioned as the main male reference person in the entire SOS context.97 Thus, both Doris and Peter, as former beneficiary children had become exactly what SOS expected: “useful” members of society who not only respected but also reproduced the existing gender order. Most importantly for us, the Kinderdorfbote promoted gendered parenthood as a universal concept of aid. It, first, did so by claiming that aid as idealized and practiced by SOS was also supported beyond Austria and the Federal Republic of Germany and appreciated in many other countries within and beyond Europe.98 For instance, in 1967 the Kinderdorfbote printed a letter signed by Matias Colmenar González, allegedly a 20-yearold postman from Madrid, who had written to Hermann Gmeiner after having learned about SOS Children’s Villages. According to the letter, the Spanish postman was immediately taken by the organization’s idea and practice of aid, telling Gmeiner that “all of humanity has to thank him” for it.99 Second, the Kinderdorfbote started to promote the expansion of SOS into war-torn Korea in the early 1950s. In 1954, its readers learned that, due to the war, Korea had become a “land of despair” in which more than half of the population suffered from poverty.100 With that, SOS had for the first time extended its scope of interest and action to non-European parts of the world. Soon, the organization would go further by addressing countries or regions marked by the conflicts, violence, or deprivation caused by decolonization, Cold-War politics or what then called underdevelopment. Thus, SOS gradually emerged as a player in the field of international aid and development as it evolved since the 1950s.101 Claiming that “the probably bitterest part of the Korean drama is the dissolution of  “Liebe Mutti, Dein Peter,” Der Kinderdorfbote 64, no. 2 (1967), 4–5.  For instance, see “Nachrichten,” Der Kinderdorfbote 37, no. 2 (1961), 9; “20 Nationen bei der 3. Internationalen Pädagogischen Tagung der SOS-Kinderdörfer,” Der Kinderdorfbote 48, no. 1 (1964), 2–3. 99  “Sehr geehrter Herr, dem ich mit großer Achtung schreibe,” Der Kinderdorfbote 63, no. 4 (1967), 7. 100  “Korea: Entfesselte Kriegsfurie brachte unsagbare Not über Tausende schuldlose Kinder,” Der Kinderdorfbote, kostenlose Werbenummer (1954), 5. 101  On such a periodization of development, see Hubertus Büschel, “Geschichte der Entwicklungspolitik,” Version: 1.0, Docupedia-Zeitgeschichte, 11.02.2010, http://docupedia.de/zg/Geschichte_der_Entwicklungspolitik?oldid=128721 (last accessed 13.08.2019). 97 98

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the family”, the Kinderdorfbote discursively paved the way for the expansion of SOS Children’s Villages into that country. This campaign was accompanied by representations of juvenile need through photographs of sad-looking, ethnically Asian toddlers.102 In addition, individual articles reported on what was depicted as the fate of children in other parts of the world (such as Ecuador, Vietnam, or India), where SOS Children’s Villages was soon to arrive.103 Despite the expansion of aid beyond Europe, the image of Tyrolian mothers, alpine houses, rural landscapes, and “white” children still dominated the Kinderdorfbote. Yet, in the 1960s, several articles introduced non-European settings and reported on major campaigns toward the geographic expansion of aid. In 1963, Gmeiner made a trip to Southeast Asia and visited South Korea in order to launch and coordinate an international fundraising campaign entitled “A Grain of Rice for Korea” (“Ein Reiskorn für Korea”), which turned out to be highly successful: according to the Kinderdorfbote, the campaign, which asked for a donation of one dollar in return for a grain of rise from Korea, was supported by 450,000 donors in Austria, the Federal Republic of Germany, Switzerland, and Scandinavia. It brought in enough funds to not only build the first SOS village in Taegu, South Korea, but also to support the foundation of planned branches in other “developing countries”.104 In 1966, Gmeiner traveled to Vietnam and visited 25 orphanages in Saigon. Back in Europe, he claimed that the terrible conditions and the suffering of Vietnamese children had moved him to action. SOS thus tackled the establishment of the hitherto largest children’s village in Vietnam, which was not only funded through donations but also supported by the German ministry of the interior. By establishing a village in Go Vap near Saigon, SOS moved for the first time to a country in a state of war.105

 “Korea,” 5.  See, for instance, an article from 1955 that accused poor Japanese parents of selling their children as slaves. “Handel mit Kindern: Japan kämpft gegen gewissenlose Unternehmer – In Not geratene Eltern verkaufen ihre Kinder,” Der Kinderdorfbote 12, no. 1 (1955), 2–3. 104  “Liebe Freunde,” Der Kinderdorfbote 48, no. 1 (1964), 11. 105  Michael Vössing, Humanitäre Hilfe und Interessenpolitik: Westdeutsches Engagement für Vietnam in den 1960er und 1970er Jahren (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2018), 483–484, 487–488. 102 103

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During the 1960s (and thus a decade that historians have described as the first “actual decade of development”106), development aid consolidated as a theme on the agenda of SOS, which advanced its own understanding of the concept: interpreting development as a specific form of cultural change, SOS promoted child welfare and education as one of its key investments.107 In the 1960s, the Kinderdorfbote (apart from South Korea and Vietnam) reported on the planning of villages in India and South America (e.g. Ecuador), whereby first initiatives often came from social reformers, missionaries, or aid workers in the respective countries. In order to become a global player, SOS had founded a supranational umbrella association that joined the Geneva-based International Union for Child Welfare and already represented itself as increasingly international in scope and organization in 1960.108 For us, it is important to note that the 1960s indeed saw the export of parenthood as aid to the world: referencing Gmeiner, the Kinderdorfbote stated in 1963 that “the idea of the SOS Children’s Villages corresponds to all peoples and can serve all peoples”.109 The article urged installing a Children’s Village in every country worldwide and suggested interpreting the international expansion as a form of proof for the accuracy of the SOS model of parenthood as aid. Yet, even a quick consideration of other historical records (such as the small amount of accessible correspondence between the heads of individual villages abroad and the SOS headquarters in Austria) suggests that the representation of international expansion failed to address the multiple conflicts that arose, particularly in non-Western cultural contexts. The correspondence reveals several complaints, whether about mothers in  Büschel, “Geschichte der Entwicklungspolitik.”  SOS discussed this reorientation for the first time systematically in an article in 1965. Otto Winkler, “SOS-Kinderdorf und Entwicklungshilfe,” Neue Wege: Beiträge zu aktuellen Erziehungsproblemen 3 (1968), 45–65. 108   SOS Children’s Villages International, originally founded in 1955 as European Association of SOS Children’s Villages and renamed in 1960, was seen as a forum from which the SOS Children’s Village idea was to be carried out into the world. Any “children’s home” could apply for membership if it declared that it would incorporate the main principles regarding mother, family and home. At the same time, efforts were made to export the concept of SOS Children’s Villages to as many countries as possible. “International Union for Child Welfare,” Der Kinderdorfbote 67, no. 4 (1968), 10; Archive of Hermann Gmeiner Akademie, Innsbruck, Sign. SKMBT_C55213101111050_0012, “Satzungen des ‘Europäischen Verbandes der SOS Kinderdörfer’.” 109  “Eine Idee für alle Völker: Bilanz der Reise Hermann Gmeiners in den Fernen Osten,” Der Kinderdorfbote 46, no. 2 (1963), 4–7, here 6. 106 107

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Jordan who did not meet the expectations of good motherhood, or about village leaders in Manila who had oppressed and abused women and children.110 Similarly, historian Michael Vössing has pointed to multiple troubles and tensions that emerged in the Children’s Village in Go Vap, Vietnam: while its founding was a particularly prestigious undertaking due to the broad support it received from the German government, the project failed to meet the demands of local need on several levels. Vössing has shown that local actors were reluctant to institutionalize Vietnamese children in the village, for indigenous kinship structures did not privilege the placement of children in artificial, nuclear, and female-­headed families. The village filled up slowly and never achieved full utilization. Yet, the German embassy still considered it a success, and SOS even opened a second Children’s Village in Dalat shortly before the organization had to leave the country with the defeat of South Vietnam in 1975.111 Although these examples show that the expansion of the SOS model of aid faced troubles, the organization went on to promote gendered parenthood as aid. By 1970, the promotional literature even heightened the power and responsibility of SOS mothers in light of the organization’s geographic expansion into zones of violent conflict: as a manual claimed in 1970, “each Children’s Village mother contributes to global peace and thus a task that forms part of the sublime duties of every woman and mother”.112



Conclusion

Between 1949 and 1970, SOS Children’s Villages not only established a transnational network of child welfare institutions but also promoted a specific model of aid for children. Introducing what SOS called the four basic elements of child welfare, the organization not only claimed to have developed a superior model of aid for children (because it was “natural” and “simple”) but also propagated its universal validity and global applicability. Yet, as this chapter has shown, the four needs – a mother, siblings, a house, and a village – were, of course, far from universal but instead firmly rooted in a specific religious and cultural tradition and charged with 110   For instance, see Archive of Hermann Gmeiner Akademie, Innsbruck, Sign. 02.01.00714, Th. Schlesinger, “Jordanien-Bericht 1/1967;” Sign. 02.01.00062, Elsa Guanco, [Letter to Hermann Gmeiner], 27.07.1973. 111  Vössing, Humanitäre Hilfe, 484–499. 112  Auguste Neubauer, Die Mutter im SOS-Kinderdorf: Ein moderner Frauenberuf (Innsbruck et al.: SOS-Kinderdorf Verlag, 31970), 20.

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conservative values and social models. This perspective was neither gender-neutral nor concerned with issues of social equality. To the contrary, these four elements reflected the contemporary gender order that largely shaped the notions, practices and laws of family life in Austria, Germany, and other European countries, based upon gendered spheres and male authority. The four basic elements, at least in the SOS’s understanding, gave different social and economic roles to men, women, boys, and girls and naturalized a set of hierarchical relations between fathers and mothers, adults, and children as well as boys and girls of different age in its humanitarian appeals and practice. Interpreting and representing the activities of male and female aid workers in terms of gendered parenthood, SOS indeed appealed to what was common sense for many people in Austria, Germany, and other European countries during the 1950s and 1960s: the great value invested in the nuclear family as a natural social order to be reconstructed after the turmoil of the Second World War and in light of what many experienced as a crises of the family and gender relations. Although the reconstruction of the family constituted a central issue for many relief workers, politicians, and reformers, some psychologists particularly emphasized motherhood and mother-child relations as a key to children’s positive and “healthy” development more generally. SOS not only connected to these ideas but represented them as a simple truth of child care, upbringing, and education. Insisting that every child (more than anything else) needs one mother, the organization claimed that individual motherly aid workers could and should provide needy children with, in a sense, substitute families that were embedded in institutionalized settings headed by fatherly leaders. Parenthood as aid thus tended to (re)produce inequality without discussing the power relations and gendered separation of work between female and male aid workers. On the contrary, by elevating women’s roles as mothers in theory while employing them as cheap aid workers in practice, SOS heavily relied on what many feminists had critiqued as familial ideology since the late 1960s. Inspired by Simone de Beauvoir’s Le Deuxième Sexe (1949), feminist scholars have explored the ideological agenda of supposedly neutral (because naturalized) notions of motherhood or maternal love and criticized the exploitation of women and of female labor in providing what, by recourse to Marxist theory, has been

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framed as reproductive work.113 SOS did not engage with this line of feminist critique but reproduced a specific vision of gendered family roles without questioning its actual implication for male and female aid workers. The organization failed to provide a progressive vision of gender equality but instead perpetuated stereotypical representations of maternal and paternal roles and gendered (re)production. By representing women’s aid work as connected to the domestic sphere and in naturalized terms of motherhood, SOS disseminated a vision of female aid work as reproductive work that remained economically less significant. The gendered conception of aid work within SOS had effects that went well beyond the level of ideology and culture but also targeted the social and material conditions within SOS more generally. As scholars have pointed out, the organization was characterized by a gender pay gap, which even rose due to Gmeiner’s hierarchic style of leadership and the masculinization of the board during the 1950s. In short, SOS offered very different career chances for men and women.114 Yet, the records show that SOS nonetheless provided some opportunities for female activism and even – at least to some extent  – leadership. This was the case not only for the organization’s phase of foundation but also during the period of international expansion dominated by Hermann Gmeiner’s fatherly and authoritarian leadership. Even though Gmeiner usually relied on well-known men when hiring personnel for mediafriendly leadership roles, the Children’s Village in Daegu, South Korea was at first headed by Maria Heissenberger (born in 1930), an Austrian woman who had already acted as a pastoral assistant in South Korea and who was well connected to the Catholic Church and missionary enterprise. Heissenberger not only managed the construction activities in Daegu and organized the beginnings of the village together with three European and two Korean female assistants but also trained the first mothers and acted as the village’s manager. Yet, already in 1968, the responsible bishop asked Heissenberger to take over the care work for tuberculosis sufferers in a newly erected Korean diocese. As a pastoral worker, she was 113  Reproductive work summarizes all activities that relate to the immediate provision, nurture and regeneration of individual human beings and thus include all types care, domestic and educational work. See Notz, Kritik des Familismus, 116–124; Encarnación Gutiérrez Rodríguez, “Europäische Krise: Care Arbeit, Prekarität, Heteronormativität und Migration,” in Andreas Langenohl and Anna Schober, eds., Metamorphosen von Kultur und Geschlecht: Genealogien, Praktiken, Imaginationen (Paderborn: Fink Verlag, 2016), 147–165. 114  Hofer and Lienhart, Idealistisch, 60.

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committed to the bishop and left her position in the Children’s Village even though Gmeiner was furious about her decision.115 This and other examples show that, despite SOS’s many claims regarding gendered parenthood and order, the organization and its mission inspired at least some women to strive for more equal roles within the rapidly growing humanitarian enterprise. However, the record of (temporary) woman leaders in the near East and Asia leads to the conclusion that it was predominantly non-European settings that provided the greatest career opportunities for European aid workers. This, in turn, raises the question of how gender and race intersected in the further development of the SOS enterprise, a question that becomes particularly vital for the decades to follow, which saw not only the further expansion of SOS but also of women’s emancipation, parental equality, decolonization and social change in many settings within and beyond Europe.

 Ibid., 214–216.

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CHAPTER 10

In/Visible Girls: “Girl Soldiers”, Gender and Humanitarianism in African Conflicts, c. 1955–2005 Stacey Hynd

[...] not much is known about the participation of girls in the wars of the end of the twentieth century, for the role of girls at war is rarely highlighted.1 DDR [Disarmament, demobilization and reintegration] programmes for children are drastically under-funded. And, because of their invisibility and the discrimination they suffer, it is girls who particularly lose out.2

African girl soldiers have historically been subject to a triple invisibility: as females, as children and as black Africans. Even when child soldiers became a major focus of international humanitarian concern in the late   United Nations Archives, Geneva, E/CN.4/Sub.2.AC.2.1992/6, Review of Developments in Contemporary Slavery, “Report by Friends World Committee for Consultation,” 17.01.1992, 4. 2  Save the Children-UK, Forgotten Casualties of War: Girls in Armed Conflict (London: Save the Children, 2005), 1. 1

S. Hynd (*) University of Exeter, Exeter, UK e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 E. Möller et al. (eds.), Gendering Global Humanitarianism in the Twentieth Century, Palgrave Macmillan Transnational History Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-44630-7_10

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1980s and 1990s, the stereotypical image of the “African child soldier” that saturated human rights reports, news media and humanitarian appeals was that of a young boy, in a ragged t-shirt and flip flops, carrying an AK-47 and staring dead-eyed at the camera. Girls were conspicuous by their absence in these initial campaigns against the recruitment and use of child soldiers, despite the fact that estimates suggested around 30–40%, or 120,000, of the 300,000 children associated with armed forces were in fact female. These girls occupied multiple roles ranging from being porters and cooks to spies, “bush wives” and even armed combatants, forming a “shadow army” that provided invaluable labour to armed groups.3 When girl soldiers did emerge as objects of humanitarian concern in the later 1990s, attention focused not so much on their active participation in front-line combat, as with boys, but rather on their victimhood and specifically on their experiences of sexual violence. When it came to “saving” these girls and rehabilitating them from their traumas in post-conflict environments however, there was a clear failure within international peacebuilding efforts to include girl soldiers in the disarmament, demobilization, rehabilitation and reintegration (DDRR) programmes that were formulated to turn “soldiers” back into “civilians”. This chapter seeks to explore why, despite the fact that African girl children figure so prominently in humanitarian imagery and discourses of salvation as “universal icon(s) of suffering”, African girl soldiers have been so marginalized in the delivery of humanitarian aid and action?4 How was their victimhood constructed? What effect did such humanitarian imaginings have on interventions to prevent the recruitment and abuse of girls by armed groups and on attempts to rehabilitate and reintegrate former girl soldiers back into their communities? The chapter thereby questions how ideas of age, race and gender have intersected to shape humanitarianism in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, highlighting tensions between constructions of girls’ victimhood and evidence of their agency. The child-soldier crisis is a relatively recent international, humanitarian concern. Whereas the “boy soldiers” of the First and Second World Wars were largely understood as heroic proto-citizens, deserving of sympathy but also honour for their patriotism and suffering, today’s child soldiers are constructed as victims of horrific rights abuses and “barbaric” forms of  Ibid.  Stanley Cohen, States of Denial: Knowing about Atrocities and Suffering (Oxford: Polity, 2001), 178. 3 4

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warfare.5 This shift is due not simply to changing patterns of children’s participation in conflict globally, but to a confluence of cultural and political changes from the 1970s to 1990s that sparked new humanitarian campaigning. The growing dominance of human rights, and particularly child rights, combined with new developments in international law, media and communications technology—in the context of the shifting geopolitical order in the late- and post-Cold War years—served to drive concerns about child soldiering, particularly (but not exclusively) those emerging in the global North about children in the wars of the global South. Such concerns were exacerbated by the growing civilianization and delegitimization of conflict, exemplified by conflicts in Vietnam and Cambodia—in which the lines between civilian and military became increasingly blurred, with total social mobilization drawing children into Viet Cong forces— and in countries like Mozambique, in which the anti-colonial liberation struggle gave way to a protracted a civil war that infamously saw thousands of children forcibly recruited and used to commit atrocities by rebel group Renamo.6 It was, however, the so-called new wars that gripped countries like Sierra Leone and Liberia in the 1990s that sparked global action against the recruitment and use of children, wars which became infamous for their purported barbarism and accounts of drug-addicted, dehumanized boy soldiers killing, raping and mutilating civilians.7 Such hyper-­ violent wars and the crisis of the post-colonial state in Africa also helped drive a recrudescence of neo-colonial discourses in the global North depicting the continent as a “heart of darkness” which required external salvation.8 By the early 1990s, then, child soldiering had become viewed as a particularly “African” problem, indicative of a wider moral and social breakdown.9 It was the emergence of a new, liberal humanitarianism, 5  See David M. Rosen, Child Soldiers and the Western Imagination: From Patriots to Victims (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2015). 6  See International Committee of the Red Cross, Official Records of the Diplomatic Conference on the Reaffirmation and Development of International Humanitarian Law Applicable in Armed Conflict, Geneva 1974–77, volume XV, CDDH/III/SR.45 (Geneva, 1978), 64–75. 7  Mary Kaldor, New and Old Wars: Organized Violence in a Global Era (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1999); Robert Kaplan, The Coming Anarchy (New York: Random House, 2000); see Human Rights Watch/Africa, Easy Prey: Child Soldiers in Liberia (New York: Human Rights Watch, 1994). 8  See V. Y. Mudimbe, The Idea of Africa (London: James Currey, 1994). 9  Alcinda Honwana, Child Soldiers in Africa (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006).

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however, that primarily facilitated international advocacy and intervention against the recruitment and use of children in war. The post-Cold War era saw a fundamental realignment and expansion of humanitarianism, which became avowedly political and increasingly intersected with human rights and development. The emergence of post-conflict peacebuilding and reconstruction as a major United Nations (UN) action also drew humanitarian organizations into longer-term developmental rather than simply relief-based interventions and brought humanitarians into former war zones and increasingly into contact with child soldiers who required rehabilitation, driving their advocacy against recruitment.10 Conceptions of child soldiers emerge from the pre-existing social, political and moral knowledge that shapes liberal humanitarianism, knowledge that is predominantly shaped by Western cultural norms and circulated by non-governmental organizations (INGOs), but which often clashes with local socio-cultural norms and the realities of growing up in a war zone. Child soldiers are presented as victims of human rights abuses, as “politically innocent beings whose childhoods have been corrupted by chaotic, violent and tribal new wars, and can only be rescued and rehabilitated by donors in the global North”.11 Humanitarian interventions to prevent the recruitment and use of children in armed forces are predicated on a contemporary transnational “politics of age” that prioritizes Western norms of childhood as a space of innocence, education and freedom from labour and sexual activity over local understandings of childhood in African communities, which rather highlight children’s capacity to be active social agents and productive members of a household, with girls in particular expected to contribute to domestic economies through undertaking household labour and childminding duties for siblings.12 Tensions within local norms of childhood and femininity also shape shifting 10  Michael Barnett, Empire of Humanity: A History of Humanitarianism (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2011), 166–169; Mark Duffield, Global Governance and the New Wars: The Merging of Development and Security (London: Zed Books, 2001). 11  Katrina Lee-Koo, “Horror and Hope: (Re-)Presenting Militarised Children in Global North-South Relations,” Third World Quarterly 32, no. 4 (2011), 725–742, here 736. 12  David M. Rosen, “Child Soldiers, International Humanitarian Law and the Globalization of Childhood,” American Anthropologist 109, no. 2 (2007), 296–306, here 296–298; Afua Twum-Danso, “The Political Child,” in Angela McIntyre, ed., Invisible Stakeholders: Children and War in Africa (Cape Town: Institute of Security Studies, 2005), 7–30; Allison James and Alan Prout, Constructing and Reconstructing Childhood (London: Falmer Press, 1990).

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conceptualizations of “girlhood”.13 Across many African cultures, girls are expected to be obedient, submissive and contribute to the running of the domestic household. They are socialized to be wives and mothers, with their value tied to the “bridewealth” they bring to their families upon marriage, and their education is often neglected in favour of schooling boys.14 It is precisely these qualities of obedience, labour and reproduction that make girls attractive recruits for many armed groups. Initiation, marriage and motherhood are the key markers of the transition from girlhood to adulthood: these markers are however disrupted and reordered in war, with girl soldiers often becoming mothers without socially sanctioned marriage or initiation. War can itself generate challenges to existing gender norms, with girl soldiers adopting violent behaviours normatively associated with masculinity and finding empowerment, agency and resilience in their new militarized identities.15 Traditional norms of girlhood have also been challenged by the exportation of global ideals that promote girls’ education and empowerment, by the spread of both Western and African feminisms and also by Communist ideals of gender equality during the Cold War. The category of “girlhood” really came to international prominence in the 1990s in development and humanitarian circles, with a particular focus on girls’ education as the most effective mechanism for delivering social change and successful development.16 Rescuing and reforming girls has become a metonym for “civilization”, with the victimized girl child emerging as the chief signifier of the pathology of the global South and a justification for intervention. Inversely, the rescued girl child then becomes a symbol of successful development towards membership of the global community and a marker of progress.17 For the purposes of this chapter, a child/girl soldier is defined following current international norms as anyone/any female under the age of eighteen years old attached to an armed force or armed group in any 13  Jennifer Helgren and Colleen A.  Vasconcellos, Girlhood: A Global History (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2010). 14  Twum-Danso, “The Political Child,” 12. 15  See Susan McKay and Dyan Mazurana, Where are the Girls? Girls in Fighting Forces in Northern Uganda, Sierra Leone and Mozambique: Their Lives During and After War (Montreal: Rights and Democracy, 2004). 16  Elisabeth J. Croll, “From the Girl Child to Girls’ Rights,” Third World Quarterly 27, no. 2 (2006), 1285–1297. 17  Augustine S. J. Park, “Global Governance, Therapeutic Intervention, and War-Affected Girls,” Alternatives: Global, Local, Political 34, no. 2 (2009), 157–182, here 158–159.

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capacity.18 The term preferred today by INGOs “girls associated with armed groups” will also be used where appropriate to indicate where girls reject the stigmatization of being termed a “soldier”. The majority of girls under discussion here are teenagers or have aged out of that category during their time in armed groups: the term “youth” will therefore be used to indicate where girls understand themselves, and are understood by local communities, as young women instead of “girls”. This chapter will first explore the emergence of the “girl soldier” as an object of humanitarian concern, and then assesses constructions of girls’ victimhood and agency in conflict. It will then focus on the marginalization of girls within DDRR programming, examining how international humanitarian actors have explained and then sought to rectify that marginalization, before analysing the gendered assumptions that underpin humanitarian interventions to rehabilitate and reintegrate former girl soldiers. Evidence is drawn from Quaker, United Nations (UN), International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), Save the Children Fund (SCF) and colonial archives, as well as human rights, humanitarian international non-governmental organization reports, working papers, journalism and the memoirs of former girl soldiers.

Histories of Girl Soldiering: Invisible Freedom Fighters Versus Visible Victims African girls may have been “invisible soldiers” from the perspective of the international community until the late 1990s, but a close reading of humanitarian archives reveals traces of their presence in conflict before this time, a presence confirmed and expanded upon in memoirs, news, oral histories and anthropological research. Prior to the 1990s “girl soldiers” were not absent from war: their presence was simply not seen as especially egregious or significant and therefore not highlighted, partially due to the auxiliary roles that they largely performed, but also due to contemporary conceptions of politicized youth, female agency and the perceived legitimacy of armed liberation struggles against colonial oppression. Whilst girls were present in colonial armies as “camp followers”, it was not until the liberation struggles during the decolonization years of the 1950s when they emerged as active participants in armed groups, following the wider 18  UNICEF, “Cape Town Principles and Best Practices,” Cape Town 1997, https://www. unicef.org/emerg/files/Cape_Town_Principles(1).pdf (last accessed 05.11.2018).

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politicization of youth in the late colonial era.19 Colonial archives reveal that teenage girls volunteered as bombers and nurses, and they provided essential support for National Liberation Front units in Algeria; in Kenya, Gikuyu girls were arrested and detained for their support of Mau Mau forces.20 In both cases, youth involvement in these insurgencies saw juveniles become deliberate targets of state violence and “rehabilitation” efforts, as the colonial state sought to turn deviant young subjects into productive adults.21 In the post-colonial era, politicized female youth were also involved as militants and supporters in the liberation struggles in Zimbabwe and Namibia and in the armed struggle against apartheid in South Africa.22 There was little international concern exhibited about the involvement of these teenagers in fighting however, at least before the later 1980s when the growth of child rights mobilized humanitarian sympathies. Of course, whilst child soldiers may have been invisible actors in Africa’s conflicts, younger children, and girls in particular, had become icons of suffering in humanitarian imagery of war and emergency.23 The 1967–70 Biafran civil war with Nigeria marked a new mediatization of children’s images as victims, bringing the African child as starving, kwashiorkor-­ ridden famine victim to the foreground of international humanitarian consciousness in a series of images that subsequent humanitarian thought has criticized as almost pornographic in their display of suffering.24 The most iconic image of all is that of a starving young 19  Richard Waller, “Rebellious Youth in Colonial Africa,” Journal of African History 47, no. 1 (2006), 77–92. 20  Neil Macmaster, Burning the Veil: The Algerian War and the Emancipation of Women, 1954–62 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2009); Katherine Bruce-Lockhart, “The ‘Truth’ about Kenya: Connection and Contestation in the 1956 Kamiti Controversy,” Journal of World History 26, no. 4 (2015), 815–838. 21  Paul Ocobock, An Uncertain Age: The Politics of Manhood in Kenya (Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 2017), 166–225. 22  Tanya Lyons, Guns and Guerrilla Girls: Women in the Zimbabwean Liberation Struggle (Asmara: Africa World Press, 2004); Weston Library, University of Oxford, Anti-Apartheid Movement Archives, MSS.AAM.1120, “Children, Apartheid and Repression in Namibia, 1988”; Emily Bridger, “Soweto’s Female Comrades: Gender, Youth and Violence in South Africa’s Township Uprisings, 1984–1990,” Journal of Southern African Studies (forthcoming). 23  Laura Suski, “Children, Suffering and the Humanitarian Appeal,” in Richard Ashby Wilson and Richard D. Wilson, eds., Humanitarianism and Suffering: The Mobilization of Empathy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 202–222. 24  Jorgen Lissner, The Politics of Altruism (Geneva: Lutheran World Federation, 1977). See Kevin O’Sullivan, “Humanitarian Encounters: Biafra, NGOs and Imaginings of the Third

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Ethiopian girl, Birhan Woldu, who became the face of the 1985 Live Aid campaign for famine relief in Ethiopia.25 The affective force of these images overshadowed other forms of children’s and youths’ involvement in conflict. Perhaps significantly, though, these famine victim infants were often portrayed in sex/gender-less terms. Images of young suffering girls were powerful tools for generating public responses to humanitarian crises, but their “girlhood” has historically not been central to the portrayal of their suffering: their symbolic vulnerability was rather located in their childhood/infancy and their African-ness. The 1980s saw growing concern about both women and children in war, linked to the civilianization of conflict more broadly, with UNICEF reporting two million child casualties in conflict between 1985 and 1995.26 However, there was a tendency to collapse “women and children” into a single humanitarian category of concern, and, as a result, girls’ specific experiences of navigating adolescence, reproductive health and trauma and of developing survival strategies in warzones were largely neglected in both advocacy and action.27 The papers of pioneering child-soldier activist Dorothea E. Woods of the Quaker United Nations Office (QUNO), Geneva, reveal that it was in the Eritrean liberation struggle against Ethiopia in the late 1980s that large numbers of teenage girls first began to attract international humanitarian attention, with girls comprising around a third of Eritrean People’s Liberation Front (EPLF) forces at the time; strikingly, these accounts appear to accept the girls’ volunteering to serve with groups like the EPLF as a rational, justifiable and patriotic impulse, reassured by evidence of formal training and promises that the girls were not being sent to the front lines.28 Teenage girls joined armed groups for many reasons: to defend their communities, to avenge their families or to better their lives, and World in Britain and Ireland 1967–70,” Journal of Genocide Research 16, no. 2 (2014), 299–315. 25  Oliver Harvey, Feed the World: Birhan Woldu and Live Aid (London: New Holland Publishers, 2011). 26  UNICEF, The State of the World’s Children 1996 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), 13. 27  See Charlotte Lindsey, Women Facing War: International Committee of the Red Cross Study on the Impact of Armed Conflict on Women (Geneva: ICRC, 2001), 34–35; Dyan Mazurana, Angela Raven-Roberts and Jane Parpart, eds., Gender, Conflict and Peacekeeping (Lanham, MD and New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 2005). 28  Swarthmore College Peace Collection [SCPC], Philadelphia, Dorothea E.  Woods Papers, 4726/14, Dorothea E. Woods, “Children at War in Africa,” 4 and 4722/10 “Girls in Military Training in War, 1992”; Chris Kutschera, “Guerre et Faim,” GEO 77 (July 1985).

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many actively demanded to fight in battle. During the Cold War, the rhetoric of gender equality espoused by many Communist-aligned forces drew a number of female youths into liberation and rebel forces, particularly those who sought to escape abuse, marginalization or early marriage at home; of course, many found that rhetorics of equality did not match the realities of their exposure to violence and exploitation within armed groups.29 A turning point for international humanitarian concern about the presence of African children in armed groups was the seizure of Kampala in January 1986 by Yoweri Museveni’s National Resistance Army (NRA), which was noted by humanitarian, media and diplomatic observers to contain some 3000 kadogos (little soldiers, child soldiers), including “500 girls”.30 These girls included China Keitetsi who wrote a memoir detailing how “the NRA gave us weapons, made us fight their war, made us hate, kill, torture, and made us their girlfriends”.31 The kadogos were initially hailed by many Ugandans as heroes. Even UNICEF’s Regional Director, Cole P. Dodge, described them as “highly motivated, reliable and dedicated” soldiers and praised the “humanitarian nature of the NRA’s overseeing of the children”, many of whom were war orphans.32 However, following failed negotiations to demobilize the kadogo into humanitarian care rather than military schools and Museveni’s dismissal of Western fears about the trauma inflicted by militarizing children, international concern about African child soldiers mounted. By 1987, the focus had shifted to the long-running civil war in Mozambique, at which point narratives of child-soldier brutalization and dehumanization developed in relation to Renamo’s forcible recruitment of an estimated 9000–10,000 children,

29  Harry G. West, “Girls with Guns: Narrating the Experience of War of Frelimo’s ‘Female Detachment’,” Anthropological Quarterly 73, no. 4 (2000), 180–194; Angela Veale, From Child Soldier to Ex-Fighter: Female Fighters, Demobilisation and Reintegration in Ethiopia (Pretoria: Institute for Security Studies, 2003); Senait Mehari, Heart of Fire: From Child Soldier to Soul Singer (London: Profile Books, 2006). 30  SCPC, Dorothea E. Woods Papers, 4725, “Children Bearing Arms Monthly Reports” (December 1986, March 1987). 31  China Keitetsi, Child Soldier (London: Souvenir Press, 2004), 154. 32  Cole P. Dodge, “Child Soldiers in Uganda: What does the Future Hold?,” Cultural Survival Quarterly, (December 1986), https://www.culturalsurvival.org/publications/ cultural-survival-quarterly/child-soldiers-uganda-what-does-future-hold (last accessed 05.11.2018).

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some as young as six.33 Alongside discourses of brutalized boys, concern about girls being forcibly recruited to provide sexual and domestic labour also emerged, in both Mozambique and Angola.34 Then in the early 1990s, during conflicts in Sierra Leone, Liberia, Rwanda and Northern Uganda, thousands of girls were recruited into government forces and rebel groups, many being forced into conjugal slavery as “bush wives” of fighters.35 It was at this point that discourses surrounding girls’ participation in armed groups shifted from empowered liberation fighters to a focus on forcible recruitment, and then sexual victimization. What drove this discursive shift from viewing girls as active participants in conflict to seeing them as war’s ultimate victims? It was part of the broader shift from agency to victimhood in constructions of child soldiers highlighted above, but there was also a distinctly gendered dimension to shifting humanitarian discourses. New global norms of childhood and child rights intersected with women’s rights movements to highlight female victimhood, with gender becoming a significant category for public policy making and international development. The expansion of the category of “child” from fifteen to eighteen years of age with the Convention of the Rights of the Child saw female teenagers branded “girls” rather than “youths”, a tactic deployed by rights organizations and humanitarians to highlight their youthful innocence and victimhood. More significant was the emergence of violence against women as a topic for transnational social movement and network action from the 1980s, with major campaigns against sexual and gender-based violence emerging by the mid-1990s.36 Girls’ exploitation in war became linked to broader gender inequality and structural violence. As World Vision highlighted in a discussion paper on the impact of armed conflict on girls in 1996, “In much of the world, girls are subordinate, voiceless and imperilled, even at 33  Miguel Mausse, The Social Reintegration of the Child Involved in Armed Conflict in Mozambique (Cape Town: Institute for Security Studies, 1989). 34  Vivi Stavrou, Breaking the Silence: Girls Forcibly Involved in the Armed Struggle in Angola (Christ Children’s Fund Angola Research Project, 2006). 35  Stacey Hynd, “‘To be taken as a wife is a form of death’: The Social, Military, and Humanitarian Dynamics of Forced marriage and Girl Soldiers in African Conflicts, c.1990–2010,” in Benjamin Lawrance, Richard L.  Roberts and Annie Bunting, eds., Marriage by Force? Contestation over Consent and Coercion in Africa (Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 2016), 292–312. 36  Margaret E. Keck and Kathryn Sikkink, Activists Beyond Borders: Advocacy Networks in International Politics (New York: Cornell University Press, 1998), 166.

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the best of times. In times of war, even the slightest protections afforded them by society are torn away. Not only do they face bombs and bullets, starvation and sickness. Increasingly, belligerents treat girls as a spoils of war and make the abhorrent ordinary as they routinely brutalise her in body and spirit”.37 Girls were increasingly constructed as the ultimate victims of war, their suffering bodies proving central to the “iconography of rescue” in humanitarian campaigns.38 The 1993–96 Machel Committee proved to be a pivotal moment in the gendering of child soldiering. Studies conducted prior to this made little mention of either girl soldiers or sexual violence; for those afterwards it became a discursive priority.39 Following sustained pressure from child-­ rights groups and consultative NGOs, such as the Quaker Friends World Committee for Consultation, Defence for Children International and Rädda Barnen, in 1993 the UN commissioned renowned Mozambican women’s and children’s rights campaigner and humanitarian Graça Machel to investigate the effects of armed conflict on the world’s children. The Machel Report, published in August 1996, has become the foundation text for human rights advocacy and humanitarian action on children affected by conflict, with its focus on the child as the ultimate victim of modern conflict, downplaying child soldiers’ agency in favour of adopting child-rights-based narratives of victimhood. After receiving evidence from humanitarian campaign groups and conducting field visits to Angola, Rwanda and Sierra Leone, Machel added specific investigations into the treatment of girls and sexual and gender-based violence to the report, investigations which were expanded upon in follow-up reports.40 This was in part driven by the emergence of sexual violence as a subject of human 37  World Vision International, “The Effects of Armed Conflict on Girls: Discussion paper for the UN Study on the Impact of Armed Conflict on Children” (July 1996), 5. 38  Erica Burman, “Innocents Abroad: Western Fantasies of Childhood and the Iconography of Emergencies,” Disasters 18, no. 3 (1994), 238–253, here 242. 39  See Ilene Cohn and Guy S. Goodwin-Gill, Child Soldiers: The Role of Children in Armed Conflicts, a Study on Behalf of the Henry Dunant Institute Geneva (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994); Rachel Brett and Irma Specht, Young Soldiers: Why They Choose to Fight? (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 2004). 40  United Nations General Assembly, “Promotion and Protection of the Rights of Children: Impact of Armed Conflict on Children: Report of the Expert of the Secretary-General,” Ms. Graça Machel, 26.08.1996, A/51/306, 3 [hereafter Machel Report]; UNICEF/United Nations Office of the Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Children and Armed Conflict, Machel Study 10-Year Strategic Review: Children and Conflict in a Changing World (New York: UNICEF, 2009).

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rights and humanitarian concern in the 1990s, particularly in the aftermath of conflicts in former Yugoslavia and Rwanda.41 This era also saw a shift within humanitarian language towards discourses of trauma, victimhood and witnessing, drawing from human rights, with a focus on aid recipients as suffering bodies rather than political subjects.42 NGO seminar reports by Radda Barnen and UNICEF wrote of “empty-eyed girls who had been raped and abused”.43 There is a distinct gendering of discourses on violence in humanitarian reports on child soldiering, and in the memoirs of former child soldiers whose narratives are used by humanitarian groups to support their campaigns Boy soldiers’ narratives are focused on explicit, often detailed accounts of the violence they perpetrated, which is then contrasted to the guilt and trauma they later experience, this suffering and perpetration marking them out as worthy recipients of salvation.44 Representations of girl soldiers’ experiences however are predominantly made through narratives of girls as victims of human rights abuses, and their suffering and trauma is located around their experiences of sexual violence in particular: relating to their body and their gender, rather than their status and experiences as soldiers. As a report by Save the Children put it, “Many are killed in combat. Most are raped and sexually abused”.45 Cultural taboos and silencing around sexual violence shape these narratives. Accounts of rape and sexual abuse by girls given in interviews and memoirs tend to be given in a very sparing and matter-of-fact manner, the detail and the emotion is starkly restrained, and the horror remains largely unspoken.46 So why then is there such a focus on sexual violence in humanitarian reports? Many girls did experience sexual violence, but not all, and even for those who 41  Kerry F. Crawford, Wartime Sexual Violence: From Silence to Condemnation of a Weapon of War (Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 2017); Miriam Ticktin, “The Gendered Human of Humanitarianism: Medicalising and Politicising Sexual Violence,” Gender & History 23, no. 2 (2011), 250–265. 42  Didier Fassin, Humanitarian Reason: A Moral History of the Present (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2012), 200–222. 43  SCPC, Dorothea E. Woods Papers, 4737, “Seminar report on the UN Draft Convention of the Rights of the Child” (October 1988), 4. 44  See Ishmael Beah, A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of A Child Soldier (London: Harper Perennial, 2008), 125. 45  Save the Children, Forgotten Casualties of War, vi. 46  See, for example, Mehari, Heart of Fire; Faith J. H. McDonnell and Grace Akallo, Girl Soldier: A Story of Hope for Northern Uganda’s Children (Grand Rapids: Chosen Books, 2007), 110–112.

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did, many of their testimonies suggest that sexual violence was experienced as part of a broader landscape of suffering rather than as demarcated events that triggered especial trauma.47 In human rights and humanitarian reports however, girls’ testimonies are excerpted and/or translated into humanitarian texts by researchers with a domestication, or vernacularization, of their experiences into Western and Global North registers of trauma, with excerpts from multiple testimonies often combined to create a “composite portrait of victimization”. Testifying to a growing concern with the treatment of women’s bodies in war, sexual violence has become foregrounded in humanitarian discourses as a form of severe trauma because of its violation of taboos, and its potent combination of physical and psychological pain: sexual and gender-based violence is a more comprehensible form of trauma than bombing or gunfire to Western donors, more immediate and horrifying than the daily grind of survival in a warscape. Emphasizing such forms of violence is an affective narrative strategy that aims provoke empathetic responses in readers/donors and thereby generate action. Shortly after the Machel Report’s publication, the abduction in Northern Uganda of 139 schoolgirls by Joseph Kony’s Lord’s Resistance Army in October 1996, and the seizure of thirty of these girls as “bush wives” for Kony’s favoured officers, provoked international outrage and reinforced narratives of girls’ sexual exploitation in conflict.48 As a result of such scandals and concerted humanitarian advocacy, the Cape Town principles of 1997, which were developed by UNICEF and other groups to establish the best practice for preventing child recruitment and rehabilitation, explicitly expanded the definition of a child soldier to “girls recruited for sexual purposes and forced marriage”, and it noted that “particular attention should be paid to the special needs of girls” in demobilization and reintegration.49 In the aftermath of the Machel Report’s publication and the UN’s creation of the Office of the Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Children in Armed Conflict in 1997, humanitarian actors and researchers increasingly turned their attention to the problem of girl soldiers, marking a growing intersection among academic research, 47  See Evelyn Amony, ed. Erin Baines, I Am Evelyn Amony: Reclaiming My Life from the Lord’s Resistance Army (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2015). 48  Els de Temmerman, Aboke Girls: Children Abducted in Northern Uganda (Kampala: Fountain Publishers, 2009). 49  UNICEF, “Cape Town Principles and Best Practices.”

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activism and humanitarian interventions.50 It is perhaps significant that the vast majority of humanitarian actors and scholars working on girl soldiers in the 1990s and early 2000s were themselves women, like Rachel Brett and Dyan Mazurana. This is less Spivak’s “white men saving brown women from brown men” than “predominantly white women trying to persuade global elite men to save brown girls from brown boys and men”.51

Girls in Contemporary Armed Groups: “Victimhood” Versus “Agency” If narratives of perpetration are almost automatically gendered as male, then narratives of victimhood in contemporary conflict are deeply feminized, conjuring women as passive participants of war. The emphasis is laid on women’s and girls’ forced recruitment, forced marriage, sexual slavery, sexual abuse and other types of victimhood and vulnerability.52 The “victim” construction of the girl child is “integral to maintaining the myth of the young ‘aggressive’ African male”, which thereby justifies the intervention of the “white saviour”.53 But as Denov argues, “while highlighting girls’ victimisation is critical, a danger is that girls become personified as voiceless victims, often devoid of agency”.54 More recent research has 50  See Dyan Mazurana et al., “Girls in Fighting Forces and Groups: Their Recruitment, Participation, Demobilization and Reintegration,” Peace and Conflict: Journal of Peace Psychology 8, no. 2 (2002), 97–123. 51  Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, “Can the Subaltern Speak?,” in Cary Nelson and Lawrence Grossberg, eds., Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1988), 271–314, here 289. 52  Dyan Mazurana, Roxanne Krystalli and Anton Baaré, “Gender and Disarmament, Demobilization and Reintegration: Reviewing and Advancing the Field,” in Fionnuala Ni Aoláin et al., eds., The Oxford Handbook of Gender and Conflict (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018), 442–466. 53  Alice Macdonald, “‘New Wars, Forgotten Warriors’: Why Have Girl Fighters been excluded from Western Representations of Conflict in Sierra Leone,” African Development 33, no. 3 (2008), 135–145. 54  Myriam Denov and Alexandra Ricard-Guay, “Girl Soldiers: Towards a Gendered Understanding of Wartime Recruitment, Participation and Demobilisation,” Gender and Development 21, no. 3 (2013), 473–488, here 476. It should be noted however that girls themselves can effectively mobilize “victim” identities in order to secure access to aid, and some of the emphasis on victimhood may be driven by their adoption of such narratives. Mats Utas, “Victimcy as Social Navigation: From the Toolbox of Liberian Child Soldiers,” in Alpaslan Özerdem and Sukanya Podder, eds., Child Soldiers: From Recruitment to Reintegration (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), 213–228.

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stressed the variation in girls’ experiences of conflict and highlighted the considerable tactical agency that many display in socially navigating warzones.55 Girls occupy multiple, often concurrent, roles in armed groups, in both auxiliary and front-line capacities: the same girl can act as a porter, wife, mother and fighter as the situation demands. Girls’ experiences will vary according to their age and maturity, whether they are armed combatants or not, the nature of the armed group, their rank and the length of their association with the armed group: “The cheerful twelve year old who was abducted by an armed group may come home as an aggressive sixteen year old, carrying her own child, brutalised by abuse and with a confused sense of loyalties and identity”.56 Yes, many girls in armed groups were abducted, but others joined to avoid domestic abuse or early marriage at home, or to escape being sexually abused as a civilian, whilst some joined for survival, economic motivations or as a form of personal empowerment.57 Some groups, including Biafran forces in the Nigerian civil war 1967–70, recognized that the inherent liminality of teenage girls made them particularly well suited to intelligence and infiltration work—being sent behind enemy lines to undertake normative childhood roles like performing domestic labour—but girls were also able to mobilize their sexualities by posing as girlfriends to soldiers.58 Some became effective fighters and commanders, attaining rank and status: for them, war was a time of empowerment and gender progress. Liberian rebel forces infamously contained both Small Girls Units and the Women’s Artillery Commandos, whose slogan was “women can do better than men”.59 As one Liberian girl soldier asserted: “We were dangerous […] people had better not come to bother us […] or we killed you! When you are a girl you have to be harder, or the men they don’t respect you”.60 But as Burman asserts, “[i]f the price of innocence is passivity, then the cost of resourcefully dealing with

 Honwana, Child Soldiers in Africa, 51.  Rachel Brett and Margaret McCallin, Children: The Invisible Soldiers (Växjö: Rädda Barnen, 1998), 123–124. 57  See McKay and Mazurana, Where are the Girls?, 4; Yvonne E. Keairns, The Voices of Girl Child Soldiers: Summary (New York: QUNO, 2002). 58  Talent Chioma Mundy-Castle, A Mother’s Debt: The True Story of an African Orphan (London: Author House, 2012). 59  Irma Specht, Red Shoes: Experiences of Girl-Combatants in Liberia (Geneva: International Labour Office, 2006), 61. 60  Brett and Specht, Young Soldiers, 85. 55 56

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conditions of distress and deprivation is to be pathologized”.61 Views of females as active agents capable of violence, as being wild and dangerous, did not fit well with international humanitarian discourse with its emphasis on war-affected women and girls as innocent victims. The privileging of depictions of female victimhood rather than agency is a key reason why little significant effort was made initially to include female combatants in DDRR processes.62

Demobilization, Disarmament, Rehabilitation and Reintegration and Girl Soldiers: Moralizing Versus Securitizing With the emergence of liberal humanitarianism in the post-Cold War era, humanitarian organizations became increasingly involved in the new UN-backed international peacebuilding and post-conflict reconstruction sector. Moving from advocacy to action, the main site of humanitarian intervention in “saving” child soldiers emerged within DDRR. As Enloe argues, demobilization and rehabilitation are inherently gendered processes, requiring the redefinition and demilitarization of both masculinities and femininities.63 DDRR may “appear neutral, but men are effectively over-privileged” during both policy and implementation phases.64 Early 1990s peace operations largely ignored gender issues, but after 1995, gendered policies began to emerge following concerted feminist advocacy. A key turning point came with Resolution 1325 in 2000, which recognized women’s importance to post-conflict reconstruction and called for their protection. Following pressure from both child rights and women’s rights movements, the UN then formally noted in 2000 that “special protection measures should be implemented to respond to the needs of girl soldiers”, with particular intervention and community sensitization required for “[g]irls or women who have suffered sexual abuse, have been forced to

 Burman, “Innocents Abroad”, 244.  Chris Coulter, Bush Wives and Girl Soldiers: Women’s Lives through War and Peace in Sierra Leone (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2009), 241–242. 63  Cynthia Enloe, The Morning After: Sexual Politics at the End of the Cold War (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 13–14. 64  Fionnuala Ni Aoláin, Dina Francesa Haynes and Naomi Cahn, On the Frontlines: Gender, War, and the Post-Conflict Process (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 133. 61 62

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participate in violence, or had had to bear children to their victimizers”.65 However, whilst these resolutions recognized women and girls’ participation in conflict, they constructed this primarily through the lens of victimhood and there remained a striking gap between rhetoric and reality within gender mainstreaming efforts in DDRR programming, with many staff lacking gender awareness.66 Weaknesses in gender responses were ­compounded by structural failings in meeting child soldiers’ needs more broadly. Humanitarian efforts to provide appropriately gendered interventions for children were hindered by disjointed approaches to DDRR: agencies involved in child soldier demobilization included the United Nations Department of Peacekeeping Operations (UNDPKO), the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), and World Bank, whilst the reintegration phases were normally run by partnerships of UNICEF and INGOs like SCF, in conjunction with local NGOs, charities, churches and government ministries.67 Reports from these programmes increasingly deployed a rhetoric of recognizing the “special needs” and “special vulnerabilities” of girls, but knowledge of their existence did not readily translate into action to meet those needs.68 A 2005 SCF-UK report raged against the underfunding of DDRR programmes for girls, particularly in Africa where programmes overall received less funding. The public report sought to shock and guilt donors into rectifying the situation by emphasizing the victimization of girl soldiers and their subsequent neglect by asserting that “girls face discrimination on a daily basis, including from the international community”.69 Whilst it is estimated that around 30–40% of child soldiers are girls, as UNICEF’s own reports acknowledged, girls were “often excluded” from

65  United Nations Security Council, “The Role of the United Nations Peacekeeping in Disarmament, Demobilization and Reintegration: Report of the Secretary-General,” 11.02.2000, S/2000/101. 66  Angela Raven-Roberts, “Gender Mainstreaming in UN Peacekeeping Operations: Talking the Talk, Tripping over the Walk,” in Dyan Mazurana, Angela Raven-Roberts and Jane Parpart, eds., Gender, Conflict and Peacekeeping (Oxford: Rowman and Littlefield, 2005), 43–64. 67  UNIFEM, Getting it Right, Doing it Right: Gender and Disarmament, Demobilization and Reintegration (New York: UNIFEM, 2004), 3–4. 68  Jean-Claude Legrand, Lessons Learned from UNICEF Field Programmes for the Prevention of Recruitment, Demobilization and Reintegration of Child Soldiers (New York: UNICEF, 1999), 31. 69  Save the Children-UK, Forgotten Casualties of War, 1–2.

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child DDRR programmes, which focused on the needs of boys.70 Early peacebuilding operations made little arrangement for boy soldiers, never mind girls. In Angola, the 1994 Lusaka Peace Accords saw 9000 boys registered for demobilization, but there was no inclusion of girls in the UNICEF programme, despite the “deliberate, systematic strategy” of recruiting and exploiting girls’ domestic and sexual labour.71 Girls were also absent from demobilization schemes in Mozambique and Rwanda. The 1999 Lomé peace accords in Sierra Leone were the first to make child soldiers an explicit priority in peacebuilding, but they did not address girls’ specific experiences or needs. There were an estimated 12,056 girls in armed groups in Sierra Leone, but only 506 formally went through demobilization, 4.2% of the total (other reports say 8% of children registered in all demobilization were girls).72 In Liberia, of 102,193 people processed in demobilization, only 2% were female children, with UNICEF figures showing 2738 girls demobilized.73 Fewer than 2% of children in the SCF-UK programme in the Democratic Republic of the Congo were girls, despite there being an estimated 12,500 girls associated with armed forces there.74 This marginalization was driven by weaknesses in the planning and delivery of demobilization, and a failure to adequately address both girls’ fears and their needs. Disarmament and demobilization schemes commonly excluded girl soldiers, as inclusion was premised on either possessing or being able to “cock and load” a gun, and many girls either lacked firearms training or had their guns taken away by commanders prior to registration. Male commanders who controlled access to registration often excluded girls from demobilization in favour of male fighters, or because  Legrand, Lessons Learned, 21.   Human Rights Watch, “Forgotten Soldiers: Child Soldiers in Angola,” 2003, https://www.hrw.org/news/2003/04/28/child-soldiers-forgotten-angola (last accessed 05.11.2018); Michael G.  Wessells, “Girls in Armed Forces and Groups in Angola: Implications for Ethical Research and Reintegration,” in Scott Gates and Simon Reich, eds., Child Soldiers in the Age of Fractured States (Pittsburgh, University of Pittsburgh Press, 2010), 183–199, here 185. 72  UNICEF, The Disarmament, Demobilisation and Reintegration of Children Associated with Fighting Forces: Lessons Learned in Sierra Leone, 1998–2002 (Dakar: UNICEF, 2005), 16. 73  UNICEF, Machel Study 10-Year Strategic Review, 17; Specht, Red Shoes, 102. 74   Save the Children-UK, Forgotten Casualties of War, 1–2; Amnesty International, “Democratic Republic of Congo  – Children at War: Creating Hope for their Future” (October 2006), AFR 62/017/2006, http://www.refworld.org/docid/4538df414.html (last accessed 05.11.2018). 70 71

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they sought to keep control of girls and their labour. A sense of shame and fear of being targeted for retaliation if they identified as members of armed groups also dissuaded many girls from entering formal demobilization programmes.75 Even where girls did have access to DDRR, programme logistics and encampment spaces prioritized male needs: clothes and sanitary supplies for girls were often non-existent, poor security put girls at heightened risk of sexual assault and reproductive health care was neglected.76 “Child mothers” have been the most underserved population within DDRR programmes, with little provision made for child care to facilitate the rehabilitation of girls who return with babies.77 In Sierra Leone, child protection agents tried to appoint “strong female staff” to manage the children’s camps but “the atmosphere was inevitably masculine and geared towards the support of male adolescents”.78 As feminist scholar of international relations Megan MacKenzie argues, a major reason for the marginalization of females in DDRR is because women and girls are not “securitized” like men and boys in post-conflict spaces: due to military roles automatically being gendered as male, females are not seen as threats to security and order and are routinely classified as “camp followers”, “sex slaves” or “girls associated with fighting forces” rather than “combatants”. Categorized as “victims”, their roles in conflict are thereby depoliticized, excluding them from potential benefits of post-­ conflict reintegration initiatives.79 For MacKenzie, a patriarchal “conjugal order” dictates post-conflict reconstruction regulating female behaviour and sexualities. “Female reintegration is seen as a social rather than political process, a ‘returning to normal’ that will happen naturally, or at least privately”, with marriage being the prime mechanism for successful reintegration.80 If girls are not securitized, then they are instead moralized within DDRR programmes. This tendency can be traced back to colonial counter-insurgency campaigns for reforming children involved in anti-colonial insurgencies. The post-1945 era was marked in Africa, as elsewhere, by heightened colonial  Coulter, Bush Wives and Girl Soldiers, 241–242.  Mazurana et al., “Girls in Fighting Forces,” 118. 77  Susan McKay et al., Girls Formerly Associated with Fighting Forces and their Children: Returned and Neglected (London: Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers, 2005). 78  UNICEF, “Lessons Learned in Sierra Leone,” 6. 79  Megan H.  MacKenzie, Female Soldiers in Sierra Leone: Sex, Security and Post-Conflict Development (New York: New York University Press, 2006), 56. 80  Ibid., 61. 75 76

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and elite African concerns about juvenile delinquency and the need to “rescue” girls from the dangers of urban life, poor parenting and exposure to the destabilizing effects of Western modernity, particularly from that archetypal form of female deviancy: prostitution.81 At a time when the patriarchal bargains of authority struck between African male elders and colonial authorities were viewed as under threat from female mobility, missionaries, charities and colonial officers alike increasingly intervened to police girls’ sexuality, with the developmentalist colonial state aiming to save endangered young girls “from peril, from themselves, and most fundamentally from the societies that surrounded them”.82 During the Mau Mau emergency, this concern transmogrified into a fear that morally disruptive urban teenage girls and young women constituted a “serious security risk” because they “encouraged their menfolk in subversive activities”, whilst younger girls were being pulled into prostitution by the social disruption caused by displacement or the loss of parents.83 Children detained as Mau Mau fighters and adherents became a major focus of colonial “rehabilitation” efforts to turn them into productive colonial citizens, but these efforts were distinctly gendered. Whilst considerable effort was invested in the rehabilitation of boys—disciplining them, educating them, initiating them into an economically productive colonial manhood—the limited efforts towards girls’ rehabilitation instead focused on turning them into well-behaved mothers and wives, adding skills like sewing and childcare to basic education and citizenship classes.84 Successful rehabilitation was described as transforming girls from being “sullen, sour,

81  Abosede George, Making Modern Girls: A History of Girlhood, Labour and Social Development in Twentieth-Century Colonial Lagos (Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 2015), 91–135. 82  Abosede George, “Within Salvation: Girl Hawkers and the Colonial State in Development Era Lagos,” Journal of Social History 44, no. 3 (2011), 837–859, here 840. 83  See International Committee of the Red Cross Archives, Geneva, B-AG 225108–003, “Rapport de mission du délégué Henri Phillipe Junod au Kenya 20 Feb–18 April 1957,” 1954 Report, 20; Kenyan National Archives [KNA], Nairobi, AH/14/25, “Homes for Parentless Children and Unattached Females in Nairobi,” 15.07.1954; AB 2/69/18/1, R. B. Lambe, “Girl Children Beyond Control,” 22.03.1957. 84  National Archives, Kew, FCO 141/6331, “Detainees and Detention Camps – Juvenile Detainees,” R.  F. F.  Owles, “Rehabilitation of Juvenile Detainees” (July 1955). Other records reveal the harsh treatment and neglect of many girls. KNA, Nairobi, AB/9/37, “Kamiti Women’s Camp  – Complaints” 64/1, 1955. See Ocobock, An Uncertain Age; Bruce-Lockhart, “The ‘Truth’ about Kenya.”

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unpleasant and downright ugly” to “really pretty”.85 Humanitarian concern with teenage girls’ behaviour and sexuality in post-conflict spaces reappears in the post-colonial welfare and juvenile reform projects conducted by INGOs. In the aftermath of the Congo Crisis, various SCF personnel noted that orphaned and displaced girls were becoming prostitutes, whilst others were too easily distracted by “the soldiers and the night clubs”.86 Such moralization also strongly informs contemporary attitudes towards girls associated with armed groups. Girls returning home are often (but not always) marginalized and excluded from their communities. Girls who had learned to socially navigate the violent and precarious but meritocratic hierarchies of armed groups often find it hard to readjust to the gendered and gerontocratic expectations of traditional communities, and many post-conflict societies experience a patriarchal backlash against women’s gains in war.87 Humanitarian reports stress that girls become viewed as “violent, unruly, dirty or promiscuous troublemakers”.88 Shepler highlights how boys in Sierra Leone were able to use discourses of “abdicated responsibility”, explaining away their wartime violence through claims of abduction, forced recruitment, drug use and indoctrination. Girls however are subject to explicitly moral discourses and are therefore less able to use discourses of abdicated responsibility.89 SCF-UK noted that communities displayed mixed responses to returning boy soldiers, but “unambiguous concern and moralizing about girls”. Girls are viewed a source of moral as well as physical (HIV, STDs) or spiritual (spirits of the dead) contagion: “communities also fear that [former girl soldiers] would ‘contaminate’ or corrupt other girls, encouraging them to have sexual

85  KNA, AB/1/112 “Rehabilitation Administration-Women’s Camp Kamiti,” Monthly Report, 25.08.1956. 86  University of Birmingham Cadbury Archives, Save the Children Fund UK, Box A122, Congo 1961–5, Visit to Leopoldville by the Secretary-General of the International Union for Child Welfare, 13–21.07.1961; Archives d’Etat de Genève, L’Union Internationale de Secours aux Enfants, Congo/Zaïre, 92.63.14  T Ri/69–14, Centre d’accueil par jeunes dèlinquents, 1969–70. 87  Legrand, Lessons Learned, 31; Elise Fredrikke Barth, Peace as Disappointment: The Reintegration of Female Soldiers in Post-Conflict Societies: A Comparative Study from Africa (Oslo: International Peace Research Institute, 2002). 88  Save the Children-UK, Forgotten Casualties of War, 1–2. 89  Susan Shepler, Childhood Deployed: Remaking Child Soldiers in Sierra Leone (New York: New York University Press, 2015), 156.

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relations without family consent, dowry and official sanction”.90 Marginalization or rejection by communities leaves former girl soldiers with few means of supporting themselves other than sex work, which compounds their stigmatization and isolation. Reports emphasizing the plight of girls formerly associated with armed groups justify humanitarian intervention on the grounds of a lack of community care and, as Burman and Pupavac argue, thereby rejuvenate colonial welfaristic and developmental discourses that suggest western organizations are better able to provide for children than their own families.91 Tempering these narratives of humanitarian salvation, however, discourses surrounding girls’ sexuality and the corruption of their “innocence” in conflict zones were also likely underpinned by concerns about their sexual exploitation by the very forces that were supposed to protect them, with scandals surrounding UN peacekeepers and under-age prostitution reported by Rädda Barnen and SCF in Mozambique, and in subsequent DDRR processes.92 A UNICEF report on Interim Care Centres for children in Sierra Leone quietly noted that the “risk of sexual abuse and exploitation exists in all forms of care”, whilst United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM) remarked on how camp geographies at Gbarnga in Liberia left young women exposed to sexual harassment each time they had to walk through the male compounds to reach their own, illuminating a strain of self-criticism in the public reports of humanitarian organizations.93 Whilst early DDRR programmes were shaped by de-securitized constructions of girl soldiers as passive “victims” of conflicts, gender-­ mainstreaming efforts and research in the early 2000s stressing girls’ agency, plus efforts by local and international NGOs to incorporate girl’s own voices and requests into their programmes, have somewhat shifted  Save the Children-UK, Forgotten Casualties of War, 20–21.  Burman, “Innocents Abroad,” 241; Vanessa Pupavac, “Misanthropy without Borders: The International Children’s Rights Regime,” Disasters 25, no. 2 (2001), 95–112, here 106. 92  See Machel Report, 32; Elisabeth Rehn and Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Women, War and Peace: The Independent Expert’s Assessment on the Impact of Armed Conflict on Women and Women’s Role in Peace-Building (New York: UNIFEM, 2002), 61; UNHCR/Save the Children Fund-UK, “Sexual Violence and Exploitation: The Experience of Refugee Children in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone” (2001), https://www.streetchildren.org/wp-content/ uploads/2013/01/sexual-violence-exploitation.pdf, (last accessed 05.11.2018). 93  UNICEF, Lessons Learned in Sierra Leone, 27; UNIFEM, Getting it Right, Doing it Right, 15. 90 91

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the tenor and focus of DDRR, leading to a greater focus on reproductive healthcare and support with community reintegration. Since the early 2000s, girls in the global south have been constructed as ideal neo-liberal subjects, more responsible than their young male counterparts and more “worthy” recipients of aid for developing the future of their communities.94 DDRR programmes became more responsive to girls’ needs and began to stress girls’ agency and resilience. Girl soldiers are increasingly viewed as particularly “recoverable”, with stress laid on their self-­discipline, pragmatism, and determination to (re-)enter civilian, domestic life. The UNIFEM report on Gbarnga girls’ interim care centre in Liberia reads as an almost Foucauldian disciplinary space, gendered female in its focus on domesticity: the girls were noted to have had input on the requirements and expectations for communal living and were praised for how “exceptionally” clean the camp was, and how everything ran efficiently on schedule, with the girls observed moving outdoors to play kickball at the precisely scheduled time of 3.30 pm. “Other scheduled activities included numerous daily classes on a host of subjects, devotion hours for religious observation and conflict resolution, and chores”.95 UNICEF noted, “girls were more committed to skills training and income generating activities than formal education”, as they sought to provide for their children or families.96 However, whilst (I)NGOs emphasize that their vocational training programmes make girls self-reliant, the skills they are taught—like soap-making or hairdressing—often do not lead to sustainable livelihoods in  local economies and are more effective as psychosocial interventions promoting confidence than in providing employment.97 Girls’ rehabilitation and reintegration still relied on their ability to (re-)conform to traditional gender roles of female domesticity, productive labour and family duty: to be good daughters, wives and mothers. DDRR programmes for girl soldiers remain markedly underfunded and under-developed and still struggle to address the immediate needs of girls formerly associated with armed groups, never mind tackling wider gender inequality.

94  Offra Koffman and Rosalind Gill, “The Revolution will be led by a 12-year-old girl’: Girl Power and Biopolitics,” Feminist Review 105 (2013), 83–102. 95  UNIFEM, Getting it Right, Doing it Right, 17; Michel Foucault, Punir et Surveiller: Naissance de la Prison (Paris: Gallimard, 1979). 96  UNICEF, Lessons Learned in Sierra Leone, 21. 97  Chris Coulter, The Girls Left Behind Project: An Evaluation Report for UNICEF/ Freetown (Freetown: UNICEF, 2004).

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Conclusions So what, then, does the shifting conceptualization of girl soldiers reveal about the relationship between gender and humanitarianism in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries? Humanitarianism was heavily gendered but insufficiently gender-aware or cognizant of the impact of its gendered assumptions, particularly with regard to how they intersected with ideas of age and race: these problems led to the marginalization and sometimes even disempowerment of African women and girls within humanitarian structures that were supposed to rescue, rehabilitate and even empower them. From the colonial to the contemporary eras, humanitarian action has operated within and tended to reinforce patriarchal structures of power and authority at both state and community levels. Tensions between local and global constructions of both gender and age have led to contested assumptions about who is a “girl” and about what forms of assistance they require and should receive. African girls were initially “invisible soldiers” because gendered and generational assumptions about conflict prevented the girls’ involvement in war being recognized. Military roles were automatically gendered male and adult by the international humanitarian bodies involved: girls’ recognized roles were as victims, through which they formed the main focus of aid appeals, with femininity and childishness collapsed to evoke sympathy and intervention justified through (neo-)colonial discourses of African “primitivism”. This focus on victimhood, however, “politically disenfranchises children from their active roles in war and survival”.98 Whilst children’s involvement in warfare became increasingly recognized in the 1970–80s, “children” were read as “boys”. It took a confluence of child rights with women’s rights, and concern about sexual violence, to render girl soldiers visible and bring them into the foreground of international humanitarian advocacy in the 1990s. High-profile victimhood, however, did not translate into effective intervention to “save” and rehabilitate these girls: as Burman argues, a “focus on suffering children avoids addressing the broader circumstances that give rise to problems”.99 African girl soldiers’ victimhood was shocking enough to generate awareness and advocacy but not enough to generate sufficient action, perhaps because it was read as normative in an African environment: the iconography of suffering mobilized to evoke  Burman, “Innocents Abroad,” 243.  Ibid., 247.

98 99

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humanitarian sympathy and reduce distance between the victim and donor can also normalize that suffering and inhibit action.100 Girls were triply overlooked in post-conflict reconstruction and rehabilitation—as children, as women and as Africans—being either excluded from or marginalized within DDRR programmes. Girls were not securitized in post-conflict spaces; instead, they were moralized. Girls’, and particularly teenage girls’, essential liminality here comes to the fore: girls could be—and be construed as—victims, as innocent children and abused women, but they could also be dangerous and deviant females or vectors of moral contagion. They could be sexually abused and subject to abuse because of their sexuality. It is, of course, cheaper and easier to focus on reforming girls’ morals than to address the wider structural violence and gender inequalities that marginalize them and drive many into what are identified as deviant, “immoral” behaviours like child soldiering or prostitution. Girls who had learned to socially navigate warscapes in order to survive life in an armed group now had to navigate post-war economies and humanitarian networks that, despite the best of intentions, continued to underserve their needs, learning to adopt the gendered roles that would secure their survival: abused victims, dutiful daughters or caring mothers. Humanitarian advocacy and intervention in the later twentieth century privileged representations of girls as victims of abuse and largely supported the return of girls into “traditional” gender roles as wives and mothers, but from the later 1990s—driven by feminist research and girls’ own testimonies— there has been an increased recognition of their agency and a reprioritizing of them as ideal recipients of neo-liberal aid. Whilst significant progress has been made in recognizing and supporting the needs of girls formerly associated with armed groups, DDRR and humanitarian interventions more broadly need to recognize girls’ personal and political agency, acknowledging both their vulnerability and their resilience. Girls, to paraphrase Graça Machel, need to be seen as a resource rather than a problem for post-conflict peacebuilding, but that resource needs to be appropriately acknowledged and supported in order to flourish.101

 See Lilie Chouliaraki, The Spectatorship of Suffering (London: Sage, 2006).  Graça Machel, “Foreword,” in Sharanjeet Parmar et al., eds., Children and Transitional Justice: Truth-Telling, Accountability and Reconciliation (Cambridge, MA: Havard Law School/UNICEF, 2010), ix–xiv, here xi. 100 101

CHAPTER 11

Gender Histories of Humanitarianism: Concepts and Perspectives Esther Möller, Johannes Paulmann and Katharina Stornig

Speaking from the point of view of the twenty-first century, we can state that gender has indeed been established as a theme in the international humanitarian sphere. Past initiatives such as the Women in Development approach since the mid-1970s and the Women, Peace and Security Agenda passed by the United Nations (UN) in a series of resolutions since 2000 have attracted much attention to the subject. As Dorothea Hilhorst and others have pointed out, the World Humanitarian Summit (WHS) held in Istanbul in 2016 has given considerable prominence to gender and the empowerment of girls and women, and almost 20 per cent of the meeting’s commitments addressed gender issues.1 In addition, over the last two 1  Dorothea Hilhorst et  al., “Gender, Sexuality, and Violence in Humanitarian Crises,” Disasters 42 (2018), 3–16, here 3. On the impact of feminism on international development, see Jean H. Quataert, “A Knowledge Revolution: Transnational Feminist Contributions to

E. Möller (*) • J. Paulmann Leibniz Institute of European History, Mainz, Germany e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected] K. Stornig University of Giessen, Giessen, Germany e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 E. Möller et al. (eds.), Gendering Global Humanitarianism in the Twentieth Century, Palgrave Macmillan Transnational History Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-44630-7_11

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decades, many humanitarian organizations, both governmental and nongovernmental, have put the issue of gender inequality on their agendas and started to develop specific tools and knowledge with the goal to operationalize gender issues effectively in the varied spheres of humanitarian work and cooperation.2 At the same time, however, the (theoretical) recognition of gender inequality and the steps often taken to address it have not sufficed to eliminate discrimination and relationships of domination. This has been shown most clearly by the recent scandals around sexual abuse in humanitarian organizations, which are alluded to in Bertrand Taithe’s contribution. In addition, feminist experts and scholars still criticize the often ineffective ways in which concerns for gender inequality and justice have been addressed in or translated into humanitarian practice. As Stacey Hynd argues in this volume, gendered constructions of both girlhood and victimhood contributed to the marginalization of African girl soldiers in the humanitarian programmes of aid and rehabilitation that have been promoted since the 1990s. Similarly, other scholars have pointed out that humanitarian activity at times and places fosters existing gender inequalities or even produces new ones, by, for instance, operating with essentialist views of women as helpless victims rather than addressing relational gender inequalities as they emerge and are transformed in the face of deprivation, (sexual) violence and/or disaster.3 International Development Agendas and Policies, 1965–1995,” Global Social Policy 14, no. 2 (2014), 209–227. As Ratna Kapur has shown, gender equality remains highly politically contested, and even feminist groups have sometimes contributed to the reproduction of gender and cultural essentialism. See Ratna Kapur, “Un-Veiling Equality: Disciplining the ‘Other’ Women Through Human Rights Discourse,” in Anver M. Emon, Mark S. Ellis and Benjamin Glahn, eds., Islamic Law and International Human Rights Law: Searching for Common Ground? (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 265–290. An introduction to the relationship between gender and human rights in the twentieth century is provided by Roman Birke and Carola Sachse, “Einleitung,” in Carola Sachse and Roman Birke, eds., Menschenrechte und Geschlecht im 20. Jahrhundert: Historische Studien (Göttingen: Wallstein Verlag, 2018), 7–19. 2  For an overview, see Dyan Mazurana and Keith Proctor, “Gender Analyses,” in Roger Mac Ginty and Jenny H. Peterson, eds., The Routledge Companion to Humanitarian Action (London and New York: Routledge, 2015), 49–61. 3  Hilhorst et al., “Gender, Sexuality, and Violence”; Ryerson Christie, “Critical Readings of Humanitarianism,” in Mac Ginty and Peterson, eds., The Routledge Companion to Humanitarian Action (London and New  York: Routledge, 2015), 38–48, here 42–43; Miriam Ticktin, “The Gendered Human of Humanitarianism: Medicalising and Politicising Sexual Violence,” Gender & History 23, no. 2 (2011), 250–265.

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These current debates about recent developments serve as a fruitful point of entry into the analysis of the relationship between gender and humanitarianism in the twentieth century. They inspire us to trace the specific ambiguities, tensions and dilemmas that emerge around gendered notions of victimhood and agency that seem to have characterized the humanitarian field since it was founded in the nineteenth century. We thus see the long-term centrality of gender issues and, with them, processes of inclusion and exclusion as well as the enduring impact of power on various levels in humanitarian discourse and practice. However, a better understanding of the workings of gender in humanitarianism in the past not only clarifies our understanding of the concept as such but also highlights the multiple and complex ways in which humanitarianism at specific times and places redefined (or contributed to the redefinition of) social relations, produced gendered representations and (re)shaped individual and organizational identities on local, national and transnational levels. This complexity ensures that future developments regarding gender and humanitarianism remain unpredictable, and giving greater attention this topic in the past is thus a vital task for historians. This volume has insisted on precisely this need to introduce gender systematically as a category of research on humanitarianism. We need to go beyond merely adding women as aid workers and beneficiaries to our pictures of the past. We have suggested doing so by questioning the ways that gender and gendered norms, ideologies and structures have functioned in historically situated humanitarian encounters, visions, organizations and strategies. As outlined in the introduction, this volume has approached the gendered histories of twentieth-century humanitarianism in three conceptual sections that have overlapped in many ways. The first section examined constructions of femininity and masculinity, showing that references to both could become resources in humanitarian practice and shape the ways in which aid workers constructed their identities towards both the beneficiaries of their activities and the supporting communities at home. The chapters by Bertrand Taithe on humanitarian masculinities, by Inger Marie Okkenhaug on the encounter between Scandinavian women missionaries and Armenian refugees and by Francesca Piana on the American Women’s Hospitals (AWH) in war-torn Europe have all pointed to the longevity of related tropes. Prominent among them are male humanitarian heroism and notions of female nurture that provided a powerful legitimization for women’s humanitarian engagement from very different national, ideological and professional backgrounds

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well into the twentieth century. This was even the case in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia: as Nora Derbal points out, since the 1960s, social activist women have used benevolent work to carve out a role of their own within the national project of modernization, providing relief to those groups (such as non-Saudis and Saudi women without male guardians) that became systematically excluded from the newly developed state social services. The second section of this volume traced the centrality of gender for the political dimension of humanitarianism on various levels and in different historical contexts during the twentieth century. It is now clear that gendered subjects and bodies often lay at the very heart of the politics of rescue and rehabilitation as they took shape in responding to severe crises. In the aftermath of the Armenian genocide (Nazan Maksudyan) or the violent outbreaks in India during the partition of 1947 (Maria Framke), women and their gendered bodies became not only targets of male violence but also imagined sites of resilience and reconstruction. Male-­ dominated groups and organizations promoted saving women and children with the goal to (re)produce ethnic, religious and/or national communities. Similarly, neither the emergence nor the forms of women’s philanthropic and humanitarian activism in Saudi Arabia during the 1960s (Nora Derbal) can be explained without reference to both the state’s sexist and racist politics and women’s striving for participation in the national project of modernization. On the other hand, however, the chapters have also pointed to the many ways in which very diverse groups of women, whether Muslim women in Saudi Arabia, Scandinavian missionaries or female American doctors, embraced humanitarianism in order to engage in what they considered meaningful work and to advance some form of emancipation. The third conceptual section focused on the workings of gendered representations in humanitarian discourse and practice. The chapters have pointed to the power that gendered representations gained in multiple contexts and on various levels. They often related to essentialist assumptions or largely stereotypical interpretations of the nature and specific needs of women, men, girls and boys. The contributions by Beth Baron on infant mortality in early twentieth-century Egypt, by Stacey Hynd on girl soldiers and by Katharina Stornig and Katharina Wolf on the SOS Children’s Villages have demonstrated the multiple ways in which gender was (or became) deeply embedded in the production of humanitarian knowledge, logics and narratives. Taken together, this volume has shown

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that the systematic introduction of the topics of gender (and sexuality) into the history of humanitarianism opens new perspectives. We consider three domains of methodological reflection to be fruitful points of departure for future research: gendering humanitarian practice, deconstructing gendered representations and problematizing key terms and concepts of humanitarianism.

Gendering Humanitarian Practice Gender mattered to twentieth-century humanitarian practice in a far-­ reaching sense and on various levels. This volume confirms and provides contextualization for what is largely accepted among humanitarian experts, organizations and activists today: natural and man-made disasters, armed conflict and development programmes affect(ed) certain groups of people differently and often according to gender, age and ethnicity/race. The chapters have gone beyond this general observation by revealing how discourses, norms and assumptions about the nature and appropriate roles of men and women have shaped gendered spheres and divisions of labour within humanitarian organizations and, at the same time, even impacted on the ways in which humanitarian need itself has been perceived. They have shown that the very ways in which the needs and sufferings of women, men, girls and boys were interpreted and addressed by humanitarian activists often depended on the extended visions, goals and politics promoted by their organizations. It made a significant difference for male and particularly for female beneficiaries if humanitarians’ views on gender aimed to preserve (or restore) a particular social order or, instead, to change it. This was, for instance, obvious in mid-twentieth-century India, where humanitarian responses to violence during the partition took a very different shape depending on the ideological and political background of the aid-giving organization. While the male-dominated and nationalist-­ oriented Hindu Mahasabha focused exclusively on the rescue of Hindu women—who were approached as the passive and victimized bearers of community honour—the feminist All India Women’s Conference provided aid to all women irrespective of religious affiliation and also promoted the active contribution of women to post-conflict peacebuilding. Similarly, humanitarian aid as experienced by child beneficiaries in the worldwide SOS Children’s Villages during the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s was deeply influenced by Christian conservative ideals of gender and sexuality as well as by the firm belief in the “family” as the natural, divinely

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ordained relationship in which orphaned or neglected children should be raised and reintegrated to society.4 Child welfare in the SOS Children’s villages was deeply influenced by the vision and ideology of gender relations held by the organization’s founding generation: boys and girls of different ages and from various cultural contexts were imagined on gendered terms as sons and daughters and were cared for in patriarchically structured institutions that emulated the structure of the heterosexual family. In these cases, the very form of aid and care as well as the chances and responsibilities encountered by individual beneficiaries in aid organizations not only depended on their sex but also depended on the specific meanings that aid-givers associated with gender. Men or women were assigned different roles in, for instance, rehabilitation, reconstruction or development. It is clear that humanitarian practice was considerably shaped by the aid givers’ gendered expectations towards the future roles and activities of the beneficiaries. The contributions have, moreover, pointed to the many ways in which actual gender relations within humanitarian organizations or aid-giving institutions affected humanitarian practice. In the cases presented, it generally made a difference whether the organization in question was gender diverse or not. The chapters have also drawn our attention to the multiple ways in which internal hierarchies, (gendered) divisions of labour and leadership in humanitarian organizations or communities impacted on day-to-day humanitarian practice. As Bertrand Taithe has reminded us, one of the foundational texts of Western humanitarianism, Henry Dunant’s A Memory of Solferino (1862),5 already employed considerably gendered interpretations of human (and particularly masculine) suffering and relief, views that reflected nineteenth-century notions of masculinity and femininity as well as related expectations towards the social roles of men and women: The Lombard women went first to those who cried the loudest – not always the worst cases. I sought to organize as best as I could relief in the quarters where it seemed to be most lacking, and I adopted in particular one of the 4  Horst Schreiber, Dem Schweigen verpflichtet: Erfahrungen mit SOS-Kinderdorf (Innsbruck et al.: StudienVerlag, 2014), 33–78. 5  For the reception of A Memory of Solferino and its key role in modern humanitarianism, see, for instance, Daniel-Erasmus Khan, Das Rote Kreuz: Geschichte einer humanitären Weltbewegung (München: C.H. Beck, 2013), 13–21; Michael Barnett, Empire of Humanity: A History of Humanitarianism (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2013), 1–2.

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Castiglione churches […]. Nearly five hundred soldiers were there, piled in the church, and a hundred more lay outside on straw in front of the church, with strips of canvas to protect them from the sun. The women entered the churches, and went from one man to another with jars and canteens full of pure water to quench their thirst and moisten their wounds. Some of these improvised nurses were beautiful and charming girls. Their gentleness and kindness, their tearful and compassionate looks, and their attentive care helped revive a little courage among the patients. The boys of the neighbourhood ran back and forth between the churches and the nearest fountains with buckets, canteens and watering pots.6

This passage not only highlights how humanitarian action was interpreted and explained in gendered terms from the start (and with a clear expectation of divided roles) but also witnesses to the male claim to a leadership role. Dunant represented himself throughout the text as a lucid leader who displayed a broad range of organizational, productive and communicative skills; by doing so, he would contribute to masculinist tropes that can still be found in humanitarian contexts today. The efficacy of the well-meant yet ultimately instinctual acts of the women of Castiglione depended in the end on Dunant’s foresight and rational male guidance— at least as he himself told the story. Humanitarian action modelled on Dunant’s widely circulated text promoted separate spheres for men and women, which were represented as complementing one another: while Dunant presented nursing as feminized practice, he depicted medical professionalism as well as organizational and infrastructural activities (and later political activism) as male tasks. Both gendered spheres of work related to each other hierarchically. As many studies have emphasized, Dunant and his fellow activists not only promoted but also established white, male and Christian leadership as a norm within the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), one that gained a long-term acceptance.7 It was only in 1918 that the first woman was admitted as a member of the ICRC-­leadership: Marguerite Frick-Cramer, who was later one of the principal authors of the Geneva  Henry Dunant, A Memory of Solferino (Geneva: ICRC, 1959), 63.  David P.  Forsythe, The Humanitarians: The International Committee of the Red Cross (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 203–204. For an analysis of this Genevan, Protestant, white and male milieu, see also Thomas David and Janick M.  Schaufelbuehl, “Swiss Conservatives and the Struggle for the Abolition of Slavery at the End of the Nineteenth Century,” Itinerario 34, no. 2 (2010), 87–103. 6 7

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Convention of 1929 on prisoners of war.8 And still, in the following decades, very few women worked in leading positions at the ICRC, although the regulation on the status of ICRC delegates from January 1949 already stipulated that “Swiss citizens of both sexes and good reputation may be taken into consideration as members of delegation”.9 Yet, it was still another 14 years until, inspired by the “sans-frontiérisme” movement, the first female delegate Jeanne Egger was appointed.10 And what is more, she still remained a minority, and so far we know only little about the workings of gender (and particularly masculinity) in the foundation, consolidation and expansion of the ICRC and the moral, political and sentimental universe it created.11 However, the extent to which Dunant’s narrative from 1862 continued to serve in later periods as a point of reference, even beyond the ICRC, can hardly be overstated. Notions of separate spheres, complementary activities, male authority and narratives and practices of male leadership impacted on and—at least in conservative circles—framed the conditions of humanitarian work in many organizations well into the twentieth century. This was as true for independent women missionaries from Scandinavia, who in one way or another had to deal with male church authorities in Aleppo during the 1920s, as it was for women aid workers in the SOS Children’s Villages, who operated in organizational structures that were modelled on the patriarchal family and that naturalized female caring roles and male authority. In addition, as we can see in Francesca Piana’s analysis of the of the American Women’s Hospitals’ activities in Greece, American women doctors not only founded their own 8  See Daniel Palmieri, “Marguerite Frick-Cramer,” in Erica Deuber Ziegler and Natalia Tikhonov, eds., Les femmes dans la mémoire de Genève: Du XVe au XXe siècle (Geneva: Éditions Suzanne Hurter, 2005), 182–183; James Crossland, Britain and the International Committee of the Red Cross, 1939–1945 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), 40. 9  “Projet de règlement concernant le statut des délégués du Comité international de la Croix-Rouge,” Article 3, 25.01.1949, quoted in Brigitte Troyon and Daniel Palmieri, “The ICRC Delegate: An Exceptional Humanitarian Player?,” International Review of the Red Cross 89, no. 856 (2007), 97–111, here 104. 10  See Irène Herrman and Daniel Palmieri, “Between Amazons and Sabines: A Historical Approach to Women and War,” International Review of the Red Cross 92, no. 877 (2010), 19–30, here 26. 11  Publications on the history of the ICRC, whether from within or without the organization, have yet to explore this topic exhaustively. See, for example, Francoise Perret and Francois Bugnion, De Budapest à Saigon: Histoire du Comité international de la Croix-Rouge 1956–1965 (Geneva: CICR, 2009); Forsythe, The Humanitarians.

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humanitarian organizations but also created and maintained women-dominated networks in order to achieve some degree of independence, to promote female medical professionalism in the international humanitarian sphere and to establish leadership roles for women. As Maria Framke’s chapter on Hindu organizations confirms, looking at practices from a gendered perspective helps to further differentiate—and to better understand—humanitarian activities. These examples suffice to show that the systematic introduction of gender to the study of humanitarian practice is analytically valuable. It not only invites us to more closely investigate the workings of power but also compels us to explain the production of (shifting) hierarchies between aid workers and beneficiaries, among aid workers or within beneficiary communities. The introduction of gender potentially enables us to see the processes of exclusion (e.g. of women or also of local people, such as the non-Saudi citizens analysed in Nora Derbal’s chapter) that might not be visible at first sight. This is of special importance when we study sources and narratives that were produced (and preserved) in masculinist humanitarian cultures and organizational frameworks. In other words, a gendered approach to humanitarian practice calls for explanations of what has frequently remained unquestioned in humanitarian histories: gender inequalities have too often been taken for granted rather than researched as phenomena that are constantly reproduced by social, cultural and/or political mechanisms of exclusion. And yet, the writing of gender histories of humanitarianism is methodologically challenging, for we often lack the appropriate sources that allow us to recover the voices of the less powerful,12 to deconstruct what contemporaries understood as the different natures of men and women or to analyse the multiple meanings of gender in specific social and cultural contexts.13 This, however, is a familiar situation for historians interested in the workings of gender in international, transnational or global history. We are convinced that the historiographies of gender, empire and the world have much to offer for the historical study of humanitarian practice. Exploring the unspoken 12  See the articles by Inger Marie Okkenhaug and Nazan Maksudyan on the rare traces of Armenian women’s and children’s voices or the article by Nora Derbal on the non-Saudi beneficiaries of Saudi humanitarian aid. 13  For an attempt to write a history “from below” of gender transformation during industrialization in Egypt in the twentieth century, see the valuable study: Hanan Hamad, Industrial Sexuality: Gender, Urbanization and Social Transformation in Egypt (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2016).

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gender roles in humanitarian organizations, which were based on ideas of paternalism and civilizing missions14 during and after the colonial period,15 would be of great importance in order to understand more deeply the structures and procedures of these organizations. Given the centrality of the human body in humanitarian practice, it appears particularly fruitful to follow recent scholarship that uses the body as a point of departure for analysing the overlap between and entanglement of ideological, material, symbolic and social systems on local, national or even global levels.16 Studying the roles of women, gender and sexuality in world history, Tony Ballantyne and Antoinette Burton have suggested approaching the body “as an archive for the pleasure of human experience and the violence of history, colonial or otherwise”.17 Such an analytical focus on bodies, they argue, enables scholars to trace the “dynamic relationship between representation and ‘reality’” and thus to highlight the “work of mediation that embodied subjects perform” in specific historical circumstances and encounters.18 Applied to gender histories of humanitarianism, this could mean studying humanitarians and aid workers ­systematically as embodied subjects and questioning the ways in which bodily markers like gender (in intersection with other constructions like ethnicity/race or class) shaped attitudes and actions. We could, for instance, ask how gender contributed to the social position of aid workers within complex humanitarian encounters that involved not only dealing with the beneficiaries of aid but also acting in a context shaped by other institutions and the larger sphere of national and international politics. Further, an analytical focus on the body in humanitarian practice draws our attention to the structural and material conditions of its existence. By looking at the human body as a discursively and socially constructed object, we can also trace the “very real stories about labor, leisure, 14  Daniel Laqua, “Inside the Humanitarian Cloud: Causes and Motivations to Help Friends and Strangers,” Journal of Modern European History 12, no. 2 (2014), 175–185, here 182. 15  Rob Skinner and Alan Lester, “Humanitarianism and Empire: New Research Agendas,” The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 40, no. 5 (2012), 729–747. 16  See Tony Ballantyne and Antoinette Burton, “Postscript: Bodies, Genders, Empires: Reimagining World History,” in Tony Ballantyne and Antoinette Burton, eds., Bodies in Contact: Rethinking Colonial Encounters in World History (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2005), 405–423, here 413. 17  Ibid., 406. 18  Ibid.

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mobility, political economy, the household, the family, and the state (among other things) that it has to tell”.19 The richness of such an approach is indicated by Beth Baron’s chapter on infant mortality in early twentiethcentury Egypt: focusing on the ways in which different actors approached alarming mortality rates among infants, Baron shows that colonial administrators, missionaries and Egyptian social reformers not only projected different hopes and interests on the bodies of infants in a precarious state but also suggested diverging explanations of, responsibilities for and measures to reduce infant mortality, from blaming and instructing mothers to demands to improve living conditions, education and health care among Egypt’s poor. Moreover, Baron uses the Egyptian women’s bodies’ mobility from their homes to the dispensaries set up by various humanitarian organizations as an indicator of their agency. Thus, gender histories of humanitarianism—as we suggest writing them—approach the suffering body as an “archive” not only for individual need and crisis but also for the ways in which individual human beings, as men, women, boys or girls, related to social structures, resources, institutions and society at large. Finally, a focus on the gendered body not only draws our attention to the intimate dimension of humanitarian practice but also encourages us to connect that practice to larger themes, structures and power relations. Human suffering as well as practices of aid-giving and aid-receiving thus appear less as abstract concepts framed by powerful universalisms but more as historically situated social practices: as acts that are actually being done by specific (groups of) people; as acts that involve physical contact, moral meaning, feelings, the senses, material realities and complex (and shifting) relationships of vulnerability.20 On a more general note, we may thus conclude that individuals are effectively saved as embodied subjects and that humanitarianism thus relates to not only universal principles and ideas of human sameness but also particularities and difference.21 Indeed, as Stacey Hynd’s study makes clear, universal principles and claims over neutrality can also reinforce gender inequality if they implicitly rely on male norms and fail to consider the specific roles and needs of girls and women during armed conflicts.

 Ibid., 407.  For a related framing of caregiving, see Ian Wilkinson and Arthur Kleinman, A Passion for Society: How we Think about Human Suffering (Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 2016), e.g. 161–164. 21  See also Ticktin, “The Gendered Human,” 261–262. 19 20

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Deconstructing Gendered Representations Particularities and differences within the broader field of humanitarianism become obvious through the deconstruction of gendered representations of the people involved with them. Demonstrating this insight is the second innovative result of this book. Included here are both self-­ representations and representations of others, whether made by the aid organizations themselves or by media and political institutions. The contributions have clearly shown that humanitarian donors as well as their beneficiaries were represented—often unconsciously—according to specific understandings of the roles of men and women. To this day, historians of humanitarianism have failed to comprehensively recognize this fact. We advocate a critical questioning of explicit and implicit role models for men and women in humanitarian contexts, both as aid-givers and beneficiaries of aid.22 Such an approach might further elucidate the relationship between humanitarianism and politics. Humanitarian organizations’ own efforts to represent themselves as non-political and the closely related perception of humanitarian aid as in itself apolitical have been refuted by scholarly research,23 yet the integration of gender as an analytical category would contribute to understanding why the activities of benevolent women are still not fully recognized and why the notion of humanitarianism is still marked by a focus on women as victims. Researching the representation, and participation, of men and women in humanitarian contexts would be of particular interest for the so-called new humanitarianism, which has—at least in theory—called for equality between the sexes since the 1980s.24 This volume has shown that the line between the visibility or invisibility of humanitarian actors is often drawn along lines of gender. Stacey Hynd’s research on girl combatants in Africa demonstrates that these girls were for a long time even invisible to humanitarian organizations because they did not consider girls to be active fighters. This question needs more 22  An inspiring example of how to critically investigate these role models can be drawn from Corinna Unger, International Development: A Postwar History (London: Bloomsbury, 2018). 23  See Didier Fassin, Humanitarian Reason: A Moral History of the Present (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2012); Miriam Ticktin, Casualties of Care: Immigration and the Politics of Humanitarianism in France (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011). 24  See, for example, Michal Givoni, The Care of the Witness: A Contemporary History of Testimony in Crises (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016), 196.

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investigation, for instance, in the domain of international humanitarian law. As legal specialists Helen Durham and Katie O’Byrne have underlined, even the texts and procedures of humanitarian law still often consider women and men in conflicts only according to “stereotypes about how men and women ‘should’ operate” and thereby oversee that there are female fighters as well as male victims of sexual violence.25 Such critique of an essentialist understanding of gender in humanitarian contexts, moreover, reminds us of how little we still know about the role of sexuality and the influence of heteronormativity in the history of humanitarianism. It also invites questions on the ways in which the (de)criminalization and social acceptance of homosexuality in some parts of the world during the second half of the twentieth century impacted on global humanitarianism. By taking a global perspective, this volume deconstructs not only stereotyped representations of women but also those of men in humanitarian contexts that have still not been fully explored by research on humanitarianism. As Maria Framke reveals, Hindu men were often represented as being threatened in their masculinity or virility by Muslim men and, therefore, were seen to require physical training in order to strengthen the Hindu nation. Yet, this construction went hand-in-hand with the representation of Hindu women as “pure”, tasked mainly with the function of supporting their male “brothers in arms”. A similar ambivalent representation of men was present in the writings of the Scandinavian female missionaries explored by Inger Marie Okkenhaug: Armenian men were viewed as martyrs, and therefore not as weak, even though they had not fought those Turks who had perpetrated the genocide against them. This was, however, not a description the missionaries used for Armenian women, the majority of the genocide survivors, who were instead represented as both brave survivors and objects of conversion. The examples of the Scandinavian missionaries and the American female doctors studied by Francesca Piana—in contrast to the male humanitarians explored by Bertrand Taithe—is also telling for the gendered representation of their task: while the female activists described their work in terms of care and 25  Helen Durham and Katie O’Byrne, “The Dialogue of Difference: Gender Perspectives on International Humanitarian Law,” International Review of the Red Cross 92, no. 877 (2010), 31–52, here 52; Johannes Paulmann, “The Dilemmas of Humanitarian Aid: Historical Perspectives,” in Johannes Paulmann, ed., Dilemmas of Humanitarian Aid in the Twentieth Century (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), 1–31.

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even motherhood, male humanitarian activists depicted theirs with reference to (the protection of) law. These differences of representation have been repeated, and thus reinforced, by archival practices and writings on humanitarianism, which have still not extended their ambition of “disrupting the traditional narrative” on humanitarianism to the question of particular male and female representations.26 A consideration of the various humanitarian crises and responses to them that have been explored in this volume demonstrates how disasters or periods of political transformation can generate more ambivalent representations of men and women. Nazan Maksudyan’s and Inger Marie Okkenhaug’s contributions reveal that the Armenian genocide also provoked new images of Armenian women as household leaders in the Western press. Yet, new representations always ran the risk of being exploited politically, as Nora Derbal’s study on Saudi women shows: poverty, natural catastrophes and political crises necessitated and enabled women’s humanitarian efforts and allowed them to be depicted as active women. These representations were, in turn, used by the Saudi monarch to present his state as modern and strong despite its severe shortcomings with regard to gender equality. While scholars have recently stressed the central role of the media in driving or legitimating humanitarianism and humanitarian intervention,27 little has so far been said about the role of gender in humanitarian representation. Given that media research still characterizes war and conflict reporting as clearly male domains, we may reasonably ask about the implications of this viewpoint in terms of the production and distribution of humanitarian knowledge. Analysing gender in the media coverage of war in German newspapers from the 1980s and 1990s, Romy Fröhlich has recently shown that women were (and remain) unrepresented as actors in the context of war, violence and armed conflicts. Just as the profession of the war reporter is still largely gendered as male, Fröhlich’s quantitative data demonstrate that women are still often marginalized in war 26   See, for example, Matthew Hilton et  al., “History and Humanitarianism: A Conversation,” Past & Present 242, no. 1 (2018), 1–38, here 2. 27  Heide Fehrenbach and Davide Rodogno, eds., Humanitarian Photography: A History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015); Johannes Paulmann, Humanitarianism and Media: 1900 to the Present (New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2019); Philip Hammond, “The Media and Humanitarian Intervention,” in Josef Seethaler et  al., eds., Selling War: The Role of Mass Media in Hostile Conflicts from World War I to the “War on Terror” (Bristol and Chicago: Intellect, 2013), 237–258.

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reporting.28 The specific roles and functions of women and gender in armed conflicts are thus relatively unknown and women especially run the risk of being depicted in stereotypical ways and as idealized victims, a situation that, given the actual complexities of war, might compromise the efficacy of humanitarian assistance.

Problematizing Key Terms and Concepts Finally, the chapters in this volume have engaged with a range of concepts and narratives that have functioned as important tools in both the history and the historiography of humanitarianism. The authors have pointed out the gendered implications that some of these terms have acquired in specific contexts. We thus believe that a critical reflection on key terms and concepts in humanitarian historiographies and an explication of their historical origins, meanings and conjunctures constitutes another particularly rich perspective for future research. We argue that such an undertaking would indeed profit from a dialogue with gender history, which, inspired by feminist theory, has been successful in reflecting on and problematizing (or even dismantling) key categories of historical research and highlighting their exclusionist implications and ideological roots.29 Some of these categories (e.g. citizenship, public sphere, modernization, civilization, development and civil society) matter directly to historians of humanitarianism, who often deal with a range of universalist concepts and related claims that the subjects they study originated and used. Protagonists continuously engaged with universal notions and with related moral and political claims that gained their force precisely through the typically humanitarian stance of avoiding taking sides. And yet, twentieth-century humanitarianism took shape under conditions of (radical) inequality and expanded significantly in social spaces (e.g. international politics, the military, warzones and international organizations) that partly excluded and 28  Romy Fröhlich, “Women, the Media and War: The Representation of Women in German Broadsheets between 1980 and 2000,” in Seethaler et al., eds., Selling War: The Role of Mass Media in Hostile Conflicts from World War I to the “War on Terror” (Bristol and Chicago: Intellect, 2013), 159–179. 29  See, for instance, Kathleen Canning, Gender History in Practice: Historical Perspectives on Bodies, Class, and Citizenship (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2006); Joanna Bourke, What it Means to be Human: Reflections from 1791 to the Present (London: Virago Press, 2011); Mary Louise Roberts, “The Transnationalization of Gender History,” History and Theory 44, no. 3 (2005), 456–468, here 462.

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certainly discriminated against women, often denying any recognition of their voices and experiences. Such exclusions were often not made explicit, for many humanitarian activists (like some historians) failed to consider their own gendered viewpoints, guided as they were by naturalized interpretations of sexual difference. It is, thus, important to study the gendered implications of apparently neutral concepts such as “humanity”, “human dignity”, “impartiality”, “suffering”, “victimhood”, “vulnerability”, “compassion”, “innocence”, “aid” or “security”. When studied in particular historical and political contexts, these terms reveal the influence of culturally embedded, gendered ideas and practices that are not immediately apparent on humanitarianism’s rhetorical surface. This volume has presented several cases in which humanitarians originated and employed notions that, though framed as universal categories, were in fact rooted in specific cultural understandings and ideological interpretations of sexual difference: they, therefore, produced, reinforced and transported gendered assumptions. For instance, none of the prominent humanitarians introduced by Bertrand Taithe questioned male leadership in the making of what could be termed an (international) humanitarian sphere. To the contrary, they encouraged a humanitarian culture that promoted action to benefit humankind that was not gender-­ neutral but heavily reliant on the naturalization of masculinist attitudes, male capacities and white male privilege. The politics of compassion they promoted foresaw different roles for men and women without questioning these roles as elements of social, symbolic and cultural structures of inequality. In their writings, humanitarians developed tropes and narratives of humanitarian engagement that appealed to readers in Europe and that also assigned meanings to humanitarian action that were closely related to other fields of activity that in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were often associated with men and male authority: the military, armed conflict, international politics, (colonial) adventure and travelling. In turn, in the context of the SOS Children’s Villages, for example, it went without saying that aid towards orphaned or neglected children was framed in gendered terms and with references to naturalized and embodied ideas and capacities of (loving and caring) motherhood and (guiding and authoritative) fatherhood well into the twentieth century. Similarly, the chapters by Inger Marie Okkenhaug and Francesca Piana have shown that the relief work of Christian women missionaries and

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women doctors operated with clear ideas about women’s roles and the divergent needs of male and female beneficiaries despite the fact that they themselves had often transgressed established gender roles. Their notion of Christianity was by no means gender-neutral. These Christian women aid workers derived these ideas both from their interpretations of social, economic and political relations in the localities in which they worked and from their religiously rooted beliefs about the “nature” and appropriate roles of Christian women and men. The same was true for the Muslim Saudi women who, in performing aid work, corresponded to old and new ideas of (elite) Muslim womanhood that were also used as political instruments by the Saudi King. As to the Indian Hindu women in the chapter by Maria Framke, religious and political dimensions interconnected when female activists relied on the ideal of care-giving but were also presented as defenders of the “Hindu race”. While the development of feminist theory and the rise of gender-sensitive politics have gradually brought change since the 1970s, Stacey Hynd’s chapter demonstrates how deeply gendered and racialized imaginations of “African girl soldiers” functioned in international relief and rehabilitation work and, at times, reduced its effectiveness. She shows that Western constructions of “girlhood” not only functioned as a model against which international relief agencies measured the experiences, sufferings and needs of girl soldiers in Central Africa but also found their way into international rehabilitation programmes. The chapters have presented a series of cases in which apparently neutral terms such as “humanity” or “Christianity” were fundamentally gendered. This was also the case with vocabularies directly connected to humanitarian action. Notions of gender functioned as defining features of “aid”, “relief”, “rehabilitation” and “development”. Moreover, such notions connected the interpretations of need by activists in humanitarian hotspots worldwide to those of their respective supporting communities. The chapters point to the need to analyse key categories and their influence in both past humanitarianism and present research. In other words, humanitarians have used and (re)produced some powerful concepts and ideas that, constituted through particular narrative logics and within specific structures of inequality, were (and partly still are) heavily charged with gendered meanings. These ideas and concepts have also found their way into historical scholarship and guided historians’ choices regarding which organizations to examine, where to search for “humanitarians” and what activities, attitudes and claims to include in humanitarian histories. To note but one example, it seems striking that mainstream histories of

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humanitarianism—when discussing its political, moral and sentimental dimension as a global concept and phenomenon—have failed to engage with the notions, practices and meanings of compassion that numerous women who were engaged in philanthropy, voluntarism and care work since the nineteenth century have put forward.30 Nor have historians explored deeply the hopes and goals of the international women’s movement, which in a similar way promoted the moral reform of the world through the integration of what its members promoted as “feminine” values and qualities that were connected to motherhood and peace-making.31 By way of conclusion, we stress the necessity to question our own epistemological frameworks in the context of gender and to problematize the gendered aspects of humanitarianism as they have been conceptualized by both activists as well scholars in the past and in the present. As has been pointed out, humanitarianism is a concept that has moral, political and emotional implications.32 It is based on a strong (philosophical, religious, political or sentimental) notion of human sameness, and it promotes solidarity with needy others irrespective of national, racial, religious, gender and age differences. Yet, humanitarianism has developed as a highly ambiguous concept, for it has not necessarily claimed equality.33 The tension between universal claims based upon beliefs in human sameness and the acceptance (or even production) of inequality has been 30  See, for instance, Jean H. Quataert, Patriotic Women and the National Imagination in Dynastic Germany, 1813–1916 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2001). For imperial contexts, see, for instance, Lora Wildenthal, German Women for Empire (Durham: Duke University Press, 2001), 13–53; Kumari Jayawardena, The White Woman’s Other Burden: Western Women and South Asia during British Colonial Rule (New York: Routledge, 1995); Nupur Chaudhuri and Margaret Strobel, eds., Western Women and Imperialism: Complicity and Resistance (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1992); Antoinette Burton, Burdens of History: British Feminists, Indian Women, and Imperial Culture, 1865–1915 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1994). 31  See Christa Hämmerle et al., “Introduction: Women’s and Gender History of the First World War: Topics, Concepts, Perspectives,” in Christa Hämmerle et al., eds., Gender and the First World War (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2009), 1–15, here 9; Leila J. Rupp, Worlds of Women: The Making of an International Women’s Movement (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997), 82–104; Angelika Schaser, Frauenbewegung in Deutschland 1848–1933 (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2006), 88–96. 32  Johannes Paulmann, “Humanity – Humanitarian Reason – Imperial Humanitarianism: European Concepts in Practice,” in Fabian Klose and Miriam Thulin, eds., Humanity: A History of European Concepts in Practice from the Sixteenth Century to the Present (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2016), 287–311. 33  Ibid., 304; Fassin, Humanitarian Reason, 3.

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f­ ruitfully addressed by a broad range of historical studies pointing particularly to the imperial context of humanitarianism’s origins and its (post)imperial function in defining and shaping global hierarchies and Europe’s relations to the world.34 However, while the study of the (post)imperial implications of humanitarianism certainly constitutes a rich field of research essential to understanding humanitarianism as both a concept and a historical phenomenon, it has tended to produce a focus on the relations between (imperial) governments, international institutions and humanitarian organizations: spheres that have all been marked by gender inequality. Women entered these international spheres only gradually, and throughout the twentieth century, their roles were almost exclusively defined through hierarchical relationships to men. Histories of humanitarianism thus should reflect on the fact that international political and organizational structures were not neutral, but instead built on hierarchical interpretations of sexual difference.35 Furthermore, historians face powerful historical narratives and explanatory logics that often associate men with globality and the world and women with locality and the home. And yet, women not only participated in global reform and human-rights movements but also connected their own specific hopes and goals to activism that crossed national borders.36 Thus, despite humanitarianism’s universal claims, we should focus on the ways in which the concept has been used by men and women with specific origins and question the ways in which its meaning was created and negotiated in concrete historical contexts. Humanitarians had the ability to both empower and disempower particular groups and individuals, and we consider the analytical category of gender to be indispensable in fully understanding the influence of power in humanitarian contexts. We hold that the very concept of h ­ umanitarianism 34  See, for example, Alan Lester and Fae Dussart, Colonization and the Origins of Humanitarian Governance: Protecting Aborigines across the Nineteenth-Century British Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015); J.  P. Daughton, “Behind the Imperial Curtain: International Humanitarian Efforts and the Critique of French Colonialism in the Interwar Years,” French Historical Studies 34, no. 3 (2011), 503–528. 35  Angelika Epple and Angelika Schaser, “Multiple Histories? Changing Perspectives on Modern Historiography,” in Angelika Epple and Angelika Schaser, eds., Gendering Historiography: Beyond National Canons (Frankfurt am Main and New  York: Campus, 2009), 7–23, here 15. 36  See Glenda Sluga, “‘Spectacular Feminism’: The International History of Women, World Citizenship and Human Rights,” in Francisca de Haan et al., eds., Women’s Activism: Global Perspectives from the 1890s to the Present (London and New  York: Routledge, 2013), 44–58.

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and the paradigms established by much of the recent scholarship around it can be fruitfully problematized in relation to the complex effects of constructions of masculinity and femininity and their intersection with other categories of difference. In other words, while, from a contemporary perspective, it might seem enough to add women and gender to the picture, we consider it a valuable task to go further and to question the gender of humanitarianism itself rather than taking its current male connotation for granted.

Bibliography1

Abrams, Jamie R. “Debunking the Myth of Universal Male Privilege.” University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform 49 (2016): 303–33. Abugideiri, Hibba. Gender and the Making of Modern Medicine in Colonial Egypt. Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate, 2010. Aggestam, Karin, and Annika Björkdahl, eds. War and Peace in Transition. Changing Roles of External Actors. Lund: Nordic Academic Press, 2009. Ahlbäck, Anders, and Fia Sundevall, eds. Gender, War and Peace. Breaking up the Borderlines. Joensuu: University Press of Eastern Finland, 2014. Akçam, Taner. The Young Turks’ Crime against Humanity. The Armenian Genocide and Ethnic Cleansing in the Ottoman Empire. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2012. Al-Rasheed, Madawi. A Most Masculine State: Gender, Politics and Religion in Saudi Arabia. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013. Al-Shalhūb, Hayfāʾ ʿAbd al-Raḥmān. Mushkilat al-Faqr bayn il-Nisāʾ fı̄ al-­ Mamlaka al-ʿArabiyya al-Saʿūdiyya [The Problem of Poverty among Women in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia]. Riyadh: Maktabat al-Rushd, 2010. Altınay, Ayşe Gül, and Yektan Türkyılmaz. “Unravelling Layers of Gendered Silencing: Converted Armenian Survivors of the 1915 Catastrophe.” In Untold Histories of the Middle East: Recovering Voices from the 19th and 20th Centuries,

1  This bibliography presents a selection of publications the editors find particularly useful for studying the intersections of gender and twentieth-century humanitarianism. It neither claims completeness nor includes all titles cited in the chapters of this volume. Complete references to all works cited in this volume are provided in the footnotes.

© The Author(s) 2020 E. Möller et al. (eds.), Gendering Global Humanitarianism in the Twentieth Century, Palgrave Macmillan Transnational History Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-44630-7

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Index1

A Aba al-Khail, ʿAbd al-Rahman, 186 ʿAbbassiyya, 217 ABCFM, see American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions ʿAbd al-Wahhab, Muhammad Ibn, 173, 174 ʿAbdin, 205, 216 Abdülhamid II, 68 Adana, 118 Adham, Kamal Ibrahim, 188 Adham, Muzaffar, 188 See also Kamal Adham, Ibrahim Adoption, 119, 124, 125n23, 128, 130n42, 142, 178, 238, 238n74, 239, 268n54 Afghanistan, 15, 20 Agency, 10, 12, 17, 19, 28, 30, 31, 40n18, 41n21, 77, 83, 109, 113,

119, 142, 256, 259, 260, 264, 265, 268–270, 276, 277, 279, 283, 291 Ahmad, (Princess) ʿAyn al-Hayat, 205 AIWC, see All India Women’s Conference Albania, 86 Al-Basar International Foundation, 169 Al-Birr Charity Society, 187n78 Aleppo, 17, 61–84, 127, 130n44, 132n52, 288 Alexandretta, 118 Alexandria, 181, 201, 203, 216 Ali, Husain Ibn, 178 al-Jamʿiyya al-Khayriyya al-Islāmiyya, 181 al-Jamʿiyya al-Khayriyya al-Nisāʾiyya al-Ū lā bi-Jidda, 172–173 All Bengal Mahila Atma Raksha Samiti, 160, 160n57

 Note: Page numbers followed by ‘n’ refer to notes.

1

© The Author(s) 2020 E. Möller et al. (eds.), Gendering Global Humanitarianism in the Twentieth Century, Palgrave Macmillan Transnational History Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-44630-7

317

318 

INDEX

All-India Hindoo Dharm Rakshini Sabha, 158, 159n54 All India Hindu Mahasabha, 22, 146–159, 158n54, 162, 165 All India Religion Protection Society, see All-India Hindoo Dharm Rakshini Sabha All India Women’s Conference (AIWC), 22, 146–148, 147n12, 159–166 Al-Nahda Society, 173, 182, 185, 187, 188 Altorki, Soraya, 171, 172 Amasya, 127 Al-Amawy, Jihan, 174, 186, 188 American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM), 102, 103n70 American Committee for Relief in the Middle East, see Near East Relief, American Committee for Relief in the Near East American Medical Association, 93 American Red Cross (ARC), 90, 94, 95, 97, 98, 101, 103, 105, 106, 112, 113 American University of Cairo, 206n40 American Women’s Hospitals (AWH), 18, 85–87, 87n6, 89–113, 283 Anatolia, 68, 70, 75, 98, 102, 118, 120, 122, 123, 142, 147n12 Andheri, 164 Andreassen, Alette, 66n15, 68, 73n40 Angola, 264, 265, 272, 272n71 Antalya, 118 Antep, 118 Aolain, Ni, 37, 37n7, 268n52, 270n64 Arabian American Oil Company, 177 Arabian Peninsula, 170 ARAMCO, see Arabian American Oil Company Aramyan School, 127n33

Armed conflict, 2, 4, 11, 14n42, 27, 265, 267, 285, 291, 294–296 See also War Armenia, 101, 101n65, 86 Armenian Apostolic Church, 69, 75, 76, 81 Armenian Athletic General Union and Scouts, 132 Armenian Evangelical Church, 76 Armenian National Relief, see Hay Azkayin Khnamadarutiun Armenian Patriarchate, 125n26, 130, 135 See also Istanbul Armenian Patriarchate Armenian Republic, 68 Armenian Roman Catholic Church, 76 Armenuhi, 140 Army Medical Reserve Corps, 86 Arnavutköy, 131, 132, 136n75 Artinian, Dr., 140 Arya Samaj, 157 Dayanand Salvation Mission, 157 Asia Minor, 101, 101n65, 118, 86 Aswan, 210 Asyut, 207, 208, 210 Athens, 101–103, 105, 106n88, 111, 261n21, 264n35, 274n81 Augsburg, 231 Australia, 239 Austria, 26, 28, 223, 248–250, 252 Avedisian, Toomas, 132 AWH, see American Women’s Hospitals Awqaf, see Ministry of Religious Endowments B Baden-Powell, Robert, 45 Baghdad, 58 Bahçecik, 127

 INDEX 

Bahri, Zaruhi, 138n83, 140 Baker, Pasha, 47, 48 Baker, Valentine, 47 Bakirköy, 126, 136n75 Balat, 131 Bandirma, 127 Barton, Clara, 95 Bavaria, 232n47 Beauvoir, Simone de, 252 Bebek, 137 Beijing, 35 Beirut, 66 Belgium, 50 Benevolent Ambulance Society, see Jamʿiyyat al-Isʿāf al-Khayriyya Bengal, 147, 149–151, 149n15, 153n31, 155, 157, 158, 160, 160n57 Benha, 212, 213 Beni Suef, 207, 208 Besiktas, 127n32, 130 Beylerbeyi Industrial School, 132 Bhonsle, Shivaji, 153n31 Bihar, 149 Biørn, Bodil, 65, 66n15, 68, 70, 71, 75, 78 Bitlis, 134n61 Black Sea, 102 Blackwell, Elizabeth, 92 Blantyre, Lord, 46 Body, 122, 133n60, 153, 153n35, 154, 183, 210, 214, 22, 227, 239, 265, 266, 290, 291, 5, 8, 8n18, 94 Bolu, 134n61 Bombay, 147n12, 149, 149n15, 161n62 See also Bombay Province Bombay Province, 164 Bowlby, John, 240 Boyhood, 55 Boys boyhood, 55

319

boy soldiers, 28, 256, 257, 266, 272, 275 sons, 182, 222, 238, 286 Boy Scout Movement, see Boy Scouts See also Girl Guides Boy Scouts, 132, 146n9 Bremen, 107 Brett, Rachel, 265n39, 268, 269n56 Britain, 18, 43, 51, 69, 92, 229n28 See also Great Britain British India, 143, 146–149 Budapest, 203 Bulaq, 201, 201n21, 213, 216, 217 Bulgaria, 46, 47 Bursa, 134n61 Bush, George W., 20 Butler, Josephine, 6, 6n7 C Cairo, 201, 203, 206, 207, 213, 215, 216 Cairo Central Ladies’ Committee, 206 Cakiryan, Arakel, 135 Calcutta, 148–150, 149n16, 160 Cambodia, 35, 55–58, 257 Cameroon, 57 Canary Islands, 51 Care care roles, caring roles, 11, 236, 238, 288 care work, 11, 13, 229, 253, 298 caring power, 12 Casement, Sir Roger, 38, 48–52 Castiglione, 287 Catholic Relief Service, 146n9 Caucasus, 102 Central Africa, 25, 28, 297 Central Committee for Exiles, see Darakrelots Getronagan Hantsnazhoghov Chandpur, 160

320 

INDEX

Chandpur Mahila Samiti, 160 Charity, 23, 24, 104, 164, 168–173, 188, 192, 238, 271, 274 Childhood, 98, 121, 185, 202, 216, 243, 244, 247, 258, 262, 264, 269 See also Boyhood; Girlhood Children, 15 orphans, 136 See also Boys; Girls Child soldiers, 27, 255, 256, 258, 261, 263–266, 270–272 China, 67n19, 147n12 China Relief Fund, 147n12 Chios, 103 Choudhury, Satyendra Kumar Datta, 151 Christianity, 18, 66, 67, 76, 81, 82, 141, 297 Chry, Mrs., 104 Church Missionary Society, 210, 217 See also Harmal Cilicia, 125 Citizenship, 23, 24, 179, 180, 274, 295 Civil Defence Organization, 168 Clot, Bey, 211 CMS, see Church Missionary Society Colmenar González, Matias, 248 Colonialism decolonization, 22, 26, 248, 254, 260 post-colonial conflicts, 275 See also Imperialism Committee for Orphan Relief, see Vorpakhnam Committee of Enquiry with Regard to Deportation of Women and Children, 136 Committee of Purchasing Sekib, see Mubayaa Komisyonu Committee of Union and Progress, Young Turks (CUP), 120–125, 133, 142

Community, 3, 15, 21–25, 27–29, 63, 65, 71, 74–76, 81, 83, 100, 105, 118, 119, 122, 124, 126, 128, 131, 132, 134, 137, 140–166, 176, 177, 180, 203, 223, 226, 233, 238, 256, 258–260, 262, 270, 271, 275–278, 283–286, 289, 297 Compassion, 52, 59, 82, 169, 296, 298 Congo, 49, 50 Conrad, Joseph, 49 Crete, 103 Cromer, First Lady, 200 See also Lady Cromer Dispensaries; Lady Cromer Home Cruikshank, Mrs. Marian, 104 Cullwick, Hannah, 51 CUP, see Committee of Union and Progress, Young Turks Cushman, Emma D., 135, 137–139 D Daegu, 253 The Daily Telegraph, 42n26, 58 Dalat, 251 Damanhur, 208 Damascus, 73, 127 Darakrelots Getronagan Hantsnazhoghov, 126 Davies, A. Tegla, 54 Daylarian, Mrs., 140 Defence for Children International, 265 Delhi, 155n41 De Mello, Sergio Vieira, 58 Democratic Republic of the Congo, 272 Denmark, 62, 68, 70 Der Yeghiayan, Zaven, 125, 130, 135 Der Zor, 127 Deutscher Hilfsbund, 70

 INDEX 

Development development of children, 228, 243, 247 economic development, 23 social development, 23, 167–192 Difference of age, 10, 298 of class, 9, 10 of gender, 9, 25, 106, 234, 298 of race, 9, 10, 298 of sex (see Sexual difference) Discrimination, 89, 91, 109, 112, 255, 271, 282 Disempowerment, 25, 29, 278 Diyarbakir, 134 Dodge, Cole P., 263 Dominican Republic, 10 Drenth, Annemieke van, 12, 12n37 Dunant, Henry, 45, 46, 49, 286–288 Durkheim, Émile, 52 E Eblighatyan, Madteos, 130 Ecuador, 249, 250 Eddy, Charles B., 104 Edinburgh, 111 Efendi, Mehmet Nuri, 136n75 Egger, Jeanne, 288 EGM, see Egypt General Mission Egypt, 25–27, 30, 181, 182, 195–219, 284, 289n13, 291 Egypt General Mission (EGM), 210, 211, 213 Egyptian Feminist Union, 216 Elites, 147, 171, 174, 177, 179, 201, 203, 205, 206, 217–219, 268, 274, 297 Elliott, Mabel Evelyn, 101, 102, 104, 104n75, 105, 130n45, 131n48, 135 Emancipation, 12, 30, 31, 67, 91, 110, 112, 113, 182, 254, 284

321

Emmanuelli, Xavier, 54, 57 Emotions, 11, 49, 138, 244, 266 Empowerment, 9, 25, 29, 31, 66, 67, 68n22, 88, 89, 112, 148, 163, 187, 192, 259, 269, 281 Engel Bey, Dr. Franz, 203 England, 198, 217 English Keswick Conventions, 68 EPLF, see Eritrean People’s Liberation Front Eritrean People’s Liberation Front (EPLF), 262 Erzincan, 133n60, 147n12 Erzurum, 127, 134n61, 140 Eskisehir, 134n61 Essentialism, 15, 282n1 Ethiopia, 262 Eton, 44 European Association of SOS Children’s Villages, 250n108 Evian, 99 Exclusion, 22, 24, 86, 283, 289, 296 F Family biological family, 226, 237, 239 heterosexual family, 286 ideas/representations of family, 224 life, 225, 226, 242, 248, 252 nuclear family, 227, 227n22, 252 role, 227, 253 structure, 245 Fatherhood, 26, 36, 222, 224, 232, 296 FAU, see Friends Ambulance Unit al-Fayed, Dodi, 182 Al-Fayed, Mohammad, 182 See also al-Fayed, Dodi Faysal (King), see Faysal bin ʿAbd al-ʿAziz Faysal bin ʿAbd al-ʿAziz, 172–180, 185, 187, 188, 191

322 

INDEX

Fayyum, 207 Federal Republic of Germany, 107, 235, 248, 252 Feinstein Institute, 40 Femininity, 1 missionary femininity, 17 “oriental” femininity, 18 See also Motherhood; Women Feminism African feminism, 259 maternal feminism, 85–114 Western feminism, 17, 18, 26, 259 Finland, 68 First Charity Society, see Al-Birr Charity Society; Jamʿiyyat al-Birr First Women’s Welfare Association in Jeddah, see al-Jamʿiyya al-Khayriyya al-Nisāʾiyya al-Ū lā bi-Jidda Forbes, Archibald, 46 Forcart, Dr., 215 Foulks, Dr. Sarah, 102, 104 France, 101, 18, 201, 53, 53n69, 86, 92, 99 French West Africa, 57 Frick-Cramer, Marguerite, 287 Friends Ambulance Unit (FAU), 54 Friends of Armenia, 64 G Galata, 126, 126n29, 127, 127n32, 127n33, 131 Gbarnga, 276, 277 Geneva, 107, 127n32, 250, 262, 287 Genocide, 7, 14, 18, 19, 21, 62–66, 62n3, 69–71, 75, 76, 78, 79, 83, 118–122, 130, 142, 237, 284, 293, 294 Germany, see Federal Republic of Germany Ghazira Badra, 217

Girl Guides, 146n9 Girlhood, 259, 262, 282, 297 Girls daughters, 48, 74, 82, 125, 161, 176, 188, 222, 238, 277, 279, 286 girlhood, 259, 262, 282, 297 girl soldiers, 29, 255–279, 282, 284, 297 Global history, 4, 4n3, 289 North, 3, 257, 258, 267 South, 15, 257, 259, 277 Gmeiner, Herman, 221–223, 221n1, 225n13, 225n15, 227–234, 237, 241, 242, 245, 246, 248–250, 253, 254 Gorakhpur, 154 Go Vap, 249, 251 Graham, W.P.G., 195, 198–200 Great Britain, 89n15, 92, 118, 161n62 Greece, 17–19, 68, 85–114, 288 Greek War Relief Association, 111 Green, Abigail, 5, 7 The Guardian, 40, 167n1 Gulf States, 169 Gülsan, see Armenuhi H Haan, Francisca de, 12 Haider, Fritz, 245 Haiti, 41 Hama, 127 Hanim, Nakiye, 140 Hanim, Nezihe, 140 Hardwar, 146 Harmal, 210 Harper, Dr., 210 Harpoot, 70, 74, 102, 134n61 Hasköy, 127n32, 131 Hatun Sayan, see Zabel

 INDEX 

Hay Azkayin Khnamadarutiun, 127, 128, 130 Haydar Bey, Dr. ‘Ali, 201 Haydarpaşa, 127, 127n33 Heinzl, Richard, 56 Heissenberger, Maria, 253 Hellenic National Graduate Nurses’ Association, 107 Hierarchies, 2, 19, 25, 77, 148, 253, 275, 286, 289, 299 Hijaz, 178, 181 Hinduism, 157 Hindu Mahasabha, see All-India Hindu Mahasabha Hindu Sahayata Samiti, 146n9 Hindustan National Guard, see Hindusthan Rashtra Sena, 154 Hindusthan Rashtra Sena, 155, 155n41 Homenetmen, see Armenian Athletic General Union and Scouts Homs, 127 Honour, 22, 124, 132, 144, 154, 156, 157n46, 158, 256, 285 Howard Shaw, Dr. Anna, 98 Human Rights, 8, 10, 11n33, 27, 235, 236, 256–258, 260, 265–267, 282n1, 299 Husayniyya, 213 I Ibn Ibrahim, Shaykh Muhammad, 176 Ideologies, 7, 8, 16, 20, 23, 53, 67, 69, 153, 222, 231, 252, 253, 283, 286 Al-Idrisi, Nisrin, 189, 189n85, 189n86 Imperialism, 12, 18, 44, 122, 299 Imst, 225 India, 21, 22, 24, 249, 250, 284, 285 Indian National Congress, 147, 148, 165

323

Inglis, Dr. Elsie, 92 Innocence, 16, 258, 264, 269, 276, 296 Innsbruck, 225, 234 Integrated Regional Information Networks, 40, 40n18, 41 International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), 185, 185n71, 260, 287, 288, 288n11, 288n9, 41 International Council of Nurses, 107 International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC), 9 International Refugee Organisation (IRO), 235 International Union for Child Welfare, 250, 250n108, 275n86 Iraq, 20, 72n37 Irfan, Bey, 140 IRIN, see Integrated Regional Information Networks IRO, see International Refugee Organisation Iskenderun, see Alexandretta Islam, 121, 123, 124, 141, 156, 169, 173, 174, 174n21, 182 Islamic Benevolent Association, see al-Jamʿiyya al-Khayriyya al-Islāmiyya Istanbul, 21, 70, 76, 117–142, 187, 281 Istanbul Armenan Patriarchate, 135 Izmit, 127, 134n61 J Jacobsen, Maria, 70 Jamal, Muhammad Salih, 181 Jam’iat al Islam, 146n9 Jamʿiyyat al-Birr, 187 Jamʿiyyat al-Isʿāf al-Khayriyya, 181 Jamʿiyyat khayriyya, 168

324 

INDEX

Jamot, Eugène, 57 Japan, 86 Jebb, Eglantyne, 6, 6n9, 6n10 Jeddah, see Jidda Jeppe, Karen, 70, 73n40, 78 Jidda, 167, 168, 171–173, 175, 175n25, 185, 187–191, 189n85, 189n86, 191n95 Jinnah, Muhammed Ali, 148 Johansson, Alma, 70, 70n28, 71 Jordan, 72n37, 251 Junior American Volunteer Aid, 97 Junod, Marcel, 54 K Kadikoy, 126, 127n32, 127n33, 131, 140 Kadiköy, see Kadikoy Kadınları Çalıştırma Cemiyet-i Iṡ lâmiyesi, 123, 137 Kafr Zayyat, 212 Kalopothakis, Dr. Mary, 104, 108, 113 Kamal Adham, Ibrahim, 188 Kamal, Dr. Sami, 188, 216 Kamal, Husayn Pasha, 202 Kamil, Bey, 136n75 Kampala, 263 Karahisar, 134n61 Kastamonu, 134n61 Kayseri, 134n61 Keitetsi, China, 263 Kemal Atatürk, Mustafa, 187 Kemal, Bey, 136n75 Kennett-Barrington, Vincent, 38, 43–49, 43n28 Kentucky, 100 Kenya, 261 Khashogji, Samira, 182, 188 Kilis, 118 Kinderdorfbote, 241–243, 246–250

KMA, see Kvindelige Missions Arbejdere Kokkinia, 102, 105, 107, 108, 110 Konya, 134n61 Korea, 248–250, 253 See also South Korea Koserian, Mariam, 81 Kouchner, Bernard, 54 Kuleli, 132 Kumkapı, 126, 127n32, 131 Kuruçeşme, 127n32, 130 Kutin, Helmut, 247 Kuwait, 190 Kvindelige Missions Arbejdere (KMA), 62, 65, 66, 66n15, 68–72, 76–82 L Lady Cromer Dispensaries, 200, 201, 217 Lady Cromer Home, 200, 201 Lange, Ulrich, 227n21 Lawrence, Dr. Caroline, 212 League of Nations, 64, 104, 105, 111, 118, 127n32, 135–137, 137n78, 138n81 Lebanon, 180, 68, 72, 72n38, 74, 76 LeGrand, Dr., 203 Leopold II, King of Belgium, 50 Lesbos, 103 Lewis, Norman, 56 Libal, Kathryn, 8, 10, 71 Liberalism, 2 Liberia, 41, 55, 257, 264, 272, 276, 277 Live Aid, 262 Lloyd, Lady Loraine, 217 L’Œuvre Mohamed Aly El-Kebir, 205 London, 43, 48, 201, 210 Lousin, 80 Lütfiye, see Nvart

 INDEX 

M Mabarat Muhammad Ali, see L’Œuvre Mohamed Aly El-Kebir Macedonia, 92 Machel, Graça, 265, 279 Machel Committee, 265 See also Machel, Graça MacPherson, Dr. Richard Burns, 46–49 Macronesi, 105 Madbuli, 217 Madras, 163 Madrid, 248 Mahalla al-Kubra, 212 Mahfouz Pasha, Dr. Naguib, 217 Makriköy, 131, 132 Manhood, 274 Manila, 251 Mans, 23, 36, 46, 49, 54, 58, 61, 81, 214, 233, 245, 287 Manshiyya, 201 Mansura, 207 Maras, 118 Marginalization, 67, 72–76, 83, 184, 260, 263, 272, 273, 276, 278, 282 Martinez, Samuel, 8, 10, 71 Marwari Relief Society, 146n9 Mary Thompson Hospital, 95 Masculinity “oriental” masculinity, 18 toxic masculinity, 17, 35, 37 See also Manhood; Men; Virility Massis, Henri, 52, 53 Mau Mau Emergency, 274 Mazurana, Dyan, 268 McClelland, Gregor, 54 Mecca, 167, 168, 175, 181 Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), 54–57, 71 Medical Emergency Relief International, 41n21

325

Medical Women’s International Association (MWIA), 100, 111, 113 Medical Women’s National Association, American Women’s National Association (MWNA) Home Service, 94 Medical Women’s Journal, 94 War Service Committee of the Medical Women’s National Association, 85 Medina, 168, 175 Mehmet Ali, Pasha, 46 Men as fathers, 26, 41, 74, 98, 102, 120, 122, 173, 178, 183, 187, 201, 221–254 as husbands, 74, 92, 98, 109, 110, 130, 131, 172, 182, 247 See also Manhood Menengage Alliance, 36 Merlin, see Medical Emergency Relief International Mersin, 118 Mesopotamia, 118 Mezerh, 70 Minagossian, Varter, 77–82, 77n54, 84 Ministry of Religious Endowments, 205 Minya, 206 MIRA, see Movement for Islamic Reform in Arabia Modernity/modernization, 16, 23–25, 31, 172, 178, 284, 295 Montpellier, 201 Mookerjee, Syama Prasad, 150, 153n31 Morel, Edmund Dene, 52 Mörlbach, 232n47 Moscow, 101 Mosul, 118

326 

INDEX

Motherhood, 17, 19, 26, 91, 96, 109, 112, 185, 224, 229, 230, 232, 237, 239–241, 251–253, 259, 294, 296, 298 Mountbatten, Lady Edwina, 160n58 Movement for Islamic Reform in Arabia (MIRA), 167 Mozambique, 257, 263, 264, 272, 276 MSF, see Médecins Sans Frontières Mubayaa Komisyonu, 136n75 Mudros, 118 Munby, Arthur, 51 Mundy, Jaromír Baron of, 46 Musch, 70 Museveni, Yoweri, 263 MWIA, see Medical Women’s International Association MWNA, see Medical Women’s National Association, American Women’s National Association N Najd, 176 Nalbadian, Varsenig, 74 Namibia, 261 Narrative fictional narrative, 11 humanitarian narrative, 2, 8, 10, 11, 37, 51, 53, 65 Nationalism, 90, 113, 146, 152, 174 National League for Women’s Service, 99 National Liberation Front (FLN), 261 National Resistance Army (NRA), 263 Nation-building, 20, 21, 23, 91, 142 Nazmi, ʿAbd al-ʿAziz, 201–205, 217 Near East Foundation, 103, 107

Near East Relief, American Committee for Relief in the Near East (NER), 101, 101n65, 103, 106, 112, 113, 118, 127, 130, 131, 135, 137, 72, 79, 90, 95, 97, 98 Nehru, Rameshwari, 165 NER, see Near East Relief, American Committee for Relief in the Near East Neubauer, Vinzenz, 233–234 Neuman, Michael, 38, 58 Neutral House (Istanbul), 119, 137–141, 138n83, 140n87 Newark, 107 New Jersey, 107, 108 New York City, 85, 92 Nigeria, 261, 269 Nightingale, Florence, 6, 6n10 Noakhali, 150, 151, 160 Non-Western, 3, 16–18, 28, 31, 250 Norbert, Megan, 40 Norseth, Kristin, 69 North Carolina, 100 Norway, 62, 68, 70, 82 NRA, see National Resistance Army Nvart, 140 O Odian, Yervant, 131 Orbinski, James, 55 Orphanage, 103, 118, 119, 122, 124, 124n21, 126, 128, 130–132, 131n47, 133n60, 134, 135, 137n80, 139, 181, 210, 217, 249, 68, 70, 74, 79, 98 Ortaköy, 131, 136n75 Orthodox Church, 100 Osmaniye, 118 Osmanlı Hilâl-i Ahmer Cemiyeti, 137 Ottoman Empire, 62, 65, 69, 74, 77n54, 88, 118, 142

 INDEX 

Owens, Ms., 207 OXFAM, see Oxford Committee of Famine Relief Oxford Committee of Famine Relief (OXFAM), 41n21 P Pakistan, 143, 145, 146, 148, 162, 163 Pamelee, Dr. Ruth Azniv, 87 Parry, Dr. Angenette, 107 Pasha, Halil, 134 Pasteur, Louis, 197 Patriarchy, 36, 83, 89, 113 Pera, 131 Peru, 50 Petersen, Karen Marie, 62–64, 70 Philadelphia, 92 Philanthropic Societiy, see Jamiʿyyat khayriyya Pohl Lovejoy, Dr. Esther, 87 Politics biopolitics, 21, 119, 142 politics of gender, 2, 17, 20, 143–166 Pontus, 86, 105 Portland, 93, 98 Pratap, Rana, 153n31 Princess Effat bint Muhammad bin Saʿud al-Thunayan, see Queen Effat Professionalization, 171, 241 Promundo, 36 Protestantism, 67, 80, 81 Punjab, 148, 149 Putumayo, 50 Q Quaker Friends World Committee for Consultation, 265 Quaker United Nations Office, 262

327

Queen Effat, 187, 188 QUNO, see Quaker United Nations Office R Rädda Barnen, 265, 276 Rajwade, Rani Lakshmibai, 161, 161n62 Ramakrishna Mission, 146n9 Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, 146n9, 149n15, 149n16, 150n17 Red Crescent, 46 Red Cross, 1 ARC (see American Red Cross) British Red Cross Society, 146n9, 209 Greek Red Cross Nursing Division, 111 Indian Red Cross, 146n9 ICRC (see International Committee of the Red Cross) IFRC (see International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies) Ottoman Red Crescent Society (see Osmanlı Hilâl-i Ahmer Cemiyeti) Saudi Red Crescent Society, 168 See also Red Crescent Red Sea, 181 Refugee Settlement Commission, 104 Rehabilitation, 132, 136–142, 145, 151, 155, 160, 21, 21n55, 236, 24, 241, 258, 261, 267, 270–277, 27–29, 279, 282, 284, 286, 297, 3, 81, 83 Religion, 16, 18, 64, 66, 80, 81, 83, 84, 90, 138, 139, 141, 142, 154, 172, 179, 202, 212, 228, 232 See also Catholicism; Christianity; Hinduism; Islam; Protestantism Renamo, 257, 263

328 

INDEX

Report the Abuse, 40 Representation power of representation, 25, 29 self-representation, 19, 67, 292 stereotypes of representation, 9, 293 Resid Bey, Mehmed, 134 Richards Graff, Dr. Elfie, 102 Riyadh, 173, 181, 182 Rockefeller Foundation, 105 Rushdi, Pasha, 202 Russia, 86, 92, 102 Rwanda, 264–266, 272 S Sabah, 134, 188 Sabban, Muhammad Surur, 181 Saigon, 249 St. John Ambulance Association, 146n9 Salonica, 103, 105, 107 Salonicai, 105 Samatya, 126, 127, 131 Saptia, 216 Sarabhai, Mridula, 145, 165 SaꜤud (King), see SaꜤud bin ʿAbd al-ʿAziz SaꜤud bin ʿAbd al-ʿAziz, 176–178 Saudi Arabia, 23, 24, 167–192, 284 SaꜤud, Muhammad Ibn, 174, 176, 187 Save The Children Fund (SCF), 271, 275, 275n86, 276, 6n9 Sayyida Zaynab, 202, 205, 216 Scandinavia, 65, 67, 68, 70n28, 78, 81–83, 249, 288 SCF, see Save The Children Fund Scottish Women’s Hospitals, 92 Scott-Montcrieff, (I.M.), 213 Securitization, 29, 270–277, 279 Serbia, 86, 92, 101

Servants of India Society, 146n9 Sexual difference, 8, 296, 299 Sexuality heterosexuality, 19, 286 homosexuality, 50, 293 sexual desire, 19, 38 Shahnur, Shahan, 117 Shibin al-Qanatar, 210, 212 Sierra Leone, 257, 264, 265, 272, 273, 275, 276 Singh, Guru Gobind, 153n31 Şişli, 132, 137 Sivas, 127, 134n61 Slaughter Morton, Dr. Rosalie, 87 Smyrna, 99, 101, 103, 126 Societas Socialis (SOS), 225 Société de la Nouvelle Femme, see Society of the New Woman Société pour la Protection de l’Enfance d’Egypte, see Society for the Protection of Childhood in Egypt Society for the Employment of Muslim Women, see Kadınları Çalıştırma Cemiyet-i Iṡ lâmiyesi Society for the Protection of Childhood in Egypt, 202, 216 Society for the Protection of Infants, 203 Society for the Welfare of Mothers and Babies, 217 Society of the New Woman, 216, 217 Sofia, 44 Soldiers, 29, 36, 45, 52, 74, 86, 94, 135, 136n75, 196, 218, 238, 255–279 See also Boy soldiers; Child Soldiers; Girl soldiers Solferino, 45 Sölöz, 127 Somalia, 55 Sonke, 36

 INDEX 

SOS-Children’s Villages SOS-Children’s Villages International, see European Association of SOS Children’s Villages SOS-Kinderdorf-Verlag, 221 See also Societas Socialis South Africa, 151, 261 South Carolina, 100 South Korea, 249, 250, 253 South Vietnam, 251 Stafford House Committee, 43, 46, 48 Stoker, Dr., 46 Sudan, 201 Sudan-Pionier Mission, 210 Süleyman, Bey, 136n75 The Sunday Times, 41 Sweden, 62, 68, 70 Switzerland, 176, 249 Syria, 180, 65, 66, 68, 7, 72, 72n38, 74, 76, 81, 82, 84 T Taegu, 249 Tanta, 210–212 Tarde, Alfred de, 52, 53 Tata Institute of Social Science, 146n9 Tawfiq, Khedive, 202 Tennessee, 100 Tevfik Bey, Ismail, 136n75 Thessaloniki, 103, 107 Thrace, 86 Tipperah, 150 Tokar, 201 Tokat, 127 Toulouse, 201 Transnational, 4, 4n3, 10n31, 16, 18, 82, 87n8, 88, 90, 91, 112, 169n7, 170, 251, 258, 264, 281n1, 283, 289 Trebizond, 102, 134n61

329

Tsaldaris, Lina, 110 Tsaldaris, Panagis, 110 Tschaghlassian, Marjam, 77–79, 77n54 Turkey, 62, 66, 68, 72, 74n42, 86, 88, 125, 126n28, 187 Turkish Relief Fund, 147n12 Tyrol, 26, 223, 225, 231, 241 U Uganda, 264, 267 UN, see United Nations United Council, 160n58 United Council of Relief and Welfare, see United Council United Kingdom, 43 United Nations (UN), 258, 260, 265, 265n37, 266n43, 267, 270, 271n65, 276, 281, 36, 58 Office of the Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Children in Armed Conflict, 267 Security Council, 190, 271n65 UNESCO, 175n28 UNICEF, 262, 263, 266, 267, 271, 272, 276, 277, 279n101 United Nations Department of Peacekeeping Operations (UNDPKO), 271 United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM), 276, 277 United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), 271 United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA), 54, 103, 235 United States (US), 20, 68n22, 75, 85–114, 131, 191n95, 209, 236, 241

330 

INDEX

Urfa, 70, 118, 127, 139 US, see United States Üsküdar, 126, 131, 136n75 V Vergine, 80 Vicdan, 140 Victimization, 264, 267 gendered forms of victimization, 23 Viet Cong, 257 Vietnam, 249–251, 257 See also South Vietnam Vila Parle, 164 Violence community violence, 22 gender-based violence, 22, 264, 265, 267 sexual violence, 14, 63, 120, 124, 130, 131, 142, 256, 265–267, 278, 282, 293 Virility, 16, 153, 154, 156, 293 Vorpakhnam, 126 Vulnerability, 16, 17, 262, 268, 271, 279, 291, 296 W Wars Bangladesh War, 14, 22 World War One, 7n12, 13, 14, 21, 88, 92, 93, 118, 123, 133, 156, 212, 237, 256, 298n31 World War Two, 1, 86, 103, 111, 148, 205, 225, 235n58, 240, 252, 256 Warren County, 108 Washington (DC), 92, 98, 266n41 Watson, Dr. Anna, 212 Welles Brown, Anna, 130, 130n41, 130n43, 131n49

Western, 2, 3, 13, 15–19, 25–29, 31, 51, 64, 75, 175, 179, 181, 214, 245, 258, 259, 263, 267, 274, 276, 286, 297 WHA, 288 Willms, R.N. Emilie, 87, 107, 108, 110–112, 111n108, 114 Wilson, Woodrow, 99 Woldu, Birhan, 262 Womanhood, 297 Women, 3 as mothers, 100, 101, 109, 109n101, 113, 160, 163, 182, 191, 198, 199, 202–204, 208, 214, 215, 226, 229, 230, 232, 232n47, 238, 240, 241, 24–27, 30, 74, 79, 82, 89, 91, 93, 96 as wives, 29, 163, 219 See also Womanhood Women’s Advisory Committee of the National Council of Defense, 98 Women’s Self-Defense Association, see All Bengal Mahila Atma Raksha Samiti Women’s Suffrage Association, 98 Woods, Dorothea E., 262, 262n28, 263n30, 266n43 Woods Winnicott, Donald, 240 World Health Organization (WHO), 36, 240 Y Yalova, 127 Yedikule, 132 See also Yedikule Armenian Hospital Yedikule Armenian Hospital, 127 Yemen, 190 Yenice, 127 Yereman, Dr. Owen H., 106, 113 Yesilköy, 126

 INDEX 

Y.M.C.A., 146n9 See also Y.W.C.A. Young, Iris, 20 Yugoslavia, 266 Y.W.C.A., 146n9

Z Zabel, 140 Zarouhi, 80 Zeitun, 77n54, 80 Zimbabwe, 261

331