Résumé En revenant sur les origines de l’aide humanitaire au Royaume-Uni, cet article examine la constitution de secours comme nouveau champ de vocations caractérisé par un ethos de « compassion rationnelle ». Il analyse les fondements des rivalités d’intervention entre la Société nationale britannique d’aide aux malades et blessés de guerre et le Fonds de secours aux victimes de guerre constitué par les Quakers durant la guerre franco-prussienne, et les différents sens et investissements moraux à l’œuvre dans une administration des secours de plus en plus systématisée. L’auteur utilise ainsi les archives des organisations et les témoignages de première main de ces travailleurs sociaux pour montrer le développement de nouveaux rôles et pratiques de secours jusqu’à présent peu étudiés des historiens.

This article pieces together the activism of the British welfare worker and feministpacifist Emily Hobhouse (1860-1926) during two largely unrecorded episodes of transnational activism: firstly her ministry of Cornish miners in Virginia, Minnesota, in the United States of America; and secondly, her interventions during the period of reconstruction following the South African War (1899-1902). The article endeavors to contextualize Hobhouse's advocacy and activism and offer a broader understanding of the limitations and restraints on her actions. Ultimately, her activism required a platform that was in the gift of political actors and establishment figures, and dependent on fluctuations within specific political and bureaucratic situations. Based on close inspection of undocumented material in both South African and British archives, the article investigates Hobhouse's repertoire of missionary and philanthropic roles within a wider context of humanitarian politics. It demonstrates how women's activism and their behind-the-scenes politicking informed political decision-making in modern imperial and international affairs. Hobhouse's work in the United States and South Africa embodied the evolution of the spiritual authority of missionary work into the new expert realm of transnational humanitarian advocacy and relief.

This article traces the history of the British National Society for Aid to the Sick and Wounded in War (NAS), and its interventions in Continental and colonial wars of the late-nineteenth century. The NAS was founded on the outbreak of the FrancoPrussian War in August 1870. It went on to become one of the most important founding members of the British Red Cross Society (BRCS) when it was established in 1905. The aim of the article is to uncover the particular anxieties and aspirations that contributed to the foundation of the NAS. It demonstrates how these concerns -many of them related to the relative state of the British militaryinformed its subsequent practices and its relationship with the International Committee of the Red Cross. In tracing its emergence as a paramilitary corps adept at rapid-response emergency medicine, this article uncovers the rivalry that characterized attempts within the NAS and BRCS to lay claim to the "true spirit" of voluntary aid in war -a rivalry which eventually informed British insistence on a revision to the Geneva Convention in 1906.KEY WORDS: relief work; militarism; Franco-Prussian War; British Red Cross Society; Geneva Convention. RESUMEN:Este artículo rastrea la historia de la British National Society for Aid to the Sick and Wounded in War (NAS) y sus intervenciones en las guerras europeas y coloniales de finales del siglo XIX. La NAS se fundó con el estallido de la Guerra FrancoPrusiana en agosto de 1870. Acabó convirtiéndose en uno de los miembros fundadores más importantes de la Sociedad de la Cruz Roja Británica (BRCS) cuando se estableció en 1905. El propósito del artículo es mostrar las peculiares inquietudes y aspiraciones que contribuyeron a la fundación de la NAS. Demuestra cómo estas preocupaciones -muchas de ellas asociadas al status de los militares británicos-condicionaron sus prácticas subsiguientes y sus relaciones con el Comité Internacional de la Cruz Roja. Al rastrear el surgimiento de la NAS como un cuerpo paramilitar experto en urgencias médicas de respuesta rápida, este artículo pone de manifiesto la rivalidad que caracterizó los intentos dentro de la NAS y de la BRCS por atribuirse el "verdadero espíritu" de la ayuda voluntaria en la guerra -una rivalidad que propició la insistencia británica en revisar la Convención de Ginebra en 1906.

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In late February 1861 the Dublin Court of Common Pleas sat to consider a case of bigamy brought by an English woman against a member of the Irish gentry. Bigamy trials were not uncommon, yet the case of Thelwell v. Yelverton was of sufficient piquancy to induce elite Dublin society to fight for a seat in the public gallery. 1 At a time when legislative reform and a new ethnography of marriage were challenging the sanctity of monogamous matrimony, a British aristocrat with multiple wives had significant cultural purchase to command audiences beyond the courtroom. Extensive newspaper reports of the trial exposed the threat posed by a 'secret' spouse to the security of the Victorian domestic ideal, inspiring sensation novelists to thrill their readers with the attendant perils of illegitimacy and lost inheritances. In a series of protracted twists, the case eventually came to be heard by jurists in three of the kingdom's capitals, in the process exposing the distinctions between Irish, Scottish and English marriage law on which the case turned. James Whiteside MP, barrister at the Irish trial, only joked in