The Origins of Global Humanitarianism

Abstract

Whether lauded and encouraged or criticized and maligned, action in solidarity with culturally and geographically distant strangers has been an integral part of European modernity. Traversing the complex political landscape of early modern European empires, this book locates the historical origins of modern global humanitarianism in the recurrent conflict over the ethical treatment of non-Europeans that pitted religious reformers against secular imperial networks. Since the sixteenth-century beginnings of European expansion overseas and in marked opposition to the exploitative logic of predatory imperialism, these reformers - members of Catholic orders and, later, Quakers and other reformist Protestants - developed an ideology and a political practice in defense of the rights and interests of distant 'others'. They also increasingly made the question of imperial injustice relevant to growing 'domestic' publics in Europe. A distinctive institutional model of long-distance advocacy crystallized out of these persistent struggles, becoming the standard weapon of transnational activists.

Religious Dimensions of Political Conflict and Violence

“…The construction of otherhood is of course a general socio-cultural process, not a distinctively religious one. And while religion is implicated in the construction of otherhood, it is also involved in transcending divisions and constructing universalistic forms of solidarity (Stamatov 2013). Here again one sees what R. Scott Appleby (2000) calls the "ambivalence of the sacred.…”

The Repugnant Other: Soldiers, Missionaries, and Aid Workers as Organizational Migrants

“…133 New World, and the reform of race-based immigration policies in the United States upon the return of GIs and their Asian "war brides" after World War II. 136 Due to its focus on class, labor history has made more progress to date by gradually including sailors and soldiers, although this integration is still somewhat piecemeal and sometimes occurs in a way that is too differentiated from how historians analyze other workers. As becomes clear in a recent formulation by Peter Way: "if the military is central to-and, in fact, productive of-those profound economic changes, it is necessary to conceptualise soldiers as war-workers, indeed as transnational labourers whose martial toil around the globe proved integral to the development of international capitalism."…”

“…The differences between Catholic and Protestant missions sometimes clearly reflected different political interests (and forms of imperialism) but also different ways of viewing potential converts. 98 But as Pels and Salemink state, "even those missionaries who had little or no tolerance toward 'other' customs had to communicate the Gospel, and to learn another language to do so." 99 With regard to Muslim missions, Ho argues that-at least for the Hadrami diaspora in the Indian Ocean from the sixteenth century onward-there existed no such link with trade and conquest, and contacts were on the basis of exchange.…”

Wybrane aspekty taoistycznej praktyki wéiwúwéi

“…Prawdopodobnie wci najbardziej popularn interpretacj politycznej wyk adni Dàodéj ng (a tak e Zhu ngz ), pozostaje anarchizm. Jednym z pierwszych, który powi za go z taoizmem, by konfucja ski uczony Liang Qichao 39 . John Clarke stwierdzi , e "sta o si niemal bana em, eby uto samia te dwa" 40 .…”