Red Cross (Military History)

Introduction

The Red Cross movement, though international in character, paradoxically stemmed from the rise of the nation-state. In mid-19th century Europe, North America, and Asia, increasingly powerful and organized states equipped and trained large standing armies, which they repeatedly deployed in conflicts. Advances in weapons technology and the advent of industrial-scale munitions production made these battles increasingly deadly. But advances in warfare were not accompanied by similar improvements in organization of medical aid, and wounded combatants were often left writhing in agony on the battlefield. Swiss businessman Henri Dunant witnessed such horrors as an accidental bystander and aid volunteer during the 1859 Battle of Solferino, a decisive engagement in the Italian Wars of Independence. He later wrote an influential book (Dunant 1986, originally published 1862 and cited under General Overviews) in which he proposed the idea of trained volunteer aid societies whose members would provide skilled aid to all wounded combatants, regardless of nationality. He recommended that an international congress be convened to formulate a set of rules governing the conduct and protection of these societies. Dunant’s ideas were rooted in his deeply held notions of Christian charity, in the Swiss political concept of neutrality, and in the Enlightenment-era ideal of the rights of men. In February 1863, Dunant and four other men in Geneva formed a committee to carry out his vision. Holding an international conference later that year, the committee drafted resolutions that guaranteed wartime neutrality of medical personnel, who were to identify themselves on the battlefield by wearing white armbands bearing red crosses; required signatories to treat wounded combatants humanely without regard for nationality; and required the creation of volunteer aid societies in signatory states. These were later named “Red Cross” societies. In August 1864, twelve nations signed a treaty, known as the Geneva Convention, in which they agreed to adhere to these resolutions. Subsequent Geneva Conventions expanded the scope of Red Cross neutrality to naval forces and prisoners of war (POWs). The committee Dunant founded, which became known as the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), became responsible for ensuring that parties abide by the conventions. Following World War II, in the face of the ICRC’s perceived inadequate response to civilians in Nazi concentration camps, the conventions were rewritten to extend the Red Cross’s humanitarian protections to civilians and participants in internal conflicts; they were adopted in 1949. As more nations have signed the conventions following the end of the Cold War, National Red Cross societies have proliferated. The League of Red Cross Societies, founded in 1919 to coordinate the activities of national societies, eventually became known as the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) and serves as an umbrella organization over the 187 national societies.

General Overviews

A central debate among historians of the Red Cross movement focuses on the effect it has had on warfare. Has the movement been a force for peace, limiting the inhumanity of war, as its visionary founder Dunant (see Dunant 1986, originally published 1862) and its early leaders (see Moynier 1882) intended? Or has it merely made war more efficient by enabling wounded combatants to be quickly treated and returned to the theater of combat? Hutchinson 1996 marshaled a number of national case studies to argue that the Red Cross societies of Europe, Japan, and the United States became tragically effective vehicles for the “militarization of charity” in the years leading up to World War I. A contrary argument, that the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has served as a force for peace in a world where war remains inevitable, has been proffered by internal ICRC scholars such as the authors of Durand 1984, Boissier 1985 (both cited under International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC)), and Sandoz 1987. Moreover, histories that extend beyond World War I, such as Riesenberger 1992, Harouel 1999, and Moorehead 1999, tend to take a more nuanced approach as they emphasize the increasing role that the ICRC, International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC), and member societies have played in peacetime humanitarian work over the past century. Some of these works, such as Riesenberger 1992, have focused as well on a second critical issue: how much the ICRC knew about the genocide of Jews and other prisoners of the Nazi state during World War II, and why the organization chose to remain silent in the face of the Holocaust. (See also World War II). Forsythe 1976 has examined the larger question of the Red Cross movement’s complex role in simultaneously transcending and buttressing the nation-state system.

Dunant, Henri. A Memory of Solferino. Geneva, Switzerland: International Committee of the Red Cross, 1986.
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First published 1862. The book that inspired the genesis of the Red Cross movement, this eyewitness account depicts the neglect and suffering of wounded soldiers following a pivotal battle in the Wars of Italian Independence and proposes the creation of trained volunteer aid societies to mitigate such suffering.
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Forsythe, David P. “The Red Cross as Transnational Movement: Conserving and Changing the Nation State System.” International Organization 30.4 (Autumn 1976): 607–630.
DOI: 10.1017/S0020818300018464Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
An introduction to the Red Cross movement and the role of the ICRC in conflict zones. Asserts that the committee’s actions as a humanitarian observer and transnational provider of aid “reinforce the nation-state system” by working within it and seeking to render it “more effective in responding to humanitarian need” (p. 625).
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Harouel, Véronique. Histoire de la Croix-Rouge. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1999.
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This concise pocket paperback volume explains the character and history of the Red Cross movement for a wide audience.
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Hutchinson, John F. Champions of Charity: War and the Rise of the Red Cross. Boulder, CO: Westview, 1996.
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A seminal scholarly work on the Red Cross movement. Argues that Red Cross societies, founded to limit the consequences of war, strengthened the military apparatus in conflicts from the Russo-Japanese War to World War I, by enabling sick and wounded soldiers to return to combat more quickly.
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Moorehead, Caroline. Dunant’s Dream: War, Switzerland and the History of the Red Cross. New York: Carroll & Graf, 1999.
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An excellent introduction to the subject, this voluminous yet readable work investigates the international humanitarian efforts and failures of the International Red Cross movement from its founding through World Wars, the Cold War, and up to the 1990s. Thoroughly researched using ICRC and other archives.
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Moynier, Gustav. La Croix-rouge: Son passé et son avenir. Paris: Sandoz & Thuillier, 1882.
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A firsthand perspective of the Red Cross movement’s early years written by the co-founder and long-time president of the ICRC. Covers the 1864 Geneva Convention, and Red Cross societies’ work in the Italian wars, Austrio-Prussian War, Franco-Prussian War, and Russo-Turkish War, as well as their envisioned role in peace.
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Riesenberger, Dieter. Für humanität in krieg und frieden: Das Internationale Rote Kreuz, 1863–1977. Gottingen, Germany: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht, 1992.
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This study, a careful analysis using the ICRC archives, focuses on the international role of the Red Cross movement from its founding through the Cold War. It does not shy from examining the Nazification of the German Red Cross and the ICRC’s limited success in rescuing Jews.
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Sandoz, Yves. “The Red Cross and Peace: Realities and Limits.” Journal of Peace Research 24.3 (September 1987): 287–296.
DOI: 10.1177/002234338702400308Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Defends the Red Cross movement as a global force for peace, acknowledging that its actions can humanize warfare but noting that these actions are unlikely to encourage war. Outlines the limits of the organization’s involvement in the political aspects of a peace process, due to its universal, impartial character.
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International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC)

The ICRC, since its founding by five Genevans in the 1860s, has reflected the insular, charitably disposed character of Swiss society, notes Forsythe 2005. Because the ICRC kept its archives closed to outside researchers until 1996, most histories of the committee, such as Boissier 1985, Durand 1984, Freymond 1976, and Bugnion 2003, have been written by ICRC-affiliated historians or insiders. The same was true until recently for biographies of ICRC founders—see Boissier 1974 and Senarclens 2000 (cited under ICRC Founders). However, several biographies by scholars outside the ICRC, such as Chaponnière 2010 (cited under ICRC Founders), have recently been published. Forsythe 2005 also provides a balanced and independent, if cursory, account of the committee’s history from its founding through 2004. Other sources that shed light on the ICRC’s history include Bugnion 2005, which situates the committee and its formation within the longer social and political history of Geneva; Bugnion 2012, which highlights the ICRC’s little-known role in de-escalating the Cuban Missile Crisis, and Pitteloud, et al. 1999, the only published volume of committee minutes from the ICRC archives. However, these minutes only go up to the beginning of World War I, so researchers must visit the archives for later minutes.

Boissier, Pierre. From Solferino to Tsushima: History of the International Committee of the Red Cross. Geneva, Switzerland: Henri Dunant Institute, 1985.
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First published in 1963. An official organizational history of the ICRC written on its centennial celebration by an employee of the organization. Covers the period beginning with Dunant’s proposal in 1859, through the Franco-Prussian, Spanish-American, and Russo-Japanese wars.
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Bugnion, Francois. The International Committee of the Red Cross and the Protection of War Victims. Oxford: Macmillan Education, 2003.
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First published in French, 1995. Traces the ICRC’s development from a passive committee that naively relied on national Red Cross societies to enforce the Geneva Conventions to an agency to protect war victims. Penned by a top ICRC legal official and historian.
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Bugnion, François. “Geneva and the Red Cross.” 3 May 2005.
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First published in French, 2001. Situates the history of the ICRC within the longer history of Geneva as an intellectual and cultural crossroads of Europe. Provides context to explain why Genevans in the 1860s embraced Dunant’s ideas to start a worldwide movement.
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Bugnion, Francois. “Confronting the Unthinkable: The International Committee of the Red Cross and the Cuban Missile Crisis, October–November 1962.” Swiss Review of History 62.1 (2012): 143–190.
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This two-part article, which continues in Swiss Review of History 62.2 (2012): 299–372, illuminates the ICRC’s little-known offer to provide neutral inspectors on Soviet ships around Cuba in 1962 to help de-escalate the Cuban Missile Crisis. Bugnion argues that this offer, though ultimately unnecessary, pushed the ICRC beyond its previous conception of neutrality and helped the Soviets save face.
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Durand, André. From Sarajevo to Hiroshima: History of the International Committee of the Red Cross. Vol. 2. Geneva, Switzerland: Henri Dunant Institute, 1984.
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A sympathetic and detailed analysis of ICRC history written by a former committee delegate. Covers the period from the 1911 Italo-Turkish War to the end of World War II. Characterizes the ICRC during the Holocaust as “at first bewildered” but nevertheless able to “mitigate the effects of the persecution” (p. 552).
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Forsythe, David P. The Humanitarians: The International Committee of the Red Cross. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2005.
DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511755958Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
A trenchant analysis of the ICRC as the foremost international humanitarian actor. Part 1 reviews its history from 1859 to 2004. Part 2 explores the committee’s principles of neutrality, impartiality, and independence, their relation to international humanitarian law, and the ICRC’s secretive, elite bureaucratic mechanisms, through which they have been carried out.
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Freymond, Jacques. Guerres, révolutions, Croix-Rouge—Réflexions sur le rôle du Comité International de la Croix-Rouge. Geneva, Switzerland: Institut Universitaire des Hautes Études Internationales, 1976.
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An insider’s view of the ICRC during the Cold War, written by a major ICRC figure who served on the committee from 1959 to 1972 and resigned in protest. Provides firsthand insights on the ICRC’s role during the Vietnam War, the Biafra crisis in Nigeria, and the internal politics of the organization during this period.
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Pitteloud, Jean-François, Caroline Barnes, Françoise Dubosson, et al. Procès-verbaux des séances du Comité International de la Croix-Rouge: 17 Février 1863–28 Août 1914: Vol. 1 of Documents pour servir à l’histoire de la Croix-Rouge et du Croissant-Rouge. Geneva, Switzerland: Société Henry Dunant, International Committee of the Red Cross, 1999.
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A useful reference volume of surviving ICRC minutes from the organization’s archives, beginning with its founding in 1863 through the first month of World War I. Minutes from March 1864–September 1867 are missing. More material for early years, including the Franco-Prussian War, than later years.
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ICRC Founders

Henri Dunant may have inspired the creation of the Red Cross movement, but it would not have lasted long without practical-minded leaders like Gustave Moynier, its president between 1864 and 1910. This is the main argument that Senarclens 2000 advances in this biography of Moynier. However, biographies of Dunant, such as Boissier 1974 and Chaponnière 2010, add a critical aspect to the story of the Red Cross founding, not merely as tributes to Dunant, but as chronicles of the dramatic swings of fortune that he experienced throughout his long life.

Boissier, Pierre. Henry Dunant. Geneva, Switzerland: Henry Dunant Institute, 1974.
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Originally published in French. Biography of Red Cross movement’s founder by an internal ICRC historian.
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Chaponnière, Corinne. Henry Dunant: La Croix d’un homme. Paris: Perrin, 2010.
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This engaging 490-page biography takes the liberty of weaving established facts of Dunant’s life with imagined conversations between Dunant and players in his personal drama. Follows Dunant from childhood to his humanitarian crusades, then into unemployment and homelessness, and finally to his receipt of the Nobel Prize in 1901.
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Senarclens, Jean de. Gustave Moynier le bâtisseur. Geneva, Switzerland: Slatkine, 2000.
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A biography of the Red Cross movement’s co-founder and president from 1864 to 1910. Written using materials compiled by ICRC internal historian André Durand. A corrective to hagiographic portrayals of Henri Dunant as the main force behind the Red Cross movement.
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Geneva Conventions

The Geneva Conventions did not arise out of thin air; they arose from centuries-long struggles to define the laws of war, as Jean Pictet, an architect of the 1949 Conventions, notes in Pictet 1985. Neither did the original 1864 Geneva Convention translate well in the United States: Its adoption by the United States required a passionate crusade by Clara Barton. Barton 1878 offers a primary source illustrating that crusade. Pictet has also analyzed the 1949 Conventions, which supplanted all prior revisions and extended protection to noncombatants and those involved in non -international conflicts. He explains them in Pictet 1951, an important primary source. Additionally, in Pictet 1979, he explicates the seven principles of the Red Cross movement, adopted in 1965 as part of a continuing effort of the movement to adapt itself to the postwar world. Rey-Schyrr 1999 chronicles the painstaking process through which the 1949 Conventions were developed, while Bugnion 2000 explores their impact over the prior half-century.

Barton, Clara. The Red Cross of the Geneva Convention: What It Is. Washington, DC: Rufus H. Darby, 1878.
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Clara Barton’s pamphlet, written to build support in the United States for the Red Cross movement. Explains the Geneva Convention and the movement to an indifferent and war-weary American public, and proposes that the American Red Cross take on the peacetime role of relief in disasters.
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Bugnion, Francois. “The Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949: From the 1949 Diplomatic Conference to the Dawn of the New Millennium.” International Affairs 76 (January 2000): 41–50.
DOI: 10.1111/1468-2346.00118Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Discusses the life of 1949 Geneva Conventions through 2000. Explains why the 1977 additional protocols were needed to extend further protections to civilians. Argues that the end of the Cold War allowed extension of the conventions to new countries, while sparking a rise in brutal ethnic and sectarian conflicts.
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Pictet, Jean. “The New Geneva Conventions for the Protection of War Victims.” American Journal of International Law 45 (July 1951): 462–475.
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In this frank article, Pictet, a chief architect of the 1949 Geneva Conventions, reviews their procedural history, explains the significance of each one, and defends their relevance in the nuclear age.
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Pictet, Jean. The Fundamental Principles of the Red Cross: Commentary. Geneva, Switzerland: Henry Dunant Institute, 1979.
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An explication by a lead figure in the postwar Red Cross of the seven principles that the movement adopted in 1965 as the culmination of its post–World War II changes. These principles include humanity, impartiality, neutrality, independence, voluntary service, unity, and universality.
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Pictet, Jean. The Development and Principles of International Humanitarian Law. Boston: Nijhoff, 1985.
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Originally published in French, 1984. Based on a series of lectures that Pictet, a key figure in the postwar ICRC, delivered at the University of Strasbourg in 1982. Traces the development of international humanitarian law from the ancient world to the contemporary Red Cross movement.
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Rey-Schyrr, Catherin. “Les Conventions de Genève de 1949: Une percée décisive.” Revue Internationale de la Croix-Rouge 81.834 (30 June 1999): 209–239.
DOI: 10.1017/S1560775500097376Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
This two-part article, which continues in Revue Internationale de la Croix-Rouge 81.835 (30 September 1999): 499–529, by an ICRC staff historian focuses on the organization’s history from 1945 to 1955. The first part chronicles the process of postwar reflection that led to the creation and adoption of the four Geneva Conventions of 1949, and the second part examines the implications of these conventions.
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International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC)

The League of Red Cross societies, now the IFRC, was founded in 1919 by Henry Davison, the wartime head of the American Red Cross. In April 1919, American, British, Japanese, French, and Italian Red Cross societies endorsed its official mission of preventing disease, promoting health, and mitigating suffering worldwide. League of Red Cross Societies 1919 includes the proceedings from the medical section of this conference. The League of Red Cross societies soon saw its more idealistic aims curtailed, a process that Buckingham 1964 traces in a thorough if uncritical history of the organization’s founding years. Buckingham asserts that the league filled an important gap in the Red Cross movement: it became a powerful umbrella organization for international coordination of peacetime humanitarian relief efforts between national Red Cross and Red Crescent societies. Towers 1995 offers a more pointed analysis of the league’s early years, describing how it promoted international humanitarianism with an unabashedly American expansionist outlook that clashed with the more conservative approach of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). As International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies 2009, an official organization document, states, in 1983, the name Red Crescent was added to the organization’s title, and in 1991 it was renamed the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies. This document outlines the IFRC’s activities and accomplishments, as well as its changes, over its first ninety years. No comprehensive, independent history of the league/federation has yet been written.

Buckingham, Clyde E. For Humanity’s Sake: The Story of the Early Development of the League of Red Cross Societies. Washington, DC: Public Affairs Press, 1964.
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An American Red Cross staff historian’s sympathetic account of the league’s founding, from World War I through founder Henry Davison’s death in 1922. Based on analysis of Davison’s papers and other archival material.
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International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies. 90 Years of Improving the Lives of the Most Vulnerable. Geneva, Switzerland: International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, 2009.
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Official IFRC document chronicling the federation’s history from 1919 to 2009. Features a timeline stretching from the league’s founding by the American, French, British, Italian, and Japanese Red Cross societies after World War I, through the Great Depression, World War II, the Cold War, and recent famines and disasters.
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League of Red Cross Societies. Proceedings of the Medical Conference Held at the Invitation of the Committee of Red Cross Societies, Cannes, France, April 1 to 11, 1919. Geneva, Switzerland: Atar S.A., 1919.
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The official record of the conference convened to form the League of Red Cross societies and define its aims in the field of international public health. The conference did not cover the organizational structure of the league, which was decided by the Executive Committee.
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Towers, Bridget. “Red Cross Organisational Politics, 1918–1922: Relations of Dominance and the Influence of the United States.” In International Health Organisations and Movements: 1918–1939. Edited by Paul Weindling, 36–55. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995.
DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511599606Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Posits the league as a humanitarian extension of American business expansionism. Details intertwining of the League of Red Cross Societies with the League of Nations and internecine battles between the league and the ICRC for dominance over the movement, especially as they played out during a typhus epidemic in Serbia.
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European Red Cross Societies

The Red Cross movement began in Europe, so it is not surprising that the national societies in European states were the first to put Dunant’s ideas into action. Riesenberger 2002 offers a thorough and unflinching history of the German Red Cross, spanning from the Franco-Prussian War through the Cold War, and examining its Nazification in the years leading up to World War II. Chrastil 2008 has addressed the early history of the French Red Cross, updating the contemporaneous history offered by Du Camp 1889. Histories of the Red Cross societies of Spain—Clemente 1986—and Italy—Mariani 2006—offer largely celebratory, if factually rich, chronologies of these societies. Clemente 2004 also offers a detailed accounting of how the Spanish Red Cross established hospitals and dispensaries throughout the country in the early 20th century, playing an important role in the country’s modernization. In another vein, historical pamphlets and volumes published by other European Red Cross societies, such as Portuguese Red Cross 1944 and Paĭchev 1973, can serve as valuable primary sources for research on these organizations.

Chrastil, Rachel. “The French Red Cross, War Readiness, and Civil Society, 1866–1914.” French Historical Studies 31.3 (Summer 2008): 445–476.
DOI: 10.1215/00161071-2008-003Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
A new perspective on the early history of the French Red Cross. Argues that the organization led a national war-readiness movement beginning in the 1880s, in which French citizens, fearing an inevitable war with Germany or Britain, “became increasingly preoccupied with preparations for the defense of France” (p. 448).
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Clemente, José Carlos. Historia de la Cruz Roja Española. Madrid: Cruz Roja Española, 1986.
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A history published by the Spanish Red Cross society that describes its founding as one of the original Red Cross societies in 1864, its work in the Franco-Prussian and colonial wars, as well as in the Spanish Civil War and World War II.
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Clemente, José Carlos. Tiempo de humanidad: La labor sanitaria de Cruz Roja Española. Madrid: Editorial Fundamentos, 2004.
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A detailed accounting of the hospitals and dispensaries established by the Spanish Red Cross beginning in the 1870s, but mainly focusing on the 1890s through the 1920s. Illustrates how deeply the organization was involved in creating a modern hospital and health-care system in Spain.
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Du Camp, Maxime. La Croix Rouge de France: Société de Secours aux Blessés Militaires de Terre et de Mer. Paris: Librairie Hachette, 1889.
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This late-19th-century account traces the origins of the French Red Cross, critically reviewing the French Army’s care for the wounded during major 19th-century conflicts. Discusses the French Red Cross’s work in the Franco-Prussian War and reorganization afterward.
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Mariani, Mario. La Croce Rossa Italiana: L’epopea di una grande istituzione. Milan: Mondadori, 2006.
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A celebratory account of the Italian Red Cross’s history, from the genesis of the Red Cross movement in Red Cross founder Henri Dunant’s eyewitness to the Italian Wars of Independence, to contemporary relief efforts following disasters and terrorist attacks.
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Paĭchev, Georgi. The Bulgarian Red Cross. Sofia: Medicina i Fizkultura, 1973.
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This glossy book, written in French, English, and Bulgarian, glowingly describes the activities of the Bulgarian Red Cross in the communist era, from its mountain rescue service and health education, to its aid to nations “suffering from military intervention” (p. 25), to its “Information and Propaganda” department (p. 28). Contains photographs.
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Portuguese Red Cross. The Portuguese Red Cross Society: Its Origins and Activities in Peace and War up to July 1944. Lisbon: SNI Books, 1944.
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Thirty-page pamphlet covering the activities and 1944 financial status of the Portuguese Red Cross society, an original signatory to the Geneva Convention. Lists medical work in Portuguese colonial campaigns, revolutions, disasters, and efforts to aid POWs and Belgian civilians during World War II. Appeals for additional donations.
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Riesenberger, Dieter. Das Deutsche Rote Kreuz: Eine Geschichte 1864–1990. Paderborn, Germany: Ferdinand Schöningh Verlag, 2002.
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This 785-page volume is the only scholarly work to examine comprehensively the history of the German Red Cross, from 1864 through World War I and the Nazi period, to the Cold War and the unification of East and West German Red Cross societies in 1990.
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American Red Cross Society

The United States was a relative latecomer to the Red Cross movement, becoming the 32nd nation to sign on to the Geneva Conventions in 1882. As Jones 2013 notes, the American Red Cross remained small and relatively ineffectual under the leadership of founder Clara Barton. But by the end of World War I, the organization had become the largest Red Cross society in the world and a powerful tool of American foreign policy, as Irwin 2013 argues. While Jones 2013 and Irwin 2013 offer similar perspectives, Jones primarily examines the American Red Cross’s institutional history and its domestic activities from its founding through World War II, including issues of racial and class discrimination, whereas Irwin focuses on its international activities in the 1910s and 1920s and characterizes the organization as an embodiment of a broader American humanitarian movement. Older histories of the organization remain valuable for their detail. Dulles 1950 examines the American Red Cross’s work from its founding through World War II, and Gilbo 1981 provides a rich pictorial history of the organization’s first century. Both of these works reflect the direct influence of the organization. Insider perspectives on American Red Cross history can be found in Barton 2009 (first published in 1899), a collection of documents and reports from the organization’s first eighteen years; Boardman 1917, an account of the organization’s early history by Mabel Boardman, the organization’s Progressive Era leader; and Bicknell 2010 (originally published 1935), a memoir by Ernest Bicknell, the organization’s pioneer director of disaster relief. (See also Bicknell 1938 cited under World War I). Turk 2006 offers a collection of oral histories from the World War II era forward. Next to that of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), the history of the American Red Cross is likely the most heavily documented in the Red Cross movement: a rich array of source materials is available to scholars.

Barton, Clara. The Red Cross in Peace and War. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Library, 2009.
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First published in 1899. The American Red Cross founder’s opinionated compendium of the organization’s early work. Includes reports on domestic disaster relief efforts, an 1896 mission to aid Armenians in Turkey, and American Red Cross aid to Cuban peasants and to the US military before and during the Spanish-American War.
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Bicknell, Ernest P. Pioneering with the Red Cross: Recollections of an Old Red Crosser. Whitefish, Montana: Kessinger, 2010.
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First published in 1935. Candid stories of disaster and war relief by the man who directed American Red Cross disaster relief operations from the San Francisco earthquake of 1906 to mining disasters and Ohio floods, then led American Red Cross efforts to aid war refugees during World War I.
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Boardman, Mabel T. Under the Red Cross Flag at Home and Abroad. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1917.
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First published in 1915. This work, written by Clara Barton’s successor and nemesis, recasts the organization as an internationally influential entity, situating it prominently within the histories of humanitarian activity and nursing, and nearly omitting Barton’s role in its development.
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Dulles, Rhea Foster. The American Red Cross: A History. New York: Harper, 1950.
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Presents a comprehensive if dated account of the American Red Cross’s history from its founding through World War II. Completed “under the auspices of” (p. vii) the American Red Cross using monographs from the organization’s staff historians, it offers a somewhat uncritical view of the organization and its activities.
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Gilbo, Patrick F. The American Red Cross: The First Century. New York: Harper & Row, 1981.
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A pictorial history of the American Red Cross published on the organization’s centenary. Uses photographs from the American Red Cross archives’ extensive collection to highlight its key activities in peacetime, from public health nursing to disaster relief; and in wartime, from the Spanish-American War to Vietnam.
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Irwin, Julia. Making the World Safe: The American Red Cross and a Nation’s Humanitarian Awakening. New York: Oxford University Press, 2013.
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This work places the American Red Cross’s early history in transnational context, focusing primarily on its activities leading up to, during, and immediately after World War I. Argues that the organization’s war-era work marked the rise of humanitarianism as a potent tool in American foreign relations.
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Jones, Marian Moser. The American Red Cross from Clara Barton to the New Deal. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2013.
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A new history of the organization that analyzes its institutional practices in relation to its founding ideals. Focuses on race, class, and gender equity in disaster relief and first aid. Also examines work in Armenia, the Spanish-American War, and World War I. Epilogue covers World War II to the present.
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Turk, Michele. Blood, Sweat and Tears: An Oral History of the American Red Cross. Robbinsville, NJ: E Street Press, 2006.
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A collection of oral history interviews with former Red Cross workers, from a POW aided by the American Red Cross in World War II, to recreation volunteers in Vietnam, to a Red Cross worker in Hurricane Katrina. A good starting point for first-person accounts of American Red Cross work.
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Clara Barton

Clara Barton was not only the founder of the American Red Cross but also one of the first women in the Red Cross movement, as Pryor 1987 notes in the leading scholarly biography of Barton. Oates 1995 explores Barton’s Civil War work. However, Oates’s work is much less analytically nuanced than Pryor’s, and dips into the cheerleading, hagiographic zone that most previous biographies, such as Barton 1922 and Ross 1956, occupy. Buckingham 1977, written by an American Red Cross staff historian, provides a rich, well-footnoted account of Barton’s life, especially the Red Cross phase. Valuable biographical material on Barton and her Red Cross work can be found at the US National Park Service’s Clara Barton National Historic Site website.

Barton, William E. The Life of Clara Barton, Founder of the American Red Cross. 2 vols. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1922.
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The first biography of Barton published after her death, penned admiringly by a cousin. Volume 1 chronicles Barton’s life from birth through the aftermath of the Civil War. Volume 2 begins in 1869 and follows Barton through her efforts to bring the Red Cross movement to the United States.
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Buckingham, Clyde. Clara Barton: A Broad Humanity. Alexandria, VA: Mt. Vernon, 1977.
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Written by an American Red Cross staff historian, this biography is substantially footnoted and does not avoid discussing the controversies in which Barton became embroiled during her later years.
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Clara Barton National Historic Site.
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This website from the US National Park Service offers a brief uncritical biography of Barton but is unique in allowing users to access photographs of her possessions, from Red Cross medals to her silver hairbrush. See also its webpage The Person.
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Oates, Stephen B. A Woman of Valor: Clara Barton and the Civil War. New York: Free Press, 1995.
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This celebratory biography, intended for a general readership, focuses on Barton’s work comforting and supplying soldiers during the Civil War, and argues that this was a critical period that shaped the rest of her life.
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Pryor, Elizabeth Brown. Clara Barton: Professional Angel. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1987.
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This work remains the definitive scholarly biography of Barton. Elegantly dissolves the myth of the American Red Cross founder as a super-human “Angel of the Battlefield” (p. 448), instead characterizing Barton as a flawed person who struggled with emotional swings and self-doubt, while pioneering in a major international movement.
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Ross, Ishbel. Angel of the Battlefield: The Life of Clara Barton. New York: Harper, 1956.
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A popular biography of Barton that bolsters the popular myth of the Red Cross founder and Civil War volunteer as an uncomplicated and heroic icon.
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Asia Pacific Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies

The Red Cross movement’s European founders believed that their ideals could only take root in “civilized” Western societies, but by 1900 the Japanese Red Cross had disproved this notion by developing a model system for the treatment of wounded combatants. Asian Red Cross societies then became an object of fascination and wonderment for Western readers, as Ariga 1900 illustrates. Checkland 1994 deftly explains the rise and fall of humanitarianism, including the Red Cross, as a movement that blended modernism and age-old notions of loyalty in imperial Japan. Similarly, Reeves 1998 discusses the spread of the Red Cross movement in another rapidly modernizing Asian society, China. Lui 2001 and Stubbings 1992 offer insider historical accounts of two vastly different Red Cross societies that both began as overseas branches of the British Red Cross society, those in Hong Kong and Australia, respectively.

Ariga, Nagao. La Croix-Rouge en Extreme-Orient: Exposé de l’organisation et du fonctionnement. Paris: A. Pedone, 1900.
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A paper from the Paris Exposition of 1900 that introduces a well-organized and well-funded Japanese Red Cross to the Western world. Explains that the driving ideal behind this society is patriotic obligation, and unconvincingly tries to reconcile this ideology with the Red Cross movement’s founding ideal of humanitarianism.
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Checkland, Olive. Humanitarianism and the Emperor’s Japan, 1877–1977. New York: St. Martin’s, 1994.
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A wide-ranging exploration of how humanitarianism and inhumanity intersected with modern imperial Japanese culture in different periods. Chronicles the Japanese Red Cross’s rise to global prominence in the late 19th century and its nurses’ expert care for 70,000 Russian POWs during the Russo-Japanese War.
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Lui, Tai-Lok. Light in the Darkness: Story of the Hong Kong Red Cross, 1950–2000. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2001.
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Offers a celebratory and uncritical account of the Hong Kong Red Cross’s history. Traces its origins as a branch of the British Red Cross that in 1950 aided evacuees from mainland China following the end of the Chinese Civil War, to an independent provider of disaster relief in contemporary Asia.
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Reeves, Caroline Beth. “The Power of Mercy: The Chinese Red Cross Society, 1900–1937.” PhD diss., Harvard University, 1998.
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Provides in-depth analysis of the Chinese Red Cross from its founding in 1904 as an elite late Qing dynasty institution to its wider influence in the Republican era. Argues that the commercial elite used the Red Cross’s medical philanthropy to create a niche for themselves in a changing society.
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Stubbings, Leon. ‘Look What You Started Henry!’: A History of the Australian Red Cross 1914–1991. East Melbourne: Australian Red Cross Society, 1992.
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Anecdote-filled history written by a 38-year veteran of the society. Begins with World War I. Covers World War II work including transport, aid to Australian war brides, and POWs. Describes welfare activities in Australia and work in Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Nepal, Vietnam, Cambodia, Afghanistan, and sub-Saharan Africa.
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Middle East Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies

While Hutchinson 1996 (cited under General Overviews) discusses the Turkish Red Crescent as the first such society in the Muslim world, Benthall and Bellion-Jourdan 2009 is the first scholarly source to thoroughly explore the development of Red Crescent societies within Muslim cultures. This source explains the ambivalence in the Muslim world toward the Red Cross movement—sometimes perceived as an arm of the West—and the simultaneous compromise with this movement through the adoption of a Red Crescent emblem and formation of Red Crescent societies. Another Middle Eastern battle over emblems is the long struggle waged by the Israeli equivalent to the Red Cross—the Magen David Adom (MDA), or Red Star of David—for official inclusion in the Red Cross and Red Crescent movement. The MDA only gained official membership in the IFRC in 2006, after years of opposition to its membership by Red Crescent society representatives. For an American Jewish perspective on this struggle, written as it was occurring, see Gaer 2000.

Benthall, Jonathan, and Jerome Bellion-Jourdan. The Charitable Crescent: Politics of Aid in the Muslim World. New York: I. B. Tauris, 2009.
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Provides an enlightening perspective on humanitarianism in Muslim cultures. One chapter explores historical tensions between Islamic societies and the Red Cross movement based around the cross emblem, and development of the Red Crescent as an alternative symbol. Discusses Jordanian and Palestinian Red Crescent societies.
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Gaer, Felice D. Israel and the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement: The Status of Magen David Adom. New York: American Jewish Committee, 2000.
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Discusses the Magen David Adom, or “Red Star of David,” the Israeli equivalent to a Red Cross society, and the battle over its acceptance into the Red Cross and Red Crescent movement. Written before the Magen David Adom was accepted into the movement.
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Latin American Red Cross Societies

The Red Cross movement gained traction in Latin America before it did in the United States, largely due to the 1879 war between Chile and a Bolivian-Peruvian coalition, as is noted in Cruz Roja Peruana 2004. The Peruvians and Bolivians both formed volunteer societies for the care of the wounded. After the war these ambulance corps became official Red Cross societies. The Peruvian society’s history is detailed in a volume published on the organization’s 125th anniversary, Cruz Roja Peruana 2004. In the 1890s Red Cross societies also formed in numerous other Latin American countries. Martinez Montero 1959 gives an insider history of the Uruguayan society, not shying from its struggles with a strong state. Sola Ricardo 1995 provides a collection of documents and biographies about the early years of the Venezuelan Red Cross. Cruz Roja Argentina 1924 serves as a key primary source and a rare window into the Pan-American Red Cross movement during the interwar period. (For a window into disaster relief activities of a Central American Red Cross society, see also Valenzuela 1976 cited under Red Cross Disaster Relief).

Cruz Roja Argentina. Primera Conferencia Panamericana de la Cruz Roja: Bajo los auspicios de la Liga de Sociedades de la Cruz Roja, Buenos Aires, Noviembre 25–Diciembre 6 de 1923. Buenos Aires: Cruz Roja Argentina, 1924.
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Report of conference held in 1923 with participation of Argentine, Bolivian, Brazilian, Columbian, Costa Rican, Cuban, Chilean, Ecuadoran, Guatamalan, Mexican, American (US), Peruvian, Paraguayan, Panamanian, Salvadoran, Uruguayan, and Venezuelan Red Cross Societies. Discussion of societies’ public health activities against malaria, tuberculosis, venereal disease, childhood disease, alcoholism, and industrial accidents.
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Cruz Roja Peruana. Una idea, una acción: 125 años de la Cruz Roja Peruana. Lima: Cruz Roja Peruana, 2004.
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A detailed commemorative volume published by the society. Reviews origins as an ambulance corps for Peruvian troops in the 1879 War of the Pacific, activities in sanitation and health, as well as relief of natural disasters including numerous earthquakes. Punctuated with biographical portraits of key figures, archival photos.
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Martinez Montero, Alcides A. Los Cruzados del Uruguay: Historia de la Cruz Roja Uruguaya. Montevideo: Centro Militar Republica Oriental del Uruguay, 1959.
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This small volume details the beginnings of the Uruguayan Red Cross in the war of 1897, and its permanent activities between 1898 and the 1950s. Discusses the organization’s political status, its early conflicts with the state, and its involvement in disaster relief, public health, and international relief work.
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Sola Ricardo, Ricardo de. La Cruz Roja Venezolana: Historia. Caracas: Ricardo de Sola Ricardo, 1995.
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A rich collection of Venezuelan Red Cross documents and biographies of important figures in the organization, assembled and written by a descendant of co-founders. Includes photographs, reproductions of posters, stamps, certificates, official programs of meetings.
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Red Cross Disaster Relief

While the Red Cross movement was founded to provide aid to combatants during wartime, national societies beginning in the 1870s began to provide aid for civilians during disasters and humanitarian crises (see Hutchinson 1996, cited under General Overviews). The American Red Cross beginning in the 1880s made this work the centerpiece of its activities, as the well-referenced volume Buckingham 1956 notes. For this reason and due to the American Red Cross’s prominence, much material on Red Cross disaster relief covers work by this society. Firsthand insider accounts of American Red Cross disaster relief include Bicknell 2010, written by the American Red Cross’s first director of disaster relief (cited under American Red Cross Society) and Deacon 1918, written by the second director of disaster relief. During the early 20th century, the organization also published increasingly slick reports of its disaster relief operations. American National Red Cross 1938 provides a prime example of this type of report. Scholarly analyses of specific American Red Cross disaster relief operations include Jones 2010, a study of the Red Cross response to the 1918–1919 influenza epidemic, and Woodruff 1985, which examines the Red Cross–led drought relief operation in the Southern plains during 1930–1931. (See also Jones 2013 cited under American Red Cross Society, as it contains numerous case studies of disaster relief). A dearth of published material exists on other Red Cross societies’ disaster relief work. A notable exception is Valenzuela 1976, an account of the Guatemalan Red Cross’s work after a major earthquake. Other material may be available in societies’ archives.

American National Red Cross. The Ohio–Mississippi Valley Flood Disaster of 1937, Official Report of Relief Operations. Washington, DC: American National Red Cross, 1938.
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An excellent example of a statistically rich, well-illustrated American Red Cross disaster relief report from the New Deal era. Reflects the organization’s increasing use in this era of modern publicity methods and its need to publicly justify a continuing role in the new welfare state.
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Buckingham, Clyde. Red Cross Disaster Relief, Its Origin and Development. Washington, DC: Public Affairs, 1956.
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A postwar American Red Cross historian cheerfully reviews the organization’s pioneer work in disaster relief, beginning with Clara Barton’s personal work in the 1880s and continuing through the institutionalization of disaster relief practices in the 20th century.
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Deacon, Janney Byron. Disasters and the American Red Cross in Disaster Relief. New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1918.
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The American Red Cross director of disaster relief describes the organization’s Progressive Era efforts to standardize disaster relief, with richly illustrated case studies from the Titanic disaster to massive mining accidents, to earthquakes, floods, and storms.
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Jones, Marian Moser. “The American Red Cross and Local Response to the 1918 Influenza Pandemic: A Four-City Case Study.” Public Health Reports 125. Supp. 3 (April 2010): 92–104.
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This article explores how the US Public Health Service, with limited personnel, engaged the wartime American Red Cross in its first-line response to the 1918–1919 influenza pandemic. Focuses on flu prevention activities and nursing volunteers in four cities: Boston, Pittsburgh, St. Louis, and Richmond, Virginia.
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Valenzuela, Atala. Memoria de labores de la Cruz Roja Guatemalteca durante el terremoto del 4 de Febrero de 1976. Guatemala: Cruz Roja Guatemalteca, 1976.
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Illustrated with over 100 photographs, this report richly covers the Guatemalan Red Cross’s emergency response and longer-term relief following an earthquake that killed over 820,000 Guatemalans in 1976 (p. 1). Details participation of Central American and US societies. Specifies funds raised, who participated, and types of in-kind aid provided by locality.
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Woodruff, Nan. Rare as Rain: Federal Relief in the Great Southern Drought of 1930–31. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1985.
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A study of the 1930–1931 drought relief operation engineered by President Herbert Hoover and executed by the American Red Cross. Focuses on Arkansas, Mississippi, Kentucky, and West Virginia. Shows how the drought’s scope soon overwhelmed the limited capabilities of the Red Cross.
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Red Cross International Relief

Beginning in the 1890s, Red Cross societies began to supplant missionary aid societies as a chief vehicle for fund-raising and delivery of aid to civilians around the world affected by wars, natural disasters, and famine. (See also World War I). Reports of the American Red Cross’s work in this vein include American National Red Cross 1896, an account of the organization’s small mission to Turkey to aid Armenians, and Belknap 1910, which details the joint American Red Cross–US Navy project to build a new village for survivors of the 1908 Messina-Reggio earthquake in Italy—a disaster in which numerous Red Cross societies provided aid. The American Red Cross (ARC) played a leading role in emergency aid to non-European nations before World War II, with its efforts closely tied to US State Department objectives (See Irwin 2013 and Jones 2013 cited under American Red Cross Society). The ARC’s longest-standing effort in this area was its prevention and relief of famine in China between 1906 and 1931, examined in Brewer 1983. Over the past fifty years, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) have become the dominant Red Cross players on the international scene, with the ICRC typically concerned with aid and monitoring in conflict zones, and the IFRC and its member societies focusing more on disaster relief (see International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies 2009 cited under International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC)). Beginning with decolonization-related conflicts, Africa over the past half century has become the main locus of the ICRC’s international activity. The 1967–1970 Biafran conflict in Nigeria provided an impetus for extensive ICRC involvement, as detailed in Samuels 1975. The ICRC has also occupied a longstanding role in monitoring conflicts and aiding refugees in Angola, South Africa, Rhodesia/Zimbabwe, Zaire, Ethiopia/Eritrea, Sudan, and Somalia, as detailed in International Committee of the Red Cross 1978, International Committee of the Red Cross 1986, and Millwood 1992. As famine enveloped parts of Ethiopia in 1985, the ICRC aided over 1 million Ethiopians, as detailed in International Committee of the Red Cross 1986. These reports provide a starting point for scholars looking to examine Red Cross work in Africa—a little-studied subject.

American National Red Cross. Report: America’s Relief Expedition to Asia Minor under the Red Cross. Washington, DC: Journal Publishing, 1896.
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The report from Clara Barton and her associates of their 1896 trip to Turkey to aid Armenians who had survived massacres and destruction of their villages. An early example of a Red Cross society using neutrality to gain access to affected civilians in a zone marred by ethnic conflict.
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Belknap, Reginald Rowan. American House Building in Messina and Reggio: An Account of the American Naval and Red Cross Combined Expedition, to Provide Shelter for the Survivors of the Great Earthquake of December 28, 1908. New York: G. P. Putnam’s, 1910.
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Report of a joint operation between the American Red Cross and the US Navy to build a village in Italy for survivors of one of recorded history’s worst earthquakes. Richly illustrated with photographs. Reflects the American Red Cross’s role as an organ of American diplomacy during this era.
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Brewer, Karen Lynn. “From Philanthropy to Reform: The American Red Cross in China.” PhD diss., Case Western Reserve University, 1983.
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This study details the American Red Cross’s flood and famine relief efforts in China including an unsuccessful 1915 flood prevention engineering project. Argues that the efforts represented the organization’s “attempt to reform China’s physical geography as a means to reform her political institutions and moral life” (p. 103).
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International Committee of the Red Cross. The International Committee of the Red Cross in Africa. Geneva, Switzerland: International Committee of the Red Cross, Press and Information Division, 1978.
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This ICRC publication succinctly details the organization’s aid and monitoring of postcolonial conflicts in Rhodesia/Zimbabwe—including aid to refugees in Botswana, Zambia, and Mozambique—Angola/South Africa, Zaire, Chad, Ethiopia/Eritrea, and Somalia. Contains pictures and balance sheet of 1978–1979 ICRC fund-raising receipts and expenditures in Africa.
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International Committee of the Red Cross. Africa Appeal No. 12 1986. Geneva, Switzerland: International Committee of the Red Cross, 1986.
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Summarizes the ICRC’s ongoing activities in Angola, South Africa (with political prisoners), Namibia, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Uganda, Chad, Sudan, and Somalia, as well as its 1985 effort to aid a million Ethiopians afflicted by drought. Appeals for over 192 million Swiss francs from international community to continue this work in 1986.
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Millwood, David. ICRC Africa. Geneva, Switzerland: International Committee of the Red Cross, 1992.
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This report seeks to explain to ICRC supporters why Africa “accounted for almost half of our total expenditures” from 1980–1992 (p. 2). Details ICRC’s POW exchanges, prison visits, disaster/famine relief, refugee aid, tracing lost family members, and aid in Somalia and Sudan. Explores increasing politicization of aid work in conflict zones.
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Samuels, J. W. “Humanitarian Relief in Man-Made Disasters: The International Red Cross and the Nigerian Experience.” Behind the Headlines 34.3 (1975): 1–43. Toronto: Canadian Institute of International Affairs.
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Analyzing the Red Cross relief operation in Nigeria to persons displaced by the Biafran conflict (1967–1970), this study examines the legal basis for ICRC involvement in a country’s internal conflict under the Geneva Conventions. Also explores logistical aspects of coordination between the ICRC Nigerian, French, and Canadian Red Cross societies.
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Red Cross Nursing

World War I marked the heyday of the Red Cross nurse. Though the professionalization of nursing as a female occupation began with Florence Nightingale’s work during the Crimean War, few Red Cross societies wholeheartedly embraced the concept of recruiting a female nurse corps until the years leading up to World War I. This war became a high point for Red Cross nursing. Fell and Hallett 2013 provides an invaluable and up-to-date transnational perspective on Red Cross nursing during World War I. Nygaard 2002 discuss how the voluntarism embodied by Red Cross nurses, in particular British Red Cross Voluntary Aid Detachment (VAD) nurses, often clashed with the serious professionalism of Army nurses. Dock 1922 and Gladwin 1931 glorify the role American Red Cross nurses played in this war, minimizing the fact that they did not enter the conflict until the final eighteen months. By World War II, Army nurses became the dominant type of war nurse—a transition that Kernodle reviews in her survey of American Red Cross nursing, Kernodle 1949.

Dock, Lavinia. History of American Red Cross Nursing, Part 1. New York: MacMillan, 1922.
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Written by a group of American Red Cross nursing leaders, an inside history of nurses’ rise to prominence within the organization between 1909 and 1918. Focuses largely on the nurses’ central role in American Red Cross activities during World War I.
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Fell, Allison, and Christine E. Hallett. First World War Nursing: New Perspectives. Hoboken, NJ: Taylor and Francis, 2013.
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This collection assembles and synthesizes scholarship from numerous national perspectives. The Red Cross movement is interwoven throughout, in discussion of British VADs, as well as French, Romanian, Serbian, and American Red Cross nurses. Focuses on nursing and wartime national identities, professionalization, and nurses as eyewitnesses to war.
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Gladwin, Mary Elizabeth. The Red Cross and Jane Arminda Delano. Philadelphia: W. B. Saunders, 1931.
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An occupational biography of Jane A. Delano, the founding leader and most influential force in American Red Cross nursing from 1909 through her untimely death in 1918.
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Kernodle, Portia. The Red Cross Nurse in Action, 1882–1948. New York: Harper, 1949.
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This well-researched popular volume chronicles the history of American Red Cross nursing. It covers the limited nursing work allowed by founder Clara Barton, the organization of a Red Cross nursing division in 1909, and the role these nurses played in the two world wars and in peacetime.
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Nygaard, Nancy. “Too Awful for Words . . . Nursing Narratives of the Great War.” PhD diss., University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, 2002.
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Why would young, privileged British women leave the comforts of home to join Voluntary Aid Detachments (VADs), nurses and domestic aides organized by the British Red Cross and St. John’s Ambulance Society during World War I? This engaging treatise uses diaries and correspondence from VADs to answer this question.
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Red Cross Blood Services

The involvement of the Red Cross movement in supplying blood for medical use began in the 1920s in the British Empire, as Klugman 2004 notes. Klugman offers a scholarly case study of the Australian Red Cross’s blood transfusion service. With the advent of advances in plasma collection and storage in the late 1930s, the American Red Cross enlisted African American blood storage pioneer Charles R. Drew to direct its blood program and subsequently became a major blood supplier to the military and, after World War II, to civilians. Love 1996 provides an important biographical portrait of Drew and the myth that surrounded his untimely death. Additional materials on Drew and blood are available online at the National Library of Medicine’s Charles R. Drew Papers. The postwar expansion of blood storage and supply as a major Red Cross activity has not been examined. Online materials are available at Red Cross Blood Services History in American Red Cross’s website. Reitman 1996 offers an exposé of the American Red Cross blood service for failing to protect the blood supply from contamination from HIV. A more comprehensive history of Red Cross blood services is sorely lacking.

Klugman, Matthew. Blood Matters: A Social History of the Victorian Red Cross Blood Transfusion Service. Melbourne: Australian Scholarly Publishing, 2004.
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Provides a fresh perspective on the history of the Red Cross movement and blood. Sympathetically chronicles the history of this blood transfusion service from its beginning in 1929, when donated blood had to be immediately transfused to patients, up to nationalization of blood banks in 1996.
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Love, Spencie. One Blood: The Death and Resurrection of Charles R. Drew. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996.
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Examines the life and death of a pioneering African American medical researcher and “father of the blood bank,” at the American Red Cross. Dissects the thicket of rumors surrounding his death in an auto accident and probes their cultural meanings.
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National Library of Medicine. The Charles R. Drew Papers online.
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Online scientific biography and papers of Charles Drew, “father of the blood bank,” and his work with plasma storage, at Red Cross, and in surgery. Contains digitized correspondence, speeches, and other documents.
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Red Cross Blood Services History. American Red Cross.
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The American Red Cross’s own timeline of its blood service, the leading Red Cross blood processing service worldwide. Omits controversial information such as the segregation of blood and controversy over inadequate screening for HIV-tainted blood in the 1980s.
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Reitman, Judith. Bad Blood: Crisis in the American Red Cross. New York: Kensington, 1996.
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In the tradition of the muckrakers, alleges that neglect, mismanagement, and a cover-up at the American Red Cross’s blood processing service led to the fatal contamination of the US blood supply with HIV and other diseases in the 1980s. An exposé rather than a scholarly examination.
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Franco-Prussian War

The Franco-Prussian War marked a watershed for the nascent Red Cross movement. This war, which began on 19 July 1870 with France’s declaration of war on the German states, and ended on 10 May 1871 with Germany’s decisive defeat of France, provided Red Cross societies with the first opportunity to test their mettle in a conflict. Also, for the first time in the history of the movement, all parties to the conflict had signed the Geneva Convention of 1864 (see Geneva Conventions). The French Red Cross, however, proved much less organized than the Prussian and other German Red Cross societies. (See Riesenberger 2002 cited under European Red Cross Societies for discussion of the German societies’ work in this war). The perceived failure of preparedness by the French Red Cross led it to split into factions, which then launched major postwar efforts to improve military readiness in France, as Chrastil 2010 and Darrow 2013 note. (See also Du Camp 1889 and Chrastil 2008 cited under European Red Cross Societies). Red Cross societies from neutral countries, most notably Great Britain (see Furley 1872 and Swain 1970), Belgium, Switzerland, and Spain also participated in aid to combatants. (See also Clemente 1986 cited under European Red Cross Societies for a discussion of Spanish Red Cross work in this war). The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), meanwhile, swung into action, developing ways to monitor the parties’ adherence to the Geneva Convention, trace missing soldiers, and repatriate wounded soldiers. Moynier 1882, written by the ICRC president during this era, reviews the activities of both the ICRC and national societies. As Moorehead 1999 notes, “much of the work and thinking that would dominate the movement for the next 120 years would be explored and developed on or around the battlefields” of this war. (p. 63).

Chrastil, Rachel. Organizing for War: France 1870–1914. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2010.
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This study argues that France’s defeat in 1871 led to the creation of numerous French Red Cross organizations focused on engaging women volunteers in a national project of military readiness. Explores how “these associations changed the relationship of citizens with the French state” (p. 1). Details Red Cross expenditures and resources.
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Darrow, Margaret H. “Making Sister Julie: The Origin of First World War Nursing Heroines in Franco-Prussian War Stories.” In First World War Nursing: New Perspectives. Edited by Alison S. Fell and Christine E. Hallett, 17–34. Hoboken, NJ: Taylor and Francis, 2013.
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Argues that French women’s perceived heroic if ineffective voluntarism during the Franco-Prussian War led to the simultaneous blaming of women for France’s defeat and elevation of women as heroines. Discusses how these events sparked the French Red Cross’s interwar (1881–1914) campaign to train women as nurses.
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Furley, John. Struggles and Experiences of a Neutral Volunteer. 2 vols. London: Chapman and Hall, 1872.
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Firsthand account by a founder of the British Red Cross Society of his adventures in France and Germany during the Franco-Prussian War. Highly personal, filled with logistic details, correspondence with British Red Cross chairman Col. Loyd-Lindsay, and disparaging comments toward both the French and Germans.
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Moorehead, Caroline. Dunant’s Dream: War, Switzerland and the History of the Red Cross. New York: Carroll & Graf, 1999.
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Chapter 3 of this work provides a multidimensional overview of the Red Cross in the Franco-Prussian War, including the role played by ICRC founders Dunant, Appia, and Moynier (See also Boissier 1974, Chaponnière 2010, and Senarclens 2000 in ICRC Founders), as well as French, Prussian, and British societies.
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Moynier, Gustav. La Croix-rouge: Son passé et son avenir. Paris: Sandoz & Thuillier, 1882.
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This account from an ICRC founder and long-time president (see also Senarclens 2000 in ICRC Founders) discusses in detail the movement’s involvement in the Franco-Prussian War on pp. 103–129, detailing the participation and financial contributions of various national societies.
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Swain, Valentine A. J. “Franco-Prussian War 1870–1871: Voluntary Aid for the Wounded and Sick.” British Medical Journal 3.5721 (29 August 1970): 511–514.
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A succinct but detailed and evenhanded treatment of the British Red Cross’s involvement in hospitals and other aid work during the Franco-Prussian War. Illustrated.
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Spanish-American War

The Spanish-American War served as a proving ground for both the American Red Cross and Spanish Red Cross societies. Jones 2013 focuses on the civilian aid offered by Clara Barton and her associates. Central Cuban Relief Committee 1898 offers a valuable primary source for further study of the American Red Cross in this war. Cruz Roja Española 1899 provides an official account of the aid provided by this society to Spanish troops in Cuba.

Central Cuban Relief Committee. Report of the Central Cuban Relief Committee, New York City to the Secretary of State. New York: Central Cuban Relief Committee, 1898.
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Report of the actions in Cuba in the months leading up to the Spanish-American War by the Central Cuban Relief Committee, a de facto organ of the American Red Cross. Detailed lists of shipments, contributors. Illustrated with photographs.
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Cruz Roja Española. La Cruz Roja: Memoria de la Delegación de la Asemblea Española en la Isla de Cuba. Havana, Cuba: El Comercio, 1899.
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An official publication of the society, imbued with patriotic sentimentality. Details the Spanish Red Cross’s efforts to aid Spanish soldiers in Cuba during their unsuccessful war with the Americans.
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Jones, Marian Moser. The American Red Cross from Clara Barton to the New Deal. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2013.
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In the fifth chapter, examines the American Red Cross’s provision of aid to civilians in Cuba affected by the country’s civil war, and the organization’s consequent unwitting role in supplying evidence to justify the 1898 US invasion of Cuba. Also discusses Red Cross work during the Spanish-American War.
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Russo-Japanese War

The Russo-Japanese War provided a chance for Japan to demonstrate to the West not only its military might, but also the effectiveness of its Red Cross society. (See also Checkland 1994 cited under Asia Pacific Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies). The Russian Red Cross Society, though less organized, also showcased its abilities, as United States 1906 discusses. Richardson 1905 offers the rare eyewitness account of a British nurse who worked with the Japanese Red Cross during the war, while United States 1906 reports upon the Russian Red Cross’s activities for an interested American political elite.

Richardson, Teresa Eden Pearce-Serocold. In Japanese Hospitals during War-Time: Fifteen Months with the Red Cross Society of Japan (April 1904 to July 1905). London: Blackwood, 1905.
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Eyewitness account by a British nurse who served with the Japanese Red Cross during the Russo-Japanese War. An odd mixture of enthusiastic travel narrative and straightforward depictions of care for the wounded in Japanese hospitals, full of praise for the “splendid organization” of the Japanese Red Cross.
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United States, Navy Dept. Bureau of Medicine and Surgery. Report on the Russian Medical and Sanitary Features of the Russo-Japanese War to the Surgeon-General. Washington, DC: GPO, 1906.
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Details operations of Russian Red Cross during Russo-Japanese War, including fund-raising, hospital trains, and hospitals. Demonstrates growing US interest in the military usefulness of a Red Cross society, prefiguring the growth of the American Red Cross during World War I.
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World War I

World War I marked a high point for the Red Cross movement. Hutchinson 1996 and Moorehead 1999 (cited under General Overviews) provide an introduction to the Red Cross movement’s involvement in this war. Fell and Hallett 2013 and Nygaard 2002 (both cited under Red Cross Nursing) explore the important role played by Red Cross nurses during this war. Irwin 2013 focuses on the American Red Cross’s work in this era and argues that the organization during the war made humanitarianism into a powerful vehicle for American foreign policy. Rozario 2003 explores the American Red Cross’s use of horrific images to raise funds for its efforts. Davis 1993 examines the activities of numerous Red Cross societies on the eastern front and the ideals underlying them. Numerous published documents and accounts from the era from different national perspectives provide the historian with a rich research substrate. See, for example, Joint War Committee of the British Red Cross Society and the Order of St. John of Jerusalem in England 2009, Davison 1943, and Clow 1919.

Bicknell, Ernest. With the Red Cross in Europe, 1917–1922. Washington, DC: American National Red Cross, 1938.
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This posthumous compilation of letters and notes from the head of the American Red Cross’s extensive World War I–era European aid effort provides an on-the-ground view of the organization’s work in France, Belgium, Switzerland, Italy, Serbia, Turkey, and the Balkans. An invaluable glimpse into the Americanization of war relief.
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Clow, Malcom P. With the Red Cross in Serbia, 1917: Being the letters of Malcolm P. Clow, Conductor of the Croix Rouge Francaise, attached to Seventh Division French Colonial Army. Belfast: John Cleland, 1919.
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A collection of letters home to Northern Ireland from a young man attached to a French Red Cross hospital convoy in Bulgaria and Greece, ferrying wounded British and French soldiers to hospitals. Describes his firsthand experience of the conflict in the Serbian theater, ending with his death from dysentery.
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Davis, Gerald H. “National Red Cross Societies and Prisoners of War in Russia, 1914–18.” Journal of Contemporary History 28.1 (January 1993): 31–52.
DOI: 10.1177/002200949302800103Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Details how Swedish, Danish, and American Red Cross societies operated on the eastern front, working with Russian, German, and Austro-Hungarian Red Crosses to improve treatment of POWs. It argues that the Russians were guided by ideals of reciprocity rather than humanitarianism in allowing these groups access to POWs.
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Davison, Henry P. The American Red Cross in the Great War, 1917–1919. New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1943.
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Originally published 1919. A factually rich report on the American Red Cross’s activities from 1917 to 1919, written by its wartime leader. Covers the organization’s unprecedented wartime fund-raising efforts, its work with the US military at home and abroad, and its extensive efforts to aid war refugees in twenty-five countries.
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Irwin, Julia. Making the World Safe: The American Red Cross and a Nation’s Humanitarian Awakening. New York: Oxford University Press, 2013.
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This work, an excellent example of the transnational approach to US history, uses the American Red Cross’s extensive work in Europe from 1914 to 1923 to tell the larger story of how, when, and why Americans began employing humanitarianism as a key tool of foreign relations.
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Joint War Committee of the British Red Cross Society and the Order of St. John of Jerusalem in England. Reports by the Joint War Committee and the Joint War Finance Committee of the British Red Cross Society and the Order of St. John of Jerusalem in England on Voluntary Aid Rendered to the Sick and Wounded at Home and Abroad and to British Prisoners of War, 1914–1919: With appendices. Sussex, UK: Naval & Military Press, 2009.
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First published 1920. The official record of the World War I activities of the Voluntary Aid Detachments (VADs), which were organized by a joint committee of the British Red Cross and the Order of St. John of Jerusalem, the society that had pioneered first aid.
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Rozario, Kevin. “‘Delicious Horrors’: Mass Culture, the Red Cross, and the Appeal of Modern American Humanitarianism.” American Quarterly 55.3 (September 2003): 417–455.
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Argues that the American Red Cross used gruesome stories of suffering and death in its mass publication, Red Cross Magazine, to draw support and raise funds during World War I. Questions this “strange marriage of sensationalism and humanitarianism and the increasing influence of consumerism in charitable enterprises” (p. 433).
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Second Italo-Ethiopian War

The Second Italo-Ethiopian War of 1935–1936 marked the first time that the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) sent delegates outside of Europe to investigate possible violations of the Geneva Conventions. Junod 1982 provides a firsthand perspective on the conflict and subsequent ones from an ICRC delegate. Baudendistel 2006 represents a major scholarly study of the ICRC’s involvement in this war.

Baudendistel, Rainer. Between Bombs and Good Intentions: The Red Cross and the Italo-Ethiopian War, 1935–1936. New York: Berghahn, 2006.
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Groundbreaking study of ICRC role in Italo-Ethiopian conflict. Based on research in ICRC and Italian military archives. Examines Italy’s use of poison gas and bombardment of Red Cross hospitals, and both sides’ mistreatment of POWs. Concludes that the Italians manipulated the ICRC to minimize their war crimes.
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Junod, Marcel. Warrior without Weapons. Geneva, Switzerland: International Committee of the Red Cross, 1982.
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First published 1947 in French. An ICRC delegate’s popular account of his experiences in war zones between 1935 and 1945. Witness to Italy’s poison attacks on Ethiopia, the Spanish Civil War, Nazi-occupied Poland, wartime Germany, and Japan immediately following Hiroshima. Provides insight on the character of the ICRC during this era.
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World War II

While much information on the Red Cross movement in World War II can be found in overviews of the movement (see General Overviews) and in histories of the national societies, two works directly address the issue that has cast a shadow over the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) since 1945: why did the organization remain silent about the concentration camps and treatment of Jews, and why didn’t it do more? Favez 1999 remains the leading work on this topic, while Ben-Tov 1988 provides an analysis of the question with regard to the special case of Hungarian Jews. Moorehead 1999 (cited under General Overviews) emphasizes the anti-Semitism of wartime ICRC members. Other scholars have begun to examine the Red Cross movement’s involvement in the war from additional perspectives. Ampferl 1999 discusses the German Red Cross’s postwar work in reuniting scattered German families, while Day, et al. 1998 provides oral histories from Canadian Red Cross volunteers. Shealy 2003 raises questions about the American Red Cross’s failure to aid POWs.

Ampferl, Monika. “La recherche des Allemands prisonniers ou portés disparus au cours de la Seconde Guerre Mondiale.” Revue Internationale de la Croix-Rouge 834 (30 June 1999): 387.
DOI: 10.1017/S1560775500097467Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
By 1945, one in four Germans was searching for missing family members, according to this article. It chronicles the development of a German Red Cross research service to help people find lost relatives, from war’s end through 1989, when the USSR made files on German POWs available.
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Ben-Tov, Arieh. Facing the Holocaust in Budapest: The International Committee of the Red Cross and the Jews in Hungary, 1943–1945. Norwell, MA: Kluwer, 1988.
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Detailed study by a Holocaust survivor, based on material from ICRC archives and interviews with ICRC leaders. Makes a nuanced argument that some ICRC field representatives acted heroically to save some of Hungary’s Jews, but that ICRC leaders thwarted more widespread action.
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Day, Frances Martin, Phyllis Spence, and Barbara Ladouceur, eds. Women Overseas: Memoirs of the Canadian Red Cross Corps (Overseas Detachment). Vancouver: Ronsdale, 1998.
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Collection of thirty-one memoirs from Canadian female wartime volunteers. The twenty-eight from World War II describe visiting hospitals, transporting soldiers, working in London soldiers’ clubs, preparing aid packages for POWs, and working with blind and disabled persons. The three from the post–Korean War period describe recreation work.
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Favez, Jean-Claude. The Red Cross and the Holocaust. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999.
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First published 1988 in French. Based on analysis of ICRC archives. Investigates how much ICRC leaders knew about concentration camps and whether they did all they could to protect the Jews. Asserts that they knew about the Holocaust in 1942 but remained silent primarily to retain access to POWs.
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Shealy, Gwendolyn C. A Critical History of the American Red Cross, 1882–1945. Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen, 2003.
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Despite its title, this published symposium paper skims over much of the American Red Cross’s early history. However, its last chapter analyzes why the organization was not more effective in aiding POWs during World War II, raising questions that merit further examination.
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Cold War Conflicts

The Cold War challenged the Red Cross movement by limiting Westerners’ access to Communist countries and limiting the role of Red Cross societies in these countries. Cardia 1996 examines an exception to this trend, the ICRC’s active involvement in aiding civilians affected by the 1956 Hungarian uprising. Stur 2011 and Kotcher 2011 both explore the culturally constrained roles of the American Red Cross recreation officers in Vietnam, the latter from an eyewitness perspective. See also Freymond 1976 (cited under International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC)).

Cardia, Isabelle Vonèche. L’Octobre hongrois: Entre Croix Rouge et drapeau rouge: L’Action du Comité International de la Croix-Rouge en 1956. Brussels: Bruylant, 1996.
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Important contribution to the little-explored history of the ICRC during the Cold War. Examines the ICRC’s active role in delivering aid packages to civilians affected by the 1956 Hungarian uprising. Also discusses the ICRC’s wider failure to protect political detainees and its reluctance to challenge the Soviet-installed government.
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Kotcher, Joann Puffer. Donut Dolly: An American Red Cross Girl’s War in Vietnam. Denton: University of North Texas Press, 2011.
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The memoir of an American Red Cross “Donut Dolly” sent to Korea in 1965 and to combat zones in Vietnam from 1966 to 1967. “Our job was to remind the soldiers of home, or to be like their sister or the girl next door,” she wrote (p. xi).
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Stur, Heather Marie. Beyond Combat: Women and Gender in the Vietnam War Era. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011.
DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511980534Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
In its second chapter, this rich blend of military and social history examines the ambivalent role that American Red Cross Supplemental Recreation Activity Officers in Vietnam, known colloquially as “Donut Dollies,” played as wholesome distractions for troops deployed in increasingly demoralizing combat zones.
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Post–Cold War Era

The history of the Red Cross movement in the post–Cold War era has not yet been written, but several scholars, such as the authors of Destexhe 1996 and Berry 1997, have begun to grapple with the organization’s role in the civil wars and ethnic conflicts that proliferated during the 1990s and early 2000s. (See also Samuels 1975, International Committee of the Red Cross 1978, International Committee of the Red Cross 1986, and Millwood 1992, all cited under Red Cross International Relief, for background on the ICRC’s involvement in Africa during the 1970s–1990s). The role of the Red Cross movement in the post-9/11 world remains largely unexamined by scholars, except for work such as Benthall and Bellion-Jourdan 2009 (cited under Middle East Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies).

Berry, Nicholas O. War and the Red Cross: The Unspoken Mission. New York: St. Martin’s, 1997.
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An analysis of the ICRC’s work during 1990s wars in Bosnia, Rwanda, Sudan, and Afghanistan. Makes the provocative argument that the committee carries out an “unspoken mission to undermine and resolve civil wars” (p. ix) by making war less efficient and warlords less effective.
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Destexhe, Alain. “From Solferino to Sarajevo.” Health and Human Rights 2 (1996): 46–57.
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Explores a central dilemma faced by Red Cross and other humanitarian workers—“how to nourish the victims without overfeeding the executioners” (p. 47). Discusses humanitarianism as ideology and practice. Focuses on the 1960s Biafra crisis, the “Doctors Without Borders” movement, and use of United Nations troops to deliver aid in 1990s conflicts.