“Similar to a cloud, the contours of humanitarianism are often unclear,” wrote historian Daniel Laqua in 2014. “It is difficult to delineate humanitarian concerns from Christian charity, or from political expressions of solidarity. On some occasions, the humanitarian cloud can obscure other objects and objectives – including self-interest.” The cloud metaphor is one Davide Rodogno invokes in the introduction to his book Night on Earth: A History of International Humanitarianism in the Near East, 1918-1930, published by Cambridge University Press in 2021. “Like a cloud,” Rodogno wrote, “humanitarian aid was an intense but ephemeral phenomenon”.

The humanitarians who staffed Near East Relief, the American Red Cross and other aid organisations addressed in the book were usually missionaries steeped in the Christian Holy Book. But their “clouds” behaved very differently from the divine clouds described in the bible, which “rain on the just and the unjust”. When it came to deciding who to rain on, by contrast, these NGO clouds were “very selective”. In a conversation with Ozan Ozavci recorded on 19 October 2023 Davide begins by explaining how Night on Earth relates to his earlier book Against Massacre: Humanitarian Interventions in the Ottoman Empire (1815-1914), before turning to the motivations driving humanitarians in his period, as well as the ways in which their activities and networks could expand in the post-WWI “vacuum of sovereignty” in the Near East.

As well as working out their own salvation, these individuals (many of them women) felt a duty to “civilize”, a mission that the League of Nations mandates were explicitly intended to pursue. These were, Davide explains, “converging, concomitant, yet conflicting missions”. The arrival of salaried “experts” brought new pressures on unpaid humanitarians. Previous experience of working with Ottoman Armenians meant that they tended to prioritize that community, and struggled to work with the Orthodox community. With the exception of the International Committee of the Red Cross in Geneva, they had little access to Muslim communities, which in any case had their own philanthropic organisations. A relatively small cadre of humanitarians was dwarfed by the hundreds of thousands of refugees and internally displaced people on the move, and their logistical reach rarely extended beyond railheads and seaports. Their field of operation was “very fragmented”, therefore, one “where bias, selection and choices were made constantly.”

Episode 41 – Reading the Clouds

Podcasts are published by TLP for the purpose of encouraging informed debate on the legacies of the events surrounding the Lausanne Conference. The views expressed by participants do not necessarily represent the views or opinions of TLP, its partners, convenors or members.

MAIN IMAGE: COVER OF NEAR EAST MAGAZINE, APRIL 1923.