Page 251 - Encyclopedia Of World History Vol IV

1552 berkshire encyclopedia of world history

popular government, he seemed to have preferred some
form of constitutional monarchy. Some of Raynal’s harsh- Red Cross and
est criticisms were leveled at the claims of religious systems,
such as the Catholic Church’s doctrine of papal infallibil- Red Crescent
ity, which he felt had led to intolerance and fanaticism.
Raynal’s History was perhaps the last example of the Movement
cosmographical tradition, begun by Andre Thevet and
Sebastian Muenster in the sixteenth century, which he International Committee of the Red Cross
attempted a global comparison of cultures. They antici- T(ICRC) and the International Federation of Red
pated Raynal in explaining the rise of Europe in part as Cross and Red Crescent Societies (the Federation),
a result of utilizing such technologies as the compass and together with the national Red Cross and Red Crescent
the printing press.Yet, he went much further in champi- Societies in over 178 countries around the world, form
oning eighteenth-century ethnocentric perspectives that the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Move-
celebrated Europe’s ascendancy and the benefits of Euro- ment.As a whole, the Movement’s mission is to help vic-
pean culture for indigenous societies, even recommend- tims of international and local armed conflicts and to
ing, in the third edition of 1781, mixed marriages lessen the horrors of war indirectly through international
between French subjects and colonial natives as a way of law and directly through humanitarian intervention.The
further civilizing the latter.Although he gave considerable larger movement also undertakes the peacetime relief of
hearing to the debate about the virtues of primitive cul- suffering from natural and manmade disasters.There are
ture versus civilization and expressed humanitarian con- currently over 250 million members of the Red Cross
cerns about various societies the perspective of the Movement.
History was clearly Eurocentric. Perhaps more than any other international organiza-
As much as any single literary production, Raynal’s tion, the Red Cross has been able to shape international
History mentored the advocates of reform and even rev- behavior.Working through the international legal system
olution on both sides of the Atlantic. A didactic work, with the Geneva Conventions (first developed in 1864,
clearly representative of its age, it nevertheless provided and adopted in their current form in 1949) and other
an agenda for modern excursions in world history. treaties, the Red Cross has created what is now almost
universally recognized as correct humanitarian behavior
William H. Alexander
in wartime: neutrality for medical personnel and their
See also Enlightenment,The; Expansion, European equipment and the humane treatment of prisoners of
war. The ICRC considers itself the “guardian of interna-
tional humanitarian law” and works to extend the reach
Further Reading and observance of those laws. The success of the inter-
Canizares-Esquerra, J. (2001). How to write the history of the New World: national body has been aided by the local importance of
Histories, epistemologies, and identities in the eighteenth-century the national societies.
Atlantic world. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Duchet, M. (1971). Anthropology and history in the century of enlight-
enment. Paris: Francois Maspero. The International
Pagden, A. (1998). Lords of all the world: Ideologies of empire in Spain, Committee of the Red Cross
Britain and France c. 1500–c. 1800. New Haven, CT: Yale University
Press. The ICRC is the original, earliest Red Cross group,
Seeber, E. (1937). Anti-slavery opinion in France during the second half founded in 1863 by Jean-Henri Dunant (1828–1910),
of the eighteenth century. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Wolpe, H. (1957). Raynal and his war machine. Stanford, CA: Stanford who was honored for this accomplishment in 1901 with
University Press. the first Nobel Peace Prize. The ICRC, an independent