Calculating compassion

Calculating compassion examines the origins of British relief work in late-nineteenth-century wars on the continent and the fringes of Empire. Commencing with the Franco-Prussian war of 1870–71, it follows distinguished surgeons and ‘lady amateurs’ as they distributed aid to wounded soldiers and distressed civilians, often in the face of considerable suspicion. Dispensing with the notion of shared ‘humanitarian’ ideals, it examines the complex, and sometimes controversial, origins of organised r