Introduction: Selective humanity: Three centuries of Anglophone humanitarianism, empire and transnationalism – Trevor Burnard, Joy Damousi and Alan Lester

Part I: Transatlantic humanitarianism, 1760–1838
1 Anthony Benezet: A Short History of Guinea and its impact on early British abolitionism –
Trevor Burnard
2 An incident at the Sun Tavern: Changing the discourse on Indigenous visitors to Georgian Britain – Kate Fullagar
3 Humanity amidst calamity: Humanitarian discourse in New South Wales, 1788–1830 –
Jillian Beard
4 'Nor do they harbour vermin': Material culture approaches to exploring humanitarian exchanges – Amanda B. Moniz
5 The realpolitik of emancipation in the British Empire, 1833–38 – Alan Lester

Part II: Humanitarianism and Indigenous peoples, 1838–c. 1950
6 Humanitarianism in a genocidal age: The tragic story of the Aboriginal prison on Rottnest Island, Western Australia, 1838–1903 – Ann Curthoys
7 From humanitarianism to humane governance: Aboriginal slavery and white Australia – Amanda Nettelbeck
8 Humanitarian priorities and West African agency in the British Empire – Bronwen Everill
9 The origins of exemption: The individual exception in the discourse of humanitarianism – Katherine Ellinghaus

Part III: A new international order, 1918–95
10 Gender, personalities and the politics of humanitarianism: Nursing leaders of the League of Red Cross Societies between the wars – Melanie Oppenheimer
11 ‘Springs of love’: Sentiment and affect in the development of mid-twentieth-century volunteering – Agnieszka Sobocinska
12 Humanitarian activism during the Vietnam War: The case of Rosemary Taylor, Elaine Moir and Margaret Moses – Joy Damousi
13 Humanitarianism in the age of human rights: Amnesty International in Australia – Jon Piccini
14 Palliation, poverty and child welfare: Human rights and humanitarianism in the 1980s – Roland Burke

Index

This is the first book to examine the shifting relationship between humanitarianism and the expansion, consolidation and postcolonial transformation of the Anglophone world across three centuries. Together, the collection teases out various issues, such as the relationship between British humanitarian concerns and the uneven imagination and application of emancipation; the fluctuating tensions between ameliorative humanitarianism based around the assumption that British civilisation should be the standard for any policy initiatives and assertive human rights; the specifics of humanitarian governance and practice; the fluid locales of humanitarian donors, practitioners and recipients as decolonisation reconfigured imperial relationships and the overarching question of who Anglo humanitarianism is for and what it is about.

This volume utilises detailed case studies over the longue durée of some three hundred years of Anglophone history, covering the eighteenth to the twenty-first centuries, with especial attention paid to Australia as the settler colony par excellence. The collection showcases an array of methodologies and sources, ranging from the biography of material objects to interviews as well as more conventional archival enquiry.