When the Canadian Red Cross (CRCS) was created in 1896 as the first colonial branch of the British Red Cross, it held closely to the Red Cross Movement’s founding vision of inactivity in peacetime. While other national Red Cross societies expanded beyond the provisions of the Geneva Conventions, the CRCS did not – and, as a result, failed to thrive. This chapter will examine the role of the First World War in transforming the CRCS into a nationwide patriotic and humanitarian cause, its wartime work fuelled by British imperialism and an emerging sense of English-Canadian nationalism born of the war. The CRCS’s evolution between 1914 and 1919 therefore offers a useful case study of how intersecting national, imperial and transnational forces shaped the evolution of one humanitarian organisation.

This chapter examines one year, 1938, in the history of the British Red Cross (BRCS): a year that was not one of its most obviously eventful. Indeed, with devastating conflict raging in Europe, the BRCS, like the British Government, was notable for its non-intervention in Spain. Yet it did play a part in the high drama of European politics, advocating for international protocols on civilian protection in war, and acting as broker and facilitator between movements for civil defence and (territorial) military planning and Government departments at a time when the shadow of European war loomed large. Using the case study of the Red Cross International Conference held in London in June 1938, the local and national history of the BRCS is explored better to understand its relative state of non-intervention in the Spanish war, and how this related to the discourse on civilian protection and civil defence at home. How much the BRCS focused on these national priorities at a time of international crisis is a focal point of this chapter, which explores the broader question of how the Movement as a whole operated and avoided segmentation at this critical political juncture in the final years of peace.

This chapter gives details of how the project reported in the book was conducted, the techniques of data collection and the analytic procedures employed. It describes the methods of the first study in 1995 (Warde and Martens, Eating Out), giving details of both the survey and interviews conducted in 2015. It discusses the use of mixed methods. The logic of a re-visit to a fieldwork site is discussed in relation to analysing social change. Its second main section briefly sketches some features of the market provision of eating services in the UK to give context to the ensuing account of consumption.

This chapter explores the way in which the British Red Cross Society responded to the crisis that affected the flow of relief parcels to British prisoners of war in Germany after the summer of 1940. It argues that the Society was slow to adjust to total war conditions. It was ill equipped to deal with the intensity of public criticism, and found itself outmanoeuvred by a Government that was intent on evading its responsibility for the crisis. It was also slow in identifying ways out of the crisis, or in forging close working relations with the non-anglophone elements of the Red Cross Movement, notably the International Committee of the Red Cross and neutral national Red Cross societies.

In 1943 the Macau delegation of the Portuguese Red Cross was established in the South China enclave at the height of the Second World War. Two years later its president was assassinated in the streets of Macau and the following year the delegation ended its activities. It was not the first time a Macau delegation had existed, nor would it be the last, but the brief period (1943–6) during which this Red Cross delegation operated reveals many important features of wartime Macau, the activities of a small Red Cross delegation under extreme circumstances and the challenges of neutrality during the same period. Surrounded by Japanese conquests, wartime Macau became a haven of neutrality and sanctuary, with a population swollen by refugees from across Asia. This chapter explores a range of issues and shows how the Red Cross in Macau was, simultaneously, a local creation, a delegation integrated into a national/colonial context, an inter-imperial structure and part of a transnational institution with global reach.

This chapter shows how dining out has become more familiar to more people over the twenty years since 1995. It examines who visits which types of restaurant and how frequently, showing how often people eat out and who eats out most, on the basis of survey evidence. It reports on how personal orientations affect the frequency of eating in restaurants. It examines exposure of survey respondents to the variety of different types of restaurant in 2015 and compares that with 1995. It concludes that eating out is both necessary and discretionary. There has been a modest increase in the rate of eating out as the tempo has stepped up. Familiarisation with the practice makes dining out less special, so while it is still highly pleasurable, satisfaction with commercially provided meals has declined.

This chapter considers what eating out means to people, for what reasons they dine out, and how their orientations towards the activity differ. It draws on in-depth interviews and survey questions about orientations towards dining out. It distinguishes between special meals and impromptu and regularised ordinary meals, identifying popular understandings and the meaning of eating out from the analysis of responses to twenty-five statements included in the survey in both 1995 and 2015. These responses indicate what people like and dislike, hope and fear, think and do. They also give some indication of change over time. The social characteristics which predispose people towards different orientations can be identified. It is concluded that dining out is primarily understood, as it was in 1995, as a substantial meal, paid for in a commercial establishment, eaten with other people, and usually primarily for enjoyment. Basic reasons for wanting to eat out are similar in 2015, but the activity has become more familiar and rather less special. Most meals out now are best considered as ordinary, and occurring in an impromptu or regularised manner which renders them normal.

In 1861, President Lincoln authorised the creation of the United States Sanitary Commission (USSC) – a body comprising humanitarian volunteers whose purpose was to complement the work of the Union’s Medical Bureau by sourcing supplies, inspecting hospitals and providing general succour to wounded soldiers. Two years later, when news of the first Geneva Conference reached the ears of the USSC’s leaders, they naturally assumed that the Committee of Five had been inspired by the American example to pursue its aims. Historians of the USSC have repeated these claims, despite the comprehensive rejection of the idea of an American origin for the Red Cross Movement by several leading Red Cross scholars. This paper will re-examine the issue of American influence on the Red Cross Movement by turning away from the idea that the USSC inspired the Geneva Convention. Instead, the focus here will be on how the performance of the USSC captured the imaginations of the first Red Cross volunteers, and contributed to the fundamental reshaping of the Committee of Five’s conception of the Red Cross by the dawn of the twentieth century.

From 1914 to the early 1920s – the era of the First World War – the American Red Cross (ARC) was best known for its dynamic growth into an organisation boasting tens of millions of members who energetically participated in a wide array of relief and reconstruction initiatives across war-torn Europe. Less is known about the ARC’s profound struggles during the period of American neutrality, from 1914 to 1917. Every major undertaking that the Red Cross leadership initiated when the United States was neutral failed. It failed to orchestrate a national relief movement, to undertake substantive foreign relief operations and to adapt institutionally to America’s military entry in the war. Given its abject ‘failure to launch’ in these ways, it is all the more remarkable that the ARC became the nation’s leading relief society during the period of American belligerency, 1917–18. In order to appreciate that unlikely transformation, this chapter considers the hurdles over which the ARC initially stumbled.