This chapter explores the legacies of indenture for international law in Asia through a survey of the existing scholarship and points to new directions for research. Focusing on indentured labor from India, which comprised the majority of labourers recruited under this system in the nineteenth and early twentieth century, it shows how indenture shifted definitions of emigrants and foreigners, shaped discourses on welfare in migration, and left its mark on international relations as they emerged in the aftermath of the two world wars. The chapter also discusses how questions of nationality and citizenship in the postcolonial period often overlooked the plight of the descendents of indenture in Asia, and concludes with speculations on what the new form of indenture is and the limits of drawing these historical analogies.

As the war ended, politicians and educationalists saw the American Junior Red Cross as a means to promote American ideals abroad. Consequently, the American Junior Red Cross shifted its focus on a new form of Americanization, using children as part of a cultural diplomacy that positioned the United States as the global Good Samaritan. Children reached out around the globe, waged war against diseases, dedicated much of their spare time to rescue foreign "brothers" and "sisters," and sponsored children overseas.

Across the nation, children were urged to become “soldiers of the soil,” members of the United States School Garden Army, an initiative created in February 1918 by the US Bureau of Education to promote local gardening. Federal authorities urged local communities to feed themselves while the United States fed the Allies and other nations dependent on the US food supply. The more food civilians grew, the better the United States could feed the world. Children thus became part of a large pool of unpaid labor, serving the interests of both politicians and educationalists: as youth helped to increase food production, they learned skills and habits of self-reliance. Through the United States School Garden Army, children hooverized and learned to change their diet and eat with moderation. Gardening taught them the meaning of sacrifice.

In organizing a juvenile division of the American Red Cross – the so-called American Junior Red Cross – in September 1917, Woodrow Wilson attempted to mobilize the nation’s twenty-two million schoolchildren. Consequently, the American Junior Red Cross became the first federal youth-focused organization to be specifically dedicated to mobilizing American youth in wartime. In designing this first national youth-focused organization, Wilson impeded radical interventionists and quelled educationalists’ concerns. While directing children’s energy to altruistic humanitarian tasks, the organization opened schools to federal oversight of efforts to instill loyalty and deter dissent. Federal authorities attempted to control teachers and relied upon the educational structures to instill loyalty in the future generations of Americanyouth.

This is the first of three overview chapters examining pivotal moments in the history of the League of Red Cross Societies. The chapter offers insights into the origins of the League and how the challenges it faced in its first decade determined the shape of the world’s first international humanitarian network dedicated to improving global health and coordinating peacetime relief efforts. The chapter argues that the massive destruction wrought by the First World War opened new areas of humanitarian endeavour for the Red Cross movement, especially in public health, social welfare, and the eradication of diseases and the administration of disaster relief. During the 1920s, the League forged a form of ‘resilient humanitarianism’, marked by agility and an ability to adapt to changing conditions and circumstances.

This chapter focuses on the Tansley Report or ‘Big Study’, an independent study undertaken by the Red Cross movement in the 1970s. The aim was to conduct a reappraisal of the Red Cross, its role, image, and status in a rapidly changing world. The chapter argues that the main recommendations of the Report, to narrow the focus of the League of Red Cross Societies on disaster relief and strengthen the Secretariat, were largely ignored because they ran counter to the federated nature of the global humanitarian organisation. National Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies wanted to retain their autonomy and continue to conduct a broad range of social welfare and public health programmes relevant to their own communities. Despite its flaws, the Tansley Report offers a unique snapshot of the Red Cross and Red Crescent movement in the 1970s, and remains the most detailed external analysis undertaken.

The book concludes in 1991 when the League’s name changed to the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC). It reiterates the central raison d’être of the League to federate Red Cross and Red Crescent National Societies around key areas of work and to attend to their needs. The League sought to facilitate and encourage a range of humanitarian activities in peacetime, and provide a permanent conduit between and within its increasingly diverse membership. It was a facilitator, enabler, and coordinator. Its creation in 1919 radically transformed a movement that was a loose configuration of the ICRC and National Societies, mainly from Western Europe, who met periodically to discuss the provision of aid to sick and wounded on the battlefield. The League overturned this model, making the Red Cross more multilateral, more diverse, and more democratic, focusing on the development of a global public health network, to mitigate the suffering and provide humanitarian care. The League was not always successful but the book offers a fresh understanding of ‘Red Crossing’ and underlines the centrality of the League of Red Cross Societies to the history of twentieth-century humanitarianism.

The ‘logic’ of charity in modern Britain has been understood as ‘complex’ and ‘varied’: ‘a loose and baggy monster’. Charity after Empire takes this complexity as the basis for a new interpretation. First, the indeterminacy of the role and function of charity lay behind its popularity and growth. With no fixed notions of what they should be or what they should do, charities and NGOs have expanded because they have been many things to many people. Second, the messy practices of aid meant success could always be claimed amidst uncertain objectives and outcomes, triggering further expansion. Third, just as charity was welcomed as a solution to poverty overseas, its scope and potential were contained by powerful political actors who restricted its campaigning and advocacy work. Fourth, racial injustice, especially apartheid, shaped not only humanitarianism overseas but also the domestic governance of charity in Britain. It all resulted not only in the massive expansion of charity but also limitations placed on its role and remit.

Food in the era of the First World War was much more than a military necessity. The shortages of foodstuffs profoundly shaped states and societies during the conflict and beyond. Hunger in war was not a new phenomenon, but its experience during the First World War led to three main changes. First, it changed the social contract between citizens and the state. People who had suffered serial nutritional deprivation came to believe more forcefully than before that a primary responsibility of the state was to provide a bare minimum of supplies for their survival. States, too, understood that being able to provide foodstuffs for their citizens was essential for their legitimacy. Second, hunger in the era of the First World War brought a new emphasis on “nutritional sovereignty”: the idea that states must be able to produce their food supplies themselves, rather than import them. Finally, hunger in the era of the First World War was a turning point in the development of international aid. While international charitable aid had existed long before the War, the amount of aid given the number of different groups and institutions grew exponentially.

Maps were part of the zeitgeist in the era of the First World War. They were used as practical tools to understand the world, as props to support new borders, and as a means to project power. Within this context, hunger maps played a vital role in re-drawing the world. Hunger Draws the Map was widely published in the US national and local press in late 1918 and early 1919. More than just a reflection of hunger in that present moment, it was also a projection of how its creators believed the world should be. Hunger Draws the Map, and other hunger maps, influenced public policy and had huge impacts for the people and geographies they covered. Hunger maps not only suggested where hungry people were, but which people’s hunger was deserving of note, and where food aid should be sent. As objects, they created sympathy, and, like other maps of the era, were projections of power. Hunger maps were both tools that helped bring about changes in the wake of the First World War, as well as by-products of the very processes they aimed to change.