The lecture will build from personal research and secondary literature to ask what role did humanitarian aid and ideals play in Europe from the decolonization era through the end of the cold war and the post-war era.
The lecture will reflect on the European dimension, but also take into consideration the ‘national’ traditions arising within new international movements such as MSF (Doctors without borders) or the ‘franchises’ of British NGOs (Oxfam, Save the Children) in order to consider whether humanitarian aid has become a form of proxy identity for the diplomacy of larger and smaller countries in Europe and what the consequences of this might be for the role of Europe in the world.

Bertrand Taithe  is Professor of History, Manchester University and Director of the Humanitarian and Conflict Response Institute, HCRI, Manchester