In June1859, a young Swiss businessman traveled to Solferino, Italy Hoping to see Emperor Napoleon III of France. The Emperor was in Italy to commands hid troops, and those of his Italian Allies, against an invasion by Austrians. The Swiss businessman, whose name was Henri Dunant, had bought land in the French colony of Algeria, in North Africa. He intended to raise livestock and grain there, and to do so he needed permission to pipe water from government-owned property. Algerian officials were not helpful to him, so Dunant decided to make a personal appeal to the French emperor. But instead of seeing the emperor, Dunant arrived in time to witness one of the bloodiest battles of the 19th century: on June 24, 1859, the Battle of Solferino, whose hand to-hand slaughter Dunant would later describe in vivid terms, claimed 40,000 lives. Putting aside his mission, Dunant joined rescue efforts to evacuate the wounded to the nearby town of Castiglione. Over the next few days he worked heroically to save lives, directing volunteers, gathering food, finding doctors, and securing medical supplies. The Battle of Solferino changed Henri Dunant’s life. He could never get over the horrors and brutality that he had seen there. He was so overwhelmed by the experience that he wrote a book about it, Un Souvenir de Solferino (A Memory of Solferino). The book was published in 1862 to instant acclaim. In the following months, many prominent public figures throughout Europe wrote Dunant to express support for his plan. The first concrete step toward the creation of Dunant’s proposed organization was taken early in 1863, when the Public Welfare Society of Geneva decided to take up his cause. The society, a private humanitarian organization to which many of Geneva’s leading citizens belonged, appointed a committee of five, including Dunant, to plan its strategy. Dunant, who was now dividing his time between Algeria and Geneva, led the committee in organizing widespread public support for an international conference. He traveled throughout Europe on behalf of his cause, giving lectures and meeting with government officials. He also sought and received the support of many well-known figures, including the English writer Charles Dickens and the French Writer Victor Hugo, as well as the founder of modern nursing, the Englishwoman Florence Nightingale. On October 26, 1863, 39 delegates representing 16 countries assembled in Geneva to found an international war relief organization that they named the International Committee of the Red Cross.
They adopted as their symbol a red cross on a white background (a reversal of the colors on the Swiss flag) and drafted a treaty that guaranteed neutral status to relief workers on the battlefield. That treaty, known as the Geneva Convention, or agreement, was signed in Paris in 1864 by representatives of 12 nations. While Dunant worked to establish the Red Cross, he had little time for his business interests in Algeria. By 1867 he had lost most of his money as well as funds that had been entrusted to him for investment by others, and he had to declare bankruptcy. Dunant fell into disgrace, and was accused falsely of fraud. Virtually overnight he became a social outcast. Yet he continued his efforts on behalf of the cause he had chosen as his life’s work—war relief. At the height of his financial distress, Dunant still managed to attend the general meeting of the Red Cross in 1867 in Paris. At that meeting, he made what was then a radical proposal: that prisoners of war be granted the same status as the wounded. What had seemed to upset Dunant the most about his experiences in Italy was the treatment of captured enemy soldiers. According to the customs of war, prisoners were not supposed to receive medical attention or be dealt with humanely; they were treated roughly and were often even killed by their captors.
Virtually overnight, Un Souvenir de Solferino made Henri Dunant known throughout the Western world. Dunant’s interest in helping others had begun years earlier, in his childhood. He was born Jean Henri Dunant in Geneva, Switzerland, in 1828 to a family that was well educated, wealthy, and devoted to works of charity. His father, a member of the Geneva town council, was the official in charge of the city’s orphanages. One of Henri Dunant’s grandfathers was the director of a leading hospital in Geneva, and an uncle was a prominent physicist. A strong Protestant religious faith underlay the family’s belief in working hard for the benefit of the community. As a youth, Henri Dunant did charitable work among the city’s poor and sick. As a university student, he found time while studying economics to be a volunteer chaplain at a local prison. He also became active in the Young Man’s Christian Association (YMCA). After meeting the American abolitionist and writer Harriet Beecher Stowe in 1853, Dunant became a lifelong opponent of slavery. In 1854, Dunant became a representative of one of Geneva’s largest banks, with responsibility for the bank’s affairs in North Africa and Sicily. He settled in Algeria, where he continued to perform charitable acts while working for the bank. Among his accomplishments was the forming of a YMCA branch in Algeria; he also published a book of essays about North Africa that included a section on slavery. Dunant left the bank in the spring of 1859 to become a private investor, and in June he made his fateful trip to Solferino. After doing all that he could for the wounded there, Dunant went on to organize relief efforts at battle sites in Brescia and Milan. He amassed local support for the survivors and arranged for charitable organizations in Geneva to send medical supplies. Back in Algeria, Dunant was obsessed by what he had witnessed on the battlefields of Italy. War, he had always assumed, was probably inevitable between nations. Seeing its consequences firsthand distressed him deeply. As a person who had always sought to serve others, he now asked himself what he could do to relieve suffering in future wars. As a way of trying to sort out his feelings about what he had seen, Dunant wrote Un Souvenir de Solferino. The book not only described what Dunant had seen on the battlefield and the relief efforts that followed; it also called for the creation of a cooperative war relief organization among nations.
Ann T. Keene – Peacemakers Winners of the Nobel Peace Prize (Oxford Profiles) (1998)Henri Dunant.
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