Author: Diana Nguyen

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Diana Nguyen

HIST 571T

Dr. Shrout

16 December 2016

Following the First World War, the American Red Cross achieved international recognition and fame but also transformed itself into a global and powerful organization by the end of the war. In addition to its phenomenal growth, the American Red Cross also implemented various nursing programs including the development of first aid, water safety, and organized public health campaigns in order to alleviate the pain and suffering of soldiers, civilians, and foreigners alike. Scholars have mostly focused upon the highlights and achievements of the major relief organization and yet through their use of propaganda, the American Red Cross also promoted militarism, sacrifice, and traditional notions of gender during wartime. Future historians should further analyze the omniscient power of the American Red Cross and how it was an organization that ultimately became a symbol of peace and charity that mobilized thousands of men to enlist in the war effort while also encouraging countless of women to prepare themselves and their men for war. By examining how historians have conceptualized and viewed the significance of the American Red Cross and its impact on gender and war during the First World War, scholars must look at the contradicting and manipulative nature of the American Red Cross through a critical gendered lens and how it fundamentally transformed both itself and the United States into a major international power through its relief programs by the end of the war.

In the interest of moving the current state of academic scholarship on the history of the American Red Cross and their rise to power by the end of the First World War, one would have to consider the intimate connections between international humanitarian aid and the ideologies of American exceptionalism and manifest destiny in the twentieth century. Julia Irwin, author of Making the World Safe: The American Red Cross and a Nation’s Humanitarian Awakening, sought to examine how the American Red Cross gave rise to a new type of international sensibility and helped foster a new sense of responsibility in Americans to help foreign others during the First World War and its aftermath. In their efforts to reduce the suffering of others, Americans aspired to such ideals and believed “the United States had to behave as a benevolent world power, a nation ready and willing to direct its burgeoning material and intellectual resources toward the improvement of international health and welfare.”[1] As part of a calculated campaign to help further U.S. political goals and diplomacy on the world front, the American Red Cross strategically used languages of obligation in order to help convinced U.S. citizens that it was of a vital national interest to donate their money and time to help foreigners in need and the war effort as well as their international aid programs. Irwin continued to assert that by “emphasizing the beneficence of aid [it] effectively masked the more violent and aggressive sides of American involvement in the world and defined U.S. influence as a force for good. The ARC’s humanitarian interventions, in short, undergirded the nascent structures of empire and U.S. global power.”[2] Compared to Gavin and Turk’s positive image of the American Red Cross, Irwin details the contradicting nature of the humanitarian organization in both a favorable and negative light as she follows their expansion from a privately funded voluntary group that focused on emergency aid for disasters to one that concentrated on relief programs and aided both sides of the conflict during World War I. Irwin further affirmed that by providing aid to noncombatants, the American Red Cross used a manipulative strategy in order to prove themselves to the world and their allies that Americans cared about the people of Europe and would do all they could to help those in need. But despite its goal of advancing U.S. national interests, Irwin does acknowledge its growing importance in international relations with the world as well as its ability to forge a nonviolent, cooperative, and mutually beneficial relationship with foreign civilians through aid.

In her attempt to further emphasized the American Red Cross’ role as a quasi-governmental organization that enjoyed unprecedented government support and direction for its work in the First World War, Julia Irwin continued looked at the international humanitarian efforts that the American Red Cross provided, but specifically in Italy, in her article, “Nation Building and Rebuilding: The American Red Cross in Italy during the Great War.” However, in its attempt to emphasize on American methods, expertise, and alliance, Irwin noted that the American Red Cross essentially enacted reforms in order to transform Italy into their own vision of a modern western nation. Not only did the humanitarian organization pledged “to restore southern Italy but also [wanted] to improve it morally and materially. Such assistance promised to benefit both the Italian recipients of aid and the American social scientists responsible for administering it.”[3] In their efforts to rebuilt and essentially convert Italy into a western nation, much like the United States, Irwin implored similar arguments from Making the World Safe when she argued that ARC’s relief activities for Italian citizens helped served both diplomatic and social reform agendas that extended beyond the North Atlantic. According to Irwin, the American Red Cross and it members found ways to propagandize their work by essentially undermining Italy’s contributions to the war effort. John Dos Passos, a member of the Ambulance Corps, complained how they were there “for propaganda it seems—more than for ambulance work.”[4] Irwin also pointed out in her article that although many came to realize the extent in which American propaganda was used as a political strategy to dupe Italian soldiers into fighting, the power and significance of the American Red Cross remains incredibly important—especially in its mission to carry out American ideals, both diplomatic and social, to European countries in such a turbulent time period.[5]

Similar to Irwin’s own statements about the American Red Cross, Marian Moser Jones, author of The American Red Cross from Clara Barton to the New Deal, maintained a similar claim about the organization and its close ties with the federal government. Detailing the early years of the American Red Cross and its founder, Clara Barton, Jones chronicles the organization from Barton’s influence in the mid-nineteenth century to its transformation into the omnipresent and powerful organization by the end of World War I. In her attempt to characterize the transformation of the American Red Cross during the war, Jones detailed how “the infrastructure developed during the war enabled the [organization] to play a critical role in the public health response.”[6] The push to reorganize the American Red Cross away from Barton’s influences came as no surprise as Jones proclaimed how “the new organization, though more powerful, better funded, and better organized than Barton’s ragtag society, became much more closely allied with the federal government and business leaders and distanced itself from the feminist, independent-minded populism that Barton embraced.”[7] As a result, not only did the American Red Cross and its international humanitarian aid helped serve American diplomatic needs that justified its close government ties in the First World War, it also provided them an opportunity to rise above other aid organizations, both in scope and power, by the end of the war.

Throughout the war, the use of propaganda became an important tool for the United States to mobilize both Americans for recruitment and donations in addition to elevating the American Red Cross into a global power with corporate and government ties by the First World War. Despite mostly focusing on the plight of motherhood and gender, P.J. Lopez’s “American Red Cross Posters and the Cultural Politics of Motherhood in World War I” and its analysis on the influences of U.S. involvement in the war through American Red Cross posters prove helpful in analyzing the connections between humanitarian aid and the peoples’ desire to further their diplomatic needs internationally. Using propaganda posters that displayed romantic images of humanitarianism and war, the American Red Cross helped mobilize U.S. society to assist in the war effort through recruitment and donations. As pointed out by Irwin in her book, the American Red Cross “drew on the longstanding traditions of Christian fraternalism, civilizing mission, and republican humanism that had motivated earlier generations of Americans to ease the suffering of others.”[8] Although Lopez never mentioned Clara Barton in his article, he generally agreed with Irwin’s assessment of the American Red Cross prior to the First World War and how it lacked a strong centralized state in the nineteenth century.[9] Looking at the source through a gendered lens, one can conclude that the American Red Cross used women as another tool to propagandize their cause to American society. Posters for recruitment purposes featuring women urging their fellow citizens to join in the Red Cross movement were splattered across the nation as the warfront intensified. According to Lopez, “ARC posters invoked the figure of the nurse to encourage the public to donate funds and time to the war effort in Europe… she is strong enough to lift a wounded soldier from the trenches without help. She represents both the neutrality of the USA and of the Red Cross. Hers is not yet a patriotic duty, but a request for aid.”[10] In their attempts to appear both benevolent and charitable to the American people and its European allies, the American Red Cross wanted to be represented as an organization that existed solely to help victims of war and the wounded.

When the United States entered the war on April 1917, the American Red Cross experienced massive growth due to the various wartime demands on the organization as well as the overwhelming desires of Americans who wanted to assist in the war effort.[11] Drawing on a range of sources including first-hand accounts, photographs, and statistics concerning the thousands of women who served in uniform abroad, Lettie Gavin’s American Women in World War I: They Also Served detailed the history of American women and the organizations they belonged to in the First World War. Focusing specifically on the chapter entitled, “Red Cross Volunteers,” Gavin positively asserted that the American Red Cross, “known the world over as a symbol of compassion, and fast, charitable action during crisis… [was] a neutral organization devoted to the care of the sick and wounded of armies at war.”[12] However, prior to when the United States officially entered the war in April 1917, the independent voluntary organization had neither government affiliations nor did it limit its focus to aid only on the battlefield. With the goal of demonstrating the hospitality and tremendous growth of the American Red Cross, Gavin repeatedly reinforced that “the Red Cross took its place as a powerful social force… overseas, the Red Cross nursing service took on new importance, providing a constant stream of trained women for service with the military.”[13] Despite its positive image however, the disconcerting fact that the growth of the American Red Cross and its aid directly correlated with the federal government’s overall agenda to promote its goodwill to others proves how influential it was over the humanitarian organization.

Providing readers a compelling synopsis of the how the American Red Cross fundamentally came to shape American society through its efforts to relieve others during wartime and devastating natural disasters, Michele P. Turk’s Blood, Sweat and Tears: An Oral History of the American Red Cross demonstrated how the organization responded to various outcomes from wartime to devastating natural disasters such as earthquakes, fires, and floods. Turk also presented the American Red Cross as an organization that deeply cared for the victims of war and natural disasters while also examining how the organization came to shape both American society and its citizens through its efforts to relieve others during wartime. Told through the voices of current and former Red Cross volunteers, Turk examined the history of the American Red Cross while she also introduce the brave volunteers and employees who actively risked their lives in order to help American allies in times crisis. Similar to Gavin’s remarks about the enduring image and legacy of the American Red Cross, Turk wrote that what the organization came to represent “was that of the compassionate and brave Red Cross nurse.” Although Turk acknowledges the many criticisms and problems of the American Red Cross, she quickly proceeds to look toward its more positive attributes instead; as a result, her personal bias and positive reflection about the organization becomes apparent throughout the book.

The idea that the American Red Cross was an organization that not only championed charity by providing aid to those in need but also enthusiastic promoters of militarism and sacrifice in times of war played an important factor in its representation as a powerful institution and major force of change by the end of the First World War. Compared to Gavin and Turk’s positive reflection of the American Red Cross, John Hutchinson’s Champions Of Charity: War And The Rise Of The Red Cross took a stand against the organization and argued that although the Red Cross tried to “civilize war” through their philanthropic efforts, both Red Cross movements in America and Europe profoundly promoted war and martyrdom through their use of propaganda and recruitment of soldiers. Take for example, using a propaganda poster from the German Red Cross featuring a knight, slayed dragon, and a volunteer nurse, Hutchinson claimed that “the pseudo-medieval imagery of European symbolism must have caught the imagination of the American Red Cross because the same style, including a less warlike version of the Red Cross knight, was chosen for the stained glass windows of the new national headquarters building that opened in Washington a few years later.”[14] In comparison to Irwin’s argument that the American Red Cross gradually developed into an international humanitarian relief organization through its connections with the federal government following the First World War, Hutchinson also noted its change “from a charitable society preoccupied with disaster relief into a huge national corporation that was closely tied to the government, the armed forces, and the financial establishment centered on Wall Street.”[15] In some respects, many American historians have also noted its transformation and change due to the ethos of the Progressive era and what they consider the “ineffective” leadership of Clara Barton. With the adoption of business practices and methods in philanthropy, many Progressives thought Barton’s “intensely personal style of leadership was ‘no longer a practical approach to the general problems of Red Cross disaster relief’… Her opponents, on the other hand, were ‘more in touch with the times… [and] reflected the new trends towards greater efficiency and financial accountability.’”[16] In the end, by chronicling the relationship between organized charity, war, and the state, Hutchinson conveyed how the militarization of the American Red Cross helped further the nationalistic and militaristic interests of both its federal government and organization through the use patriotic propaganda throughout the war effort.

Although historians mostly agree that Clara Barton had a huge impact on the legacy of the American Red Cross in her efforts to forge a new path for the organization with the federal government, they have also made critical claims about her administration and ability to lead. Looking at the works of various authors who have written about Clara Barton and her contributions to the humanitarian organization, Elizabeth Brown Pryor’s Studies in Health, Illness, and Caregiving: Clara Barton, Professional Angel focused on the life of Barton and her contributions to the American Red Cross. While examining the papers that Barton carefully preserved throughout her lifetime, Pryor maintained that Barton played an important role in both the history and legacy of the humanitarian organization as she risked her life to bring supplies for the war-injured while also providing relief efforts both at home and abroad. As both the founder and champion of the American Red Cross, Barton’s experiences in Europe ultimately laid the foundation and framework for the humanitarian organization and set the stage for it to eventually provide international relief efforts to the people of Europe in the First World War. Pryor’s admiration for her subject becomes clear when she reveals the kind of modern woman Barton was and how she used every resource available to bring comfort the victims of disasters when no one was inclined to support such activities. Similar to Jones and Hutchinson’s evaluation of Barton’s leadership of the American Red Cross, however, Prydor admitted there was a limit to what Barton could do for the organization—especially when it came to spreading the story of Red Cross. In many ways, Pryor agreed that Barton was “ill-equipped to undertake the organization of what was an enormously ambitious project. Barton had the habit of command, but… she was a poor administrator. Accustomed to working alone, she preferred to keep records, plan projects, and oversee relief work personally.”[17] With her leadership in question and public respect for the American Red Cross almost destroyed due to the complications that arose between Barton and the reformers, the reorganization of the Red Cross was in order. The transformation of the American Red Cross “into a national corporation under government supervision”[18] came as no surprise even though debates surrounding the topic of why the reorganization of the society brought it so much closer with the government and military continue to exist today.

Focusing on the activities and private correspondences of American author Edith Wharton and her disagreements with the American Red Cross, Alan Price’s “Edith Wharton at War with the American Red Cross: The End of Noblesse Oblige” provided a brief insight into the mind of an American women who becomes increasingly disenchanted with the Red Cross as the war raged on. Although she never publicly disagreed with it, Price stated that Wharton became disillusioned with the politics of American relief during the First World War as it swallowed up the private relief agencies and charities that had been organized and administered by American women during the first three years of the war.[19] When the United States entered the war, Wharton believed it would promise relief; but instead, it provided her with even more work as she wrote to her friend, Sara Norton, proclaiming, “I have a great deal more work on my hands since our declaration of war which took from me two of our best workers, and has left me to cope with a task beyond my strength.”[20] In the same vein as Jones, Hutchinson, and Pryor’s description of the American Red Cross and its founder, Clara Barton, Price provides a brief history of the organization as well as the early developments concerning war relief policies that went when it went through a sweeping change. In addition to mentioning Barton, Price also related the conflict that arose between the founder and her successor, Mabel T. Boardman, who “represented wealth, social position and the spirit of Noblesse Oblige of her class… [and] convinced as a result of her family heritage that Red Cross leadership should be in the hands of people who command the support of the wealthy members.”[21] Although Price never mentions the connections between the organization and the federal government, he does allude do its practices and takeovers that often align with the methods conducted by the state and business corporations. Many of the volunteers, according to Price, worked in business-related jobs prior to becoming administrative officials in the American Red Cross and concluded that “it would be best if all of the private American relief societies and charities operating in France and England would turn over the management of their separate societies to the American Red Cross.”[22] Although Price does a commendable job outlining the many problems and frustrations Americans in Europe had with the American Red Cross, his assessment of the organization reflects a personal bias. Not only does he fail to include any positive features about the humanitarian organization, he ends his article with a recollection of Wharton’s bitter and lasting impression of the American Red Cross. On the other hand, Gertrude Atherton, an American author, also vehemently tried to protest against the American Red Cross and their takeover of private charities in her letter to the editor of the New York Times. Much like Edith Wharton’s own personal remarks about the indifferent nature and politics of American relief toward other private relief agencies, Atherton wrote a letter to the New York Times complaining about the American Red Cross and its ultimate goal in Europe. Referencing the section where she talks about the organization, Atherton’s disillusionment becomes apparent as she states: “They have undertaken to distribute all out goods to the hospitals we supply in the war zone… But, while the Red Cross distributes our foods and leaves our individuality intact, it gives us nothing.”[23] Although Wharton and Atherton’s claims about the American Red Cross may seem capricious at times, their cynicism ultimately stems from the politics and leadership of the organization as it heedlessly took over other American private relief charities in France during war.

As for the amount of primary sources available on the topic of the American Red Cross and its transformation into an international organization through its connections with the federal government and military, The Story of the American Red Cross in Italy by Charles M. Bakewell directly challenged Irwin’s account on the activities of the American Red Cross and its contributions in Italy during its greatest time of need. His portrayal of the organization as one that alleviated the suffering of Italians and brought justice to the country greatly contrasts with Irwin’s depiction of the American Red Cross in its effort to convert Italy into a western nation during the war. Written two years after the First World War in 1920, Bakewell’s personal reflection of the American Red Cross attempted to convey how the organization essentially created a long-lasting friendship and bond between United States and Italy together though its material aid and assistance. He further commented, “what matters most for our future relations, is the fact that through this material aid the Red Cross succeeded in translating into the deeds the soul of America, in making it plain to the Italians that we were there to work as brothers, filled with a common enthusiasm and inspired by common ideals.”[24] Though his opinion of the American Red Cross and its contributions in Europe during the war rings true, his opinion of the organization reflects the typical mindset of an American politician in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century who strongly believed in a strong government tie with the Red Cross and that it was their duty to convey their benevolence and charity to the world.

While many historians have agreed that although the American Red Cross played a critical role in the war and came out of it transformed, other scholars including Irwin, Hutchinson, and Jones have questioned the reorganization, transformation, and legacy of the society in regards to its close ties with the federal government and military throughout the First World War. Although American Red Cross and its aid programs were more welcomed during the First World War, they became less popular after as European countries sought to reassert their control over healthcare in their own respective communities while American continued to impose rather aggressive tactics in their pursuit of American exceptionalism. In the end, with the goal of advancing the field of American Red Cross studies and history of philanthropy forward, future scholars should continue to look at the dynamic relationship between the federal government and its ties with the Red Cross as well as its transformation; furthermore, historians should also place the American Red Cross it within the larger context within the community of humanitarian organizations prior to its ascendency in World War I.

Bibliography

Primary Sources:

Bakewell, Charles Montague. The Story of the American Red Cross in Italy. New York: The MacMillan Company, 1920.

Gertrude Atherton. “Women To Go To France: Mrs. Atherton Wants Helpers for Le Bien-Être du Blessé.” Accessed December 1, 2016. http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=9A04E3D9103AE433A25750C2A96F9C946696D6CF.

Secondary Sources:

Gavin, Lettie. American Women in World War I: They Also Served. Niwot: University Press of Colorado, 1997.

Hutchinson, John F. Champions of Charity: War and the Rise of the Red Cross. Boulder: Westview Press, 1996.

Irwin, Julia F. Making the World Safe: The American Red Cross and a Nation’s Humanitarian Awakening. New York: Oxford University Press, 2013.

Irwin, Julia F. “Nation Building and Rebuilding: The American Red Cross in Italy during the Great War.” The Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era 8 (2009): 407-439.

Jones, Marian Moser. The American Red Cross from Clara Barton to the New Deal. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2013.

Lopez, P.J. “American Red Cross Posters and the Cultural Politics of Motherhood in World War I.” Gender, Place & Culture: A Journal Of Feminist Geography 23 (2016): 769-785.

Price, Alan. “Edith Wharton at War with the American Red Cross: The End of Noblesse Oblige.” Women’s Studies 20 (1991): 121-131.

Pryor, Elizabeth Brown. Studies in Health, Illness, and Caregiving: Clara Barton, Professional Angel. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011.

Turk, Michele P. Blood, Sweat and Tears: An Oral History of the American Red Cross. Robbinsville: E Street Press, 2006.

_______________________________________________________

[1] Julia F. Irwin, Making the World Safe: The American Red Cross and a Nation’s Humanitarian Awakening (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013), 3.

[2] Ibid, 210.

[3] Ibid, 41.

[4] Julia F. Irwin, “Nation Building and Rebuilding: The American Red Cross in Italy during the Great War,” The Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era 8 (2009): 407-408.

[5] Ibid: 408.

[6] Marian Moser Jones, The American Red Cross from Clara Barton to the New Deal (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2013), xv.

[7] Ibid, 98.

[8] Julia F. Irwin, Making the World Safe: The American Red Cross and a Nation’s Humanitarian Awakening (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013), 79.

[9] P.J. Lopez, “American Red Cross Posters and the Cultural Politics of Motherhood in World War I.” Gender, Place & Culture: A Journal Of Feminist Geography 23 (2016): 772.

[10] Ibid: 772.

[11] Lettie Gavin, American Women in World War I: They Also Served (Niwot: University Press of Colorado, 1997), 179.

[12] Ibid.

[13] Ibid, 181.

[14] John F. Hutchinson, Champions of Charity: War and the Rise of the Red Cross (Boulder: Westview Press, 1996), 181.

[15] Ibid, 224.

[16] Ibid, 225.

[17] Elizabeth Brown Pryor, Studies in Health, Illness, and Caregiving: Clara Barton, Professional Angel (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011), 218.

[18] John F. Hutchinson, Champions of Charity: War and the Rise of the Red Cross (Boulder: Westview Press, 1996), 233.

[19] Alan Price, “Edith Wharton at War with the American Red Cross: The End of Noblesse Oblige,” Women’s Studies 20 (1991): 121.

[20] Ibid: 122-123.

[21] Ibid: 123.

[22] Ibid: 125-126.

[23] “Women To Go To France: Mrs. Atherton Wants Helpers for Le Bien-Être du Blessé,” New York Times, accessed December 1, 2016, http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=9A04E3D9103AE433A25750C2A96F9C946696D6CF.

[24] Charles M. Bakewell, The Story of the American Red Cross in Italy (New York: The MacMillan Company, 1920), v.

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By tracing the history of the Philippine-American colonialism in the early twentieth century, Warwick Anderson’s Colonial Pathologies: American Tropical Medicine, Race, and Hygiene in the Philippines sought to examine ideas of colonial medicine in the Philippines while also charting the development of “biomedical citizenship” and how the integral body not only played a significant role in the colonial situation between Americans and Filipinos but also in its ability to frame ideas of whiteness and masculinity as well. What I found most intriguing was that Anderson never truly defines the concept of “biomedical citizenship” throughout his book but rather instead, her merely infer that compliance with medicalized colonial regimes would be interpreted as evidence for citizenship. In addition to dealing with the tropical environment, medicine, and race, Anderson also argued that for many Americans, preventing disease had become a process that fundamentally racialized and even disciplined native bodies. As Jonathan stated in his post, the degree in which guaranteeing the health of white people and their whiteness versus the “threatening microbial pathology that lurked within native bodies” became a matter of racial tensions between white Americans and Filipinos. For example, Anderson claimed that “as they investigated, treated, and attempted to discipline allegedly errant Filipinos, America medicos were revealing previously hidden aspects of their own characters and disclosing their fears and anxieties in alien circumstances” (6).

Despite the book’s many strengths from its well-written and comprehensive study on the cultural history of U.S. colonialism in the Philippines, colonial medicine, as well as ideas on whiteness and masculinity, I found Anderson’s lack of a Filipino voice beyond their roles as doctors, medical personnel, or patients to be a particular weakness. He focused much too entirely on the anxieties and obsessions of his white, male colonialists; not to mention, Anderson’s “protagonists” were all exclusively confined to white, male medical officers. Similar to Jonathan once again, I did see many similarities with Scott Zesch’s The Chinatown War: Chinese Los Angeles and the Massacre of 1871 as well as Ari Kelman’s A Misplaced Massacre: Struggling over the Memory of Sand Creek for all of their depictions on white American racism, prejudice, and lack of sympathy towards a group of minorities. In an effort to mitigate the fears of a “white degeneration” in the tropics, white Americans decided to civilize the Philippines and its people by training Filipinos in the hygienic disposal of feces while simultaneously labeling them as irresponsible and lacking self-restraint over their bodily fluids and defecation.

As for what I liked most about this book, Anderson’s ability to highlight the complex situation and racialized tensions between white Americans and Filipinos during the U.S. colonial rule of the Philippines in the twentieth century to be a powerful one. Race turned out to be an important factor as ideas of whiteness and masculinity occupied the mindset of many white Americans toward the natives. Using a wide range of sources from medical records, photographs, and personal accounts from white male officers as well as Filipino doctors and medical personnel, Anderson successfully incorporated the many themes of empire building, colonial medicine, race, and gender within his book.

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Dock, Lavinia L. History of American Red Cross Nursing. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1922.

Focusing on the section devoted to the period of the First World War and the activities of the American Red Cross throughout the war, Dock’s book includes numerous extracts such as letters and illustrations that not only add a personal touch to the narrative but also value and interest to the book. Dock also includes an appendix, which lists the various organizations conducted by the American Red Cross in the United States as well as other parts of the world.

Hall, Margaret. Letters and Photographs from the Battle Country: The World War I Memoir of Margaret Hall. Edited by Margaret R. Higonnet. Boston: Massachusetts Historical Society, 2014.

Hall’s first-person account of her life and experiences in the First World War explores her departure from New York and across the Atlantic to work with the American Red Cross organization in France. In a series of letters, journals, and photographs, Hall weaves a powerful narrative of the conflict and her own experiences and opinions of the war during her stay in a field hospital near the Western Front. Many of the photographs include movement of troops through town, women working behind front lines, and even what was left of the landscapes after the war.

Millard, Shirley. I Saw Them Die: Diary and Recollections of Shirley Millard. New Orleans: Quid Pro, LLC, 2011.

Millard’s book features a contemporary account of an young American woman who traveled to France in the spring of 1918 as a volunteer nurse to care for the war wounded. As a diary-based book, Millard’s perspective on the horrors of war as well as her fears offer a compelling insight into the lives of women who were constantly under intense pressure during the war, in addition to the bombings nearby. Millard also describes the medical horrors as well the philosophical transformations many of those in her generation shared about the war and life after the conflict.

Wagner, Anges. “My Beloved Poilus.” Accessed November 11, 2015. http://www.gutenberg.org/files/24368/24368-h/24368-h.htm

Written by an unknown American women who served and cared for the wounded in France during the First World War, the letters featured in this primary source were not written for publication but instead, for friends and families. These letters offer a brief glimpse of the hardships and distress many American volunteers and nurses often faced in times of war when caring for those who are suffering from the effects of battle. The letters also reveal what some women did in order to bring relief to the war wounded.

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In his attempt to examine a relatively “unknown” moment and period of time in American history, Scott Zesch’s The Chinatown War: Chinese Los Angeles and the Massacre of 1871 explored the life and struggles of Chinese immigrants in Los Angeles and their subsequent murder by the native citizens who resented them in 1871. Through his detailed descriptions of Chinese life in Los Angeles as well as the events leading up to the massacre, Zesch made a compelling case for himself by providing a valuable window into the lives of Chinese workers and their society in California. By surveying the settlement of Chinese immigrants in Los Angeles in the first half of the book, Zesch sets the stage for the gradual build-up of anti-Chinese sentiment and the extreme violence that resulted in the death of eighteen Chinese on October 24, 1871. Although only one chapter dealt exclusively with the mass killing of Chinese immigrants while the rest of the book followed the history of the Chinese who lived in Los Angeles, I thought Zesch did a fantastic job of detailing the conditions in China that ultimately compelled Chinese men to leave their hometown and journey to the United States in order to earn money and return to their country soon after. However, many ended up choosing to stay in California, especially San Francisco and Los Angeles, and even “started their own businesses, washing clothes or peddling vegetables or fish… [While] those with no capital took positions as housekeepers, cooks, waiters, and farmhands” (pg. 6).

Using a range of historical sources from newspaper archives to court records, Zesch also persuasively described how adept the Chinese were at using the American legal system to their advantage. For example, Zesch stated that “the Chinese of Los Angeles learned as early as 1864 that they could use the local courts to resist maltreatment and right the injustices committed against them… the American legal system could be manipulated to thwart one’s enemies and facilitate illicit transactions” (pg. 51). As David B. pointed out in his post, I also thought Zesch did an excellent job of making use of the sources available to him, especially considering the lack of specificity in many of the historical sources and inability of Americans to properly record Chinese names. I would also have to agree with both Elena and David B. again that The Chinatown War certainly brought to mind similarities with Ari Kelman’s A Misplaced Massacre for its depiction of violence toward a particular group of people and how innocents were slaughtered indiscriminately due to racism. In addition, both books share a common theme in asking how history has either been created, changed, or remembered differently over time.

As for what I liked most about this book, I thought Zesch did a commendable job highlighting the increasing tensions and anti-Chinese sentiments ultimately resulted in murder throughout the book. By starting the book with the reasons and conditions on why many Chinese men left their villages for America, readers are left feeling sympathetic for these individuals as they struggled to acquire enough money to return to China and live a comfortable life there. Despite Zesch’s unwillingness to fully explore or explain why the native citizens in Los Angeles slaughtered the Chinese-Americans, I thought Zesch’s discussion on the contemporary significance of the massacre in his last four pages to be a powerful one. He leaves readers with the claim that the local inhabitants of Los Angeles “did what they did not because they felt threatened or because their families were out of work but because they wanted to. It seemed fun. They thought they could get away with it because their victims were people who didn’t matter” (pg. 219).

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In comparison to the chapter, “The Burnt District: Making Sense of Ruins in the Postwar South” by K. Stephen Prince in Gregory Downs and Kate Masur’s The World the Civil War Made, which examined how northerners have turned to look at ruins and war-torn landscapes in order to make sense of the South after the American Civil War, Thomas J. Brown’s “Monuments and Ruins: Atlanta and Columbia Remember Sherman” specifically looked at the burning of the cities in Atlanta and Columbia and how civic memories of the events eventually took on different shapes after the war. While Prince’s chapter focused on the legacy of the Civil War through the use of images and discussions of ruination in postwar South, Brown’s article discussed the ways in which American memory of the Civil War turned from monuments and ruins to other forms of commemorations instead. Despite their differences, however, by linking national memory of the war to the use of public spaces for mourning in order to commemorate the war dead, both Prince and Brown successfully argued their points while simultaneously showcasing the significance of monuments and ruins in their works.

As depictions of the ruined South became an integral part of northern print and visual culture, “southern ruins [soon] appeared in newspaper articles, speeches, sermons, travel narratives, photographs, and illustrations”[1] throughout the North. Instead of concentrating on the rebuilding of southern cities and its towns and plantations, K. Stephen Prince’s chapter in The World the Civil War Made looked at ways in which images and discussions of ruins have played significant roles in the legacies of the American Civil War. Furthermore, Prince asserted that the “treatment of southern ruins in the print and visual culture of the North… help capture the complex range of emotions—pride, resolve, conceit, optimism… [And] as they gazed on images of southern ruination, northerners pondered the meanings of war, but they also looked to the future.”[2] After years of infighting and bloody war, northerners essentially saw themselves faced with an opportunity to fundamentally change and rebuild the South anew for the future. Prince further goes on to claim that by rebuilding the South’s economic base, political structures, and even social order, “the South—defined as a place—would be re-created, but so would the South as an idea. Out of the ashes of the Civil War, a new South would emerge.”[3] Similar to Brown’s article, Prince also looked at the burning of Atlanta in November 1864 in addition to the devastation that took place in the cities of Charleston, Columbia, and Richmond. As one of the first widely photographed conflict in American history, the ruinations of Southern cities were well depicted and featured throughout several illustrated weeklies including Harper’s Weekly and Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Weekly.[4]

Focusing on the fires that burned Atlanta and Columbia, Thomas J. Brown commendably highlighted the differences and similarities between the two cities during and after the Civil War. Brown stated that while “Atlanta tended to build monuments to its renewal; Columbia preferred to highlight ruins of its lost glory… monuments of Atlanta [often] address national audiences while… ruins of Columbia appealed to local elites.”[5] He further pointed out in his article that the wartime experiences of Atlanta and Columbia differed significantly from one another as one hard-fought campaign became the Union goal while the other, a “whirlwind.” While Atlanta brought forth fierce fighting between Union soldiers and Confederates along with many casualties, “the destruction of Columbia revolved around face-to-face encounters between Union soldiers and local residents. Confederate military and civilian casualties were minimal.”[6] In addition to including powerful images of the fire and its aftermath in both of Columbia and Atlanta, Brown also included diarists and letter writers who commented on what they saw. According to Brown, “Atlanta had burned as Union soldiers left the city, but Columbia burned shortly after they entered the city… these descriptions soon entered into print alongside dispatches from northern journalists who visited the South at the end of the war.”[7] Illustrated weeklies such as Harper’s Weekly published graphic illustrations of the fire its aftermath while famous photographers from George N. Barnard to Richard Wearn either included powerful pictures of destroyed buildings in books or documented the damage in a series of photographs.

The idea of commemorating the American Civil War through memorials and ruins also played an important role in creating memory of the war in both Atlanta and Columbia. Not only did “commemorations of the burning of Atlanta and Columbia illuminate the resolution and persistence of the sectional tensions that exploded in the Civil War”[8] but monuments also helped shaped American literature and writers throughout the nineteenth and mid-twentieth century. On the other hand, the idea of the Lost Cause, a set of beliefs that sought to describe the goals of the Confederate as a heroic one–despite their defeat by the Union, became an important symbol of Confederate memory and commemoration in Atlanta and Columbia after the war. Brown argued that Atlanta and Columbia had “established many places of Confederate commemoration during the seventy-five years after the Civil War… [and] these sites did not all center on the burning of the cities, but local trauma figured prominently even when the capitals tried to look back broadly at the war records of Georgia and South Carolina.”[9] In the end, while memory in Atlanta and Columbia turned from monuments and ruins toward new ways to commemorate the war through battle flags, license plates, and even costumed simulations of the battles fought in the conflict, Brown ends his article by stating that the burning of the two cities ultimately demonstrate the continuities and discontinuities of memory and remembrance in the postwar era.

[1] K. Stephen Prince, “The Burnt District: Making Sense of Ruins in the Postwar South,” in The World the Civil War Made, ed. Gregory P. Downs and Kate Masur. (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2015), 106.

[2] Ibid, 108.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Ibid, 112.

[5] Thomas J. Brown, “Monuments and Ruins: Atlanta and Columbia Remember Sherman,” Journal of American Studies (2016): 1-2.

[6] Ibid: 2.

[7] Ibid: 8-9.

[8] Ibid: 26.

[9] Ibid: 4.

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Following the First World War, the American Red Cross achieved international recognition and fame but also transformed itself into a major national humanitarian organization by the end of the conflict. In addition to its phenomenal growth during the war, the programs it created in order to alleviate the pain and suffering of soldiers, civilians, and foreigners alike would forever cement its place as the nation’s humanitarian relief organization. One of the many debates surrounding the topic of the American Red Cross on gender and war came in the form of its transformation or the “rise and fall” of the organization as it began to adopt an international sensibility and responsibility to help others, especially foreigners, during the war. In Julia F. Irwin’s Making the World Safe: The American Red Cross and a Nation’s Humanitarian Awakening, she explicitly stated that by implementing languages of obligation as part of their rhetorical strategy during World War I, the American Red Cross helped convinced U.S. citizens that it was of a vital national interest to donate their money and time to not only help foreigners in need but also the war effort. Marian Moser Jones’ The American Red Cross from Clara Barton to the New Deal, on the other hand, also detailed the transformation of the American Red Cross and how the war ultimately transformed the organization into the powerful institution that remains today.

Another debate or theme involving the American Red Cross that the authors in my annotated bibliography all have in common with would be the experiences of women who have made countless of sacrifices for their nation in times of war. From their roles as nurses and volunteers, these women battled sexism and racism, worked long hours and in sufferable conditions, and yet, they still accomplished an extraordinary amount of work through their philanthropic efforts overseas. In addition to exploring the cultural shifts of women’s involvement and the responsibilities of women during wartime, historians have also looked at how ideas of motherhood have come to shape the war effort both at home and abroad. Through the use of American Red Cross posters produced between 1914 and 1918, P.J. Lopez’s “American Red Cross Posters and the Cultural Politics of Motherhood in World War I” looked at how they became a fundamental propaganda tool for communicating notions of femininity and patriotism to American women while also exploring the influences of U.S. involvement in the war as well as the social constructions of white femininity of the time.

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In her attempt to examine the history of a mostly ignored aspect of the American Civil War, Drew Gilpin Faust’s This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War takes a look at the history of death, dying, and suffering on a massive scale and how American society in both the North and South dealt with such a loss. Although my knowledge of the American Civil War tends to be limited to what has been often told in popular American history, I did find Faust’s attempt at bringing a new perspective to previous Civil War scholarship through the idea of “empathy” refreshing. Early on in the book, Faust noted that a majority of the deaths and fatalities were either caused by combat but “disease proved a far more deadly killer than combat… [for] twice as many soldiers died of disease as from battle wounds” (p. 48). Throughout the book, Faust’s main argument revolved around the idea that the war produced untold suffering yet it also helped transform American society, culture, politics and its institutions in the nineteenth century. Not only did the war dramatically alter the way Americans previously thought about death but it also changed their perceptions on the subject matter of religious faith during wartime.

By exploring the topic of religion and war and its significance on the soldiers who willingly risked their lives just so that they could die in God’s good grace, Faust claimed that the war undeniably challenged the foundations of American faith and religious devotion. Drawing on a huge range of primary sources from Ambrose Bierce, Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., to Emily Dickinson and Herman Melville, Faust made great use of the documents, letters, and diaries scattered throughout her book while relying heavily on the writings of others as well. Like sbremer and Taylor, I was also reminded of Jay Winter’s Sites of Memory, Sites of Mourning as well as Susan R. Grayzel’s Women’s Identities at War when Faust focused on the topic of mourning and how women essentially coped with the deaths of their loved ones after the war. While Winter’s and Grayzel’s books both took place during the First World War, they similarly addressed the strict regulations of mourning dresses for women and how society ultimately dealt with mass death through the use of public spaces and war memorials.

As for what I liked most about this book, I found that although nothing Faust talked about in her book was particularly new, innovative, or insightful—especially when it came to the killing of others on a national scale and the consequences of it in the aftermath of the war, she did an incredible job detailing the struggles of Americans as they reacted to the systemized slaughtering of others while maintaining a strict and long-cherished belief in their faith. Her use of letters, poems, photographs, and memories of soldiers and their families made for a heartfelt read. Despite its repetitiveness, This Republic of Suffering should still be considered a powerful, well-researched, and well-written book that covers much more than just the Civil War but on the true meaning of war and human life.

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In Samuel Truett’s Fugitive Landscapes: The Forgotten History of the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands, Truett examined the history of the “copper borderlands” between southern Arizona and northern Sonora, Mexico in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century by focusing on the appropriation of space and landscapes. Truett contends that the history of the U.S.-Mexico borderlands was one of a “transnational collaboration [that] extended deep into both nations” (p. 4) through cross-border investments as well as economic and industrial development. Despite my lack of knowledge and expertise in this particular area of American history, I did find myself compelled by Truett’s determination to prove what became of the “lost world” as it transformed into “one of the most industrialized and urban spaces in the U.S.-Mexican Borderlands” (p. 6) by the early twentieth century. Not only does Truett seek to show his readers how regions were essentially produced in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century but also how spaces were made and landscapes fundamentally transformed. By dividing his analysis into four parts, Truett manages to paint a broad picture spanning from America’s colonial attempts at domesticating its borders until the arrival of the railroad in the nineteenth century to narrowing his focus on the interactions between state and local inhabitants as well as the men who attempted empire building but failed spectacularly.

Similar to David, I also agree that Truett never took sides, nor did he ever focus on one particular group over another; instead, he gave explanations for their motives, what drove them, and why they sought opportunities in the borderlands. Truett does well in this regard when he showcases the different array of “actors” who ultimately became involved between the borders as they cooperated, plotted, or fought against one another due to racial and ethnic differences and even class antagonism. From the Apache and Opata Indians to the Spanish and Mexican miners, white American settlers and Anglo entrepreneurs, all of these groups of people played a major part in marking out the different areas in the region as they struggled to achieve their ends and dreams in a “fugitive landscape.”

As for where this book is placed within the broader historiography of borderlands history, I would have to agree with David, Suzanna, and Taylor that Pekka Hamalainen’s Comanche Empire especially comes to mind. While Hamalainen’s focus was narrow as he particularly focused on the Comanche Indians and their rise to power against the Euro-American colonists during the eighteenth and nineteenth century, Truett’s attempt at borderland history within the United States is much more expansive and broad as he focuses on the everyday lives of the people who lived and struggled between the U.S.-Mexico borderlands. In the end, I found Fugitive Landscapes to be an insightful and satisfying read as it gave me a much more broader picture and history of the American West and its borderlands with its different cast of characters compared to Hamalainen’s narrow focus on the Comanche Indians and Euro-American colonists in Comanche Empire.

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In my paper, “In the Name of Mercy: The Legacy the American Red Cross on Gender and War,” I would like to examine how historians have conceptualized and viewed the significance of the American Red Cross and its impact on gender and war since its establishment in 1881 and first major humanitarian relief effort during the Johnstown Flood of 1889 to its transformation as a major national humanitarian organization in the First World War. Not only did the American Red Cross experienced phenomenal growth during the Great War but it also implemented various nursing programs including the development of first aid, water safety, and organized public health campaigns in order to alleviate the pain and suffering of soldiers and civilians during the war. The idea that the American Red Cross were “champions of charity” but also “enthusiastic promoters of militarism and sacrifice in times of war” intrigued me when I came across John Hutchinson’s Champions Of Charity: War And The Rise Of The Red Cross. I would like to explore what other historians have written about this subject matter in the field and how they have come to view the American Red Cross over time.

From its humble beginnings as one of the many small organizations that took part in international Red Cross movement, the Johnstown Flood of 1889 played a pivotal role in the history of the American Red Cross and even helped establish the organization as the major disaster relief agency in the United States. Despite its initial goal of providing relief for peacetime disasters, the American Red Cross would eventually provide wartime services as well as international relief efforts in the years that followed. Mostly in part due to the voice and efforts of Clara Barton, the founder and “champion” of the organization, Barton played an important role in both the history and legacy of the American Red Cross when it came to protecting the war-injured and providing disaster relief efforts both at home and abroad. Her experiences in Europe, especially after becoming influenced by Henry Dunant, would come to lay the foundation and framework for the American Red Cross to provide national and international relief efforts during World War I.

In order to trace how historians have approached this topic, I would need to address a couple of questions:

1. How have historians viewed the growth and development of the American Red Cross since its early establishment in 1881 to its dramatic transformation as a massive and influential institution by the end of the First World War?
2. Despite its success and significance as a major humanitarian relief organization throughout the Great War, was the American Red Cross (in some ways) an instigator of war through its recruitment process and propaganda?
3. How did gender and the roles of women play a fundamental role in the American Red Cross in terms of reconstructing gender identities on the battlefields and during wartime in the First World War?
4. How have women fashioned new identities for themselves due to increasing employment opportunities that emerged during wartime? What happened to them when they were forced to return to the traditional standards of femininity after the war and during the postwar era?

As for potential primary sources, I will be looking at first-hand accounts of the experiences of the female medical personnel who served abroad during the First World War. These may include, diaries, letters, biographies and personal memoirs, photographs, as well as membership data on the number of American women who volunteered in the war and possibly a summary of the Red Cross’ financial operations during the war.

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In Closer to Freedom: Enslaved Women and Everyday Resistance in the Plantation South, Stephanie Camp’s central argument revolves around the notion of movement within confined spaces as well as the “rival geography” that existed between the enslaved and their owners during the antebellum era. Although Camp claims that her book revolves around the struggles of bondswomen and their everyday resistance in the Old South, Closer to Freedom covers both the actions and roles of enslaved men and women when it comes to resisting white authority in the Old South. While slaveholders in the Old South exercised control over their bound laborers through the use of restraints from “passes, tickets, curfews, and roll calls [that] all limited slave mobility” (pg. 13), enslaved men and women operated against their oppressive owners by etching out forms of mobility for themselves in the face of constraint. By engaging in a practice called truancy, enslaved people sought temporary escape from their owners to spaces such as woods, swamps, and even slave cabins where the enslaved could essentially exercise more autonomy than the fields that they worked in and other open spaces on the plantation. According to Camp, truancy “disturbed and in some cases alarmed slaveholders… [It] never became an acceptable part of plantation life in planters’ minds. Rather it was the source of a fundamental conflict of interest between owner and owned” (pg. 36).

I agree with both Andrew and Taylor that Camp tends to shy away from using the word “slave” in her book. By using the words “enslaved” or “bondpeople,” she undeniably gives the people she writes about more agency as it not only “implies the active historical process involved in subjugating those who where enslaved… [but also] connotes a status rather than a state of being” (pg. 143). On the other hand, I also appreciated Camp’s attention to geography and movement especially when it came to exploring the ways in which enslaved people resisted and conducted their life under “white rule” through areas of open space. I personally thought Camp’s thesis created an in-depth picture of the ways in which enslaved people carved out lives for themselves using “rival geography,” which provided slaves a “space for private and public creative expression, rest and recreation, alternative communication, and importantly, resistance to planters’ domination of slaves’ every move” (pg. 7).  In the end, not only was Closer To Freedom an ambitious work that gives further substance and depth to the experience of slavery from the perspective of both enslaved men and especially women, it also discloses several features of slavery and Southern society that are normally not made explicit. Instead of merely touching the surface of the ways in which slaves coped with their existence in the South, Camp humanizes the enslaved in the process and fundamentally connects their efforts to the dramatic events following the American Civil War.