Britannia’s Embrace: Modern Humanitarianism and the Imperial Origins of Refugee Relief by Caroline Shaw

Excerpt

Scholarship on humanitarianism and the ideologies behind aiding foreign victims of oppression and violence too often fails to fully consider the long history of refugee relief. Caroline Shaw provides an important corrective to this reality. In Britannia’s Embrace: Modern Humanitarianism and the Imperial Origins of Refugee Relief, Shaw presents an enthralling and timely consideration of the genesis of British humanitarianism in the long nineteenth century. Shaw argues that Britain’s harboring of foreigners was a vital aspect of internationalized liberalism. This ideology of aid was grounded in generally held assumptions that victims in need of sanctuary shared political beliefs with the British populace. While the reality was not always so simple, Shaw maintains that “the public interest in foreign refugees had real power” (4). …