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The Great Eastern Crisis (1875–1878) as a global humanitarian moment

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 April 2021

Adrian Ruprecht*
Affiliation:
Historical Institute, University of Bern, Länggassstrasse 49, 3012Bern, Switzerland
*
Corresponding author. E-mail: adrian.ruprecht@cantab.net

Abstract

This article explores the global spread of the Red Cross and Red Crescent movement to colonial India. By looking at the Great Eastern Crisis (1875–78) and the intense public ferment the events in the Balkans created in Britain, Switzerland, Russia and India, this article illustrates how humanitarian ideas and practices, as well as institutional arrangements for the care for wounded soldiers, were appropriated and shared amongst the different religious internationals and pan-movements from the late 1870s onwards. The Great Eastern Crisis, this article contends, marks a global humanitarian moment. It transformed the initially mainly European and Christian Red Cross into a truly global movement that included non-sovereign colonial India and the Islamic religious international. Far from just being at the receiving end, non-European peoples were crucial in creating global and transnational humanitarianism, global civil society and the world of non-governmental organizations during the last third of the nineteenth century.

Type
Article
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press

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Footnotes

This article is dedicated to the memory of my former Ph.D. supervisor C.A. Bayly. I would especially like to thank Tim Harper without whose support this piece would never have seen the light of the day. I am grateful to the reviewers, Toby Matthiesen, Christof Dejung, Francesca Fuoli and Moritz von Brescius for their perceptive comments.

References

1 The Times of India, 26 August 1876, 3.

2 Peter Stamatov, Origins of Global Humanitarianism: Religion, Empires, and Advocacy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013); Peter Walker and Daniel Maxwell, Shaping the Humanitarian World (London: Routledge, 2014).

3 Michael Barnett, Empire of Humanity: A History of Humanitarianism (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2011), 16.

4 Didier Fassin, Humanitarian Reason: A Moral History of the Present (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2012), 248. See also, Thomas Haskell, ‘Capitalism and the Origins of the Humanitarian Sensibility, Part 2,’ The American Historical Review 90, no. 3 (1985): 553.

5 Abigail Green, ‘Humanitarianism in Nineteenth-Century Context: Religious, Gendered, National,’ The Historical Journal 57, no. 4 (2014): 1169.

6 Dipesh Chakrabarty, Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993).

7 Mark Frost, ‘Humanitarianism and the Overseas Aid Craze in Britain’s Colonial Straits Settlements, 1870–1920,’ Past & Present 236, no. 1 (2017): 169–205; Keith Watenpaugh, Bread from Stones: The Middle East and the Making of Modern Humanitarianism (Oakland: University of California Press, 2015).

8 There have, of course, been earlier transnational humanitarian associations such as the International Shipwreck Society (ISS), but very few of them have the same historical continuity as the Red Cross. See, Thomas Davies, ‘Rethinking the Origins of Transnational Humanitarian Organizations: the Curious Case of the International Shipwreck Society,’ Global Networks 18, no. 3 (2018): 461–78.

9 Astrid Heiberg, ‘Keynote Address by Dr Astrid N. Heiberg President of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies,’ International Review of the Red Cross 81, no. 836 (1999): 837.

10 Geoffrey Best, Humanity in Warfare (New York: Columbia University Press, 1980); John Hutchinson, Champions of Charity: War and The Rise of the Red Cross (Oxford: Westview 1996); Caroline Moorehead, Dunant’s Dream: War, Switzerland and the History of the Red Cross (London: HarperCollins, 1998).

11 The American Red Cross Society is, probably, the most studied of these national societies. See, Patrick Gilbo, The American Red Cross: The First Century (New York: Harper & Row, 1981); Gwendolyn Shealy, A Critical History of the American Red Cross, 1882–1945: The End of Noble Humanitarianism (New York: Edwin Mellen Press, 2003); Marian Moser Jones, The American Red Cross from Clara Barton to the New Deal (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2013); Julia Irwin, Making the World Safe: The American Red Cross and A Nation’s Humanitarian Awakening (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013).

12 At times accounts are heavily target-oriented and teleological. For the teleological accounts in the Japanese case, see Frank Käser, ‘A Civilized Nation: Japan and The Red Cross 1877–1900,’ European Review of History: Revue européenne d’histoire 23, no. 1: 16–7. For the ‘Red Cross patriotism’ that often served as basis of these histories, see Hutchinson, Champions of Charity 6, 256–76.

13 Pierre Boissier, From Solferino to Tsushima: History of the International Committee of the Red Cross (Geneva: Institute Henry Dunant, 1985); André Durand, History of the International Committee of the Red Cross: from Sarajevo to Hiroshima, (Geneva: Henry Dunant Institute, 1984).

14 For Japan, see Olive Checkland, Humanitarianism and the Emperor’s Japan, 1877–1977 (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1994).

15 Sho Konishi, ‘The Emergence of An International Humanitarian Organization in Japan: The Tokugawa Origins of the Japanese Red Cross,’ American Historical Review 119, no. 4 (2014): 1129–53; Frank Käser, ‘A Civilized Nation’.

16 Jonathan Benthall and Jérôme Bellion-Jourdan, The Charitable Crescent: Politics of Aid in the Muslim World (London: I.B. Tauris, 2003).

17 Christopher Bayly, The Birth of the Modern World, 1780–1914: Global Connections and Comparisons (Malden: Blackwell Publishing, 2004); Jürgen Osterhammel, Die Verwandlung der Welt: eine Geschichte des 19. Jahrhunderts (München: C.H. Beck, 2009).

18 Alan Lester, ‘Obtaining the ‘Due Observance of Justice’: The Geographies of Colonial Humanitarianism,’ Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 20, no. 3 (2002): 277–93; David Lambert and Alan Lester, “Geographies of Colonial Philanthropy,” Progress in Human Geography 28, no. 3 (2004): 320–41; Harald Fischer-Tiné, ‘Reclaiming Savages in ‘Darkest England’ and ‘Darkest India’. The Salvation Army as Transnational Agent of the Civilizing Mission,’ in Civilizing Missions in Colonial and Postcolonial South Asia: From Improvement to Development, eds. Carey Watt and Michael Mann (London: Anthem, 2011), 125–64; Robert Skinner and Alan Lester, “Humanitarianism and Empire: Introduction,” Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 40, no, 5 (2012): 729–47; Alan Lester and Fae Dussart, Colonization and the Origins of Humanitarian Governance: Protecting Aborigines Across the Nineteenth-Century British Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014); Tony Ballantyne, ‘Moving Texts and “Humane Sentiment”: Materiality, Mobility and the Emotions of Imperial Humanitarianism”, Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History 17, no. 1 (2016).

19 Thomas Laqueur, ‘Mourning, Pity, and The Work of Narrative in the Making of “Humanity”,’ in Humanitarianism and Suffering: The Mobilization of Empathy, eds. Richard Wilson and Richard Brown (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 33.

20 Eric Hobsbawm, Age of empire 1875–1914 (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1987); C.C. Eldridge, Disraeli and the Rise of a New Imperialism (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1996).

21 Andrew Porter, ‘Trusteeship, Anti-Slavery and Humanitarianism,’ in The Oxford History of the British Empire, Vol. 3, The nineteenth century, ed. Andrew Porter (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999): 198–221.

22 The Indian mutiny of 1857 was a watershed moment in this regard. See Nancy Paxton, ‘Mobilizing Chivalry: Rape in British Novels About the Indian Uprising of 1857,” Victorian Studies 36, no. 1 (1992): 5–30; Christopher Herbert, War of No Pity: The Indian Mutiny and Victorian Trauma (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008).

23 Antony Anghie, Imperialism, Sovereignty, and The Making of International Law (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004); Frédéric Mégret, ‘From ‘Savages’ to ‘Unlawful Combatants’: A Postcolonial Look at International Law’s ‘Other’,’ in International Law and Its Others, ed. Anne Orford (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 265–317.

24 Bulletin international des sociétés de secours aux militaires blessés [henceforth: Bulletin international] 5, no. 17 (1873): 11. Translation is mine as are henceforth all the following in the article.

25 Verhandlungen der vierten internationalen Conferenz der Gesellschaften vom Rothen Kreuz abgehalten in Karlsruhe vom 22. bis 27. September 1887 (Berlin: Starcke, 1887), 139.

26 Gerrit Gong, The Standard of Civilization in International Society (Oxford: Clarendon, 1984).

27 The popular self-image of Switzerland and the Red Cross as innocent bystanders to colonialism has been deconstructed. See, Patricia Purtschert and Harald Fischer-Tiné, eds., Colonial Switzerland: Rethinking Colonialism from the Margins (Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015).

28 David Lambert and Alan Lester, “Geographies of Colonial Philanthropy” and Alan Lester, ‘Obtaining the ‘Due Observance of Justice’: The Geographies of Colonial Humanitarianism’; For the empire as webs, see Tony Ballantyne, ‘Race and the Webs of Empire: Aryanism from India to the Pacific,’ Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History 2, no. 3 (2001).

29 Michael Barnett and Janice Stein, Sacred Aid: Faith and Humanitarianism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012).

30 Christopher Bayly, The Birth of the Modern World. For the idea of a single Atlantic culture in which religion, philanthropy and reform bound middle-class America and Britain together, see J. MacLear, ‘The Evangelical Alliance and the Antislavery Crusade,’ Huntington Library Quarterly 42, no. 2 (1979): 141–64.

31 Abigail Green and Vincent Viaene, eds., Religious Internationals in the Modern World: Globalization and Faith Communities Since 1750 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), 1–2.

32 However, pan-movements and religions were not always entirely congruent, see Cemil Aydin, The Politics of Anti-Westernism in Asia: Visions of World Order in Pan-Islamic and Pan-Asian Thought (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007); Louis Snyder, Macro-Nationalisms: A History of the Pan-Movements (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1984).

33 Richard Carwardine, Transatlantic Revivalism: Popular Evangelicalism in Britain and America, 1790–1865 (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1978); Mark Noll, David Bebbington and George Rawlyk, Evangelicalism: Comparative Studies of Popular Protestantism in North America, The British Isles, and Beyond 1700–1900 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994); Jonathan Sperber, Popular Catholicism in Nineteenth-Century Germany (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984); Adeeb Khalid, ‘Pan-Islamism in Practice: The Rhetoric of Islamic Unity and its Uses,’ in Late Ottoman Society: The Intellectual Legacy, ed. Elisabeth Özdalga (London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2005), 201–2; Kemal Karpat, Politicization of Islam: Reconstructing Identity, State, Faith, and Community in the Late Ottoman State (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001); Christopher Bayly, Recovering Liberties: Indian Thought in the Age of Liberalism and Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 22, 221–3.

34 Peter van der Veer, Religious Nationalism: Hindus and Muslims in India (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994); Peter van der Veer and Hartmut Lehmann, eds., Nation and Religion: Perspectives on Europe and Asia (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999).

35 Tomoko Masuzawa, The Invention of World Religions, or, How European Universalism was Preserved in the Language of Pluralism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005).

36 Christopher Clark and Wolfram Kaiser, eds., Culture Wars: Secular-Catholic Conflict in Nineteenth-Century Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003).

37 Andrew Porter, Religion versus Empire? British Protestant Missionaries and Overseas Expansion, 1700–1914 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2004).

38 Kenneth Jones, ed., Religious Controversy in British India: Dialogues in South Asian languages (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1992); Ayesha Jalal, Self and Sovereignty: Individual and Community in South Asian Islam since 1850 (London: Routledge, 2002), 78–86.

39 Such a totalizing influence of religion is evident, for instance, in William Wilson Hunter’s famous book title The Indian Musalmans: are they bound in conscience to rebel against the Queen? (1871), but also in the anti-Catholic literature, see Edward Norman, Anti-Catholicism in Victorian England (London: Allen and Unwin, 1968).

40 My argument is partly inspired by Nile Green, Bombay Islam: The Religious Economy of the West Indian Ocean, 1840–1915 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 24–48.

41 Carey Anthony Watt, Serving the Nation: Cultures of Service, Association, and Citizenship (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005); Kenneth Jones, Socio-Religious Reform Movements in British India (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989).

42 Emma Hutchison, Affective Communities in World Politics: Collective Emotions After Trauma (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016).

43 Thomas Laqueur, ‘Bodies, Details, and Humanitarian Narrative’, in The New Cultural History, ed. Lynn Hunt (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989), 176–204; See also, Karen Halttunen, “Humanitarianism and the Pornography of Pain in Anglo-American Culture.” The American Historical Review 100, no. 2 (1995): 303–34.

44 Thomas Laqueur, ‘Mourning, Pity, and The Work of Narrative in the Making of “Humanity”,’ 42

45 Ibid., 39; Judith Butler, Frames of War: When is Life Grievable? (London: Verso, 2009).

46 Green, ‘Humanitarianism in nineteenth-century context’.

47 Jeff Goodwin, James Jasper, and Francesca Polletta, Passionate Politics: Emotions and Social Movements (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2001); Sidney Tarrow, Power in Movement: Social Movements and Contentious Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998).

48 Mitchel Roth, Historical Dictionary of War Journalism (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1997).

49 David Sachsman and David Bulla, eds., Sensationalism: Murder, Mayhem, Mudslinging, Scandals, and Disasters in 19th-Century Reporting (New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 2013); Patricia Cline Cohen, Flash Press: Sporting Male Weeklies in 1840s New York (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008).

50 Gustave Moynier, Droit des gens: étude sur la Convention de Genève pour l’amélioration du sort des militaires blessés dans les armées en campagne (1864–1868) (Geneva: Cherbuliez, 1870), 12.

51 Daniel Headrick, The Invisible Weapon: Telecommunications and International Politics, 1851–1945 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), 20–24, 40, 51–52.

52 Amelia Bonea, ‘Telegraphy and Journalism in Colonial India, c. 1830 to 1900s,’ History Compass 12, no. 5 (2014): 393.

53 Tony Ballantyne, ‘Moving Texts,’ 15; Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso, 1983).

54 Ulrike Stark, An Empire of Books: The Naval Kishore Press and the Diffusion of the Printed Word in colonial India (Ranikhet: Permanent Black, 2016), 64–83.

55 Richard Millman, Britain and the Eastern Question, 1875–1878 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979).

56 Michelle Tusan, Smyrna’s Ashes: Humanitarianism, Genocide, and the Birth of the Middle East (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2012); Ussama Makdisi, Artillery of Heaven: American Missionaries and The Failed Conversion of the Middle East (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2008), 141–79.

57 Cemil Aydin, The Politics of Anti-Westernism in Asia: Visions of World Order in Pan-Islamic and Pan-Asian Thought (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007); Naeem Qureshi, Pan-Islam in British Indian Politics: A Study of the Khilafat Movement, 1918–1924 (Leiden: Brill, 1999); Azmi Özcan, Pan-Islamism: Indian Muslims, the Ottomans and Britain (1877–1924) (Leiden: Brill, 1997); Jacob Landau, The Politics of Pan-Islam: Ideology and Organization (Oxford: Claredon Press, 1990); Ram Lakhan Shukla, Britain, India, and the Turkish Empire, 1853–1882 (New Delhi: Peoples Pub. House, 1973).

58 David Harris, Britain and the Bulgarian Horrors of 1876 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1939); Richard Shannon, Gladstone and the Bulgarian Agitation 1876 (London: Nelson, 1963); Richard Millman, Britain and the Eastern Question, 1875–1878 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979); Ann Saab, Reluctant Icon: Gladstone, Bulgaria, and the Working Classes, 1856–1878 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1991).

59 Charles Tilly, “Contentious Repertoires in Great Britain, 1758–1834,” Social Science History, 17, no. 2 (1993): 253–80.

60 Rebecca Gill, Calculating Compassion: Humanity and Relief in War, Britain 1870–1914 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2016), 84.

61 Shannon, Gladstone and the Bulgarian agitation, 29; Andrew Griffiths, The New Journalism, The New Imperialism and the Fiction of Empire, 1870–1900 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015).

62 Januarius MacGahan, Eugene Schuyler, The Turkish Atrocities in Bulgaria: Letters of the Special Commissioner of the “Daily News”, with An Introduction and Mr. Schuyler’s Preliminary Report (London: Bradbury, Agnew & Co., 1876), 10–11.

63 Ibid., 26, 11, 27–31.

64 Atrocities’ and ‘massacres’ on Muslims were frequently reported in major British newspapers, see for instance “Atrocities”, The Times, 9 August 1877, 6.

65 Birmingham Daily Post, 7 April 1876, 5.

66 Daily News, 19 August 1876, 3.

67 Ruth Yeazell, Harems of the Mind: Passages of Western Art and Literature (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000); Edward Ziter, Imagining the Orient on the Victorian Stage (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 54–93.

68 Geoff Watson, ‘Representations of Central Asian ethnicities in British Literature c. 1830–1914,’ Asian Ethnicity 3, no. 2 (2002): 137–51.

69 Bradley Deane, Masculinity and The New Imperialism: Rewriting Manhood in British Popular Literature, 1870–1914 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014).

70 Dorothy Anderson, Balkan Volunteers (London: Hutchinson, 1968), 9–22; Gill, Calculating Compassion, 75–123; Eugenio Biagini, British Democracy and Irish Nationalism 1876–1906 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 42–3.

71 Here, I rely on Halberstam’s investigation into Gothic monsters. See Judith Halberstam, Skin Shows: Gothic Horror and The Technology of Monsters (Durham: Duke University Press, 1995), 22.

72 Shannon, Gladstone and the Bulgarian Agitation, 161–2.

73 John Robertson Scott, The Life and Death of A Newspaper: An Account of the Temperaments, Perturbations and Achievements of John Morley, W.T. Stead, E.T. Cook, Harry Cust, J.L. Garvin and three other editors of the Pall Mall Gazette (London: Methuen, 1952), 104.

74 For Canon Liddon’s mixing of news with preaching, see John Octavious Johnston, Life and letters of Henry Parry Liddon (New York: Longmans, 1904), 205–6, 214.

75 Shannon, Gladstone and the Bulgarian Agitation, 167, 136–38, 137.

76 Simon Goldsworthy, ‘English Nonconformity and The Pioneering of the Modern Newspaper Campaign: Including the Strange Case of W. T. Stead and the Bulgarian Horrors,’ Journalism Studies 7, no. 3 (2006): 391–2.

77 Bulgaria had been a field of American missionary enterprise since the late 1850s. American missionaries were entangled in the national revival, see Tatyana Nestorova, American Missionaries Among the Bulgarians, 1858–1912 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1987); James Clarke, Bible Societies, American Missionaries and The National Revival of Bulgaria (New York: Arno Press, 1971). For the vital role of the Robert College as ‘nerve centre’ during the Bulgarian campaign, see James Clarke, ‘Americans and the April Uprising,’ East European Quarterly 11, no. 4 (1977): 422 and Edwin Pears, Forty years in Constantinople (London: H. Jenkins, 1916), 15–6.

78 Freda Harcourt, ‘Disraeli’s Imperialism, 1866–1868: A Question of Timing,’ The Historical Journal 23, no. 1 (1980): 87–109.

79 Shannon, Gladstone and the Bulgarian Agitation, 147–238, 154.

80 Saab, Reluctant Icon, 201.

81 See, for instance, the report on different experienced Russian generals and an American general who had fought during the Civil War in the ranks of the Serbian and Montenegrin armies. The Morning Post, 6 June 1876, 5.

82 Gill, Calculating Compassion, 115.

83 Harriet Wantage, Lord Wantage, V.C., K.C.B.: A Memoir by His Wife (London: Smith, 1908), 218–20.

84 For Farley’s and Canon Liddon’s reactions, see Daily News, 19 August 1876, 6; Anderson, Balkan Volunteers, 11.

85 Stafford House Committee, Report and Record of the Operations of the Stafford House Committee for the Relief of Sick and Wounded Turkish Soldiers (London: Spottiswoode, 1879).

86 The Morning Post, 13 December 1876, 1, 4.

87 W. Burdett-Coutts, ed., The Turkish Compassionate Fund: An Account of Its Origin, Working, and Results (London: Remington, 1883).

88 Michelle Tusan, ‘At home in the Ottoman Empire: Humanitarianism and the Victorian Diplomat,’ in The Cultural Construction of the British World, eds. Barry Crosbie and Mark Hampton (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2016), 77–94; Michelle Tusan, The British Empire and The Armenian Genocide: Humanitarianism and The Imperial Politics from Gladstone to Churchill (London: I.B. Tauris, 2017), 45–9.

89 Gill, Calculating Compassion, 104–5.

90 Hans Kohn, Pan Slavism, Its History and Ideology (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1953), 131–80; Barbara Jelavich, Russia’s Balkan Entanglements, 1806–1914 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 143–98.

91 David Brown, Tchaikovsky: A Biographical and Critical Study, Vol. 2, the crisis years (1874–1878) (London: Victor Gollancz, 1982), 100–1.

92 Jeffrey Brooks, ‘How Tolstoevskii pleased readers and rewrote a Russian myth,’ Slavic Review 64, no. 3 (2005): 538–59.

93 MacKenzie, Serbs and Russian Pan-Slavism, 115–27.

94 For the foundation of the Ottoman Red Crescent by an Austrian refugee, see W.F. List, A. Kernbauer, and Th. Kenner, “Karl E. Hammerschmidt: Humanist, Naturwissenschaftler und Narkosepionier,” Anaesthesist 47 (1998): 65–70.

95 Jean-François Pitteloud, ed. Procès-verbaux des séances du Comité International de la Croix-Rouge: 17 février 1863–28 août 1914 (Geneva: Institut Henry Dunant, 1999), 365, 368–70.

96 Bulletin international 7, no. 27 (July 1876), 117–19.

97 Gill, Calculating Compassion, 110.

98 Bulletin International 8, no. 29 (Jan. 1877): 36.

99 Ibid. 8, no. 30 (April 1877): 41–7; Boissier, From Solferino to Tsushima, 300–12.

100 Ibid. 7, no. 28 (Oct. 1876): 173.

101 Ibid., 175.

102 See, for instance, Bulletin International 7, no. 26 (1876): 66–8.

103 Davide Rodogno, ‘European Legal Doctrines on Intervention and the Status of the Ottoman Empire within the ‘Family of Nations’ Throughout the Nineteenth Century,’ Journal of the History of International Law 18, no. 1 (2016): 5–41.

104 Drawing partly on Ottoman sources Özcan interprets the agitation as guided by the Porte and the Sultan, see Azmi Özcan, Pan-Islamism: Indian Muslims, the Ottomans and Britain (18771924) (Leiden: Brill, 1997), 64–78. Shukla provides a more detailed examination, has, however, neglected much of the transnational connections. See, Shukla, Britain, India, and the Turkish Empire, 94–120.

105 Khalid, “Pan-Islamism in Practice,” 201–2.

106 Seema Alavi, Muslim Cosmopolitanism in the Age of Empire (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2015).

107 The Times of India, 24 July 1876, 3.

108 Ibid., 31 July 1876, 2.

109 Ibid., 7 August 1876, 2, The Times of India, 17 August 1876, 2.

110 Julia Stephens, “The Phantom Wahhabi: Liberalism and the Muslim Fanatic in Mid-Victorian India,” Modern Asian Studies 47, no. 1 (2013): 22–52; Qeyamuddin Ahmad, Wahabi Movement in India (Calcutta: Mukhopadhyay, 1966).

111 The Times of India, 7 August 1876, 2.

112 Sarah Roddy, Julie-Marie Strange, and Bertrand Taithe, The Charity Market and Humanitarianism in Britain, 1870–1912 (London: Bloomsbury, 2019), 59–98.

113 Gregory Kozlowski, Muslim Endowments and Society in British India (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985).

114 For the Viceroy’s reactions, see Lord Lytton Papers, The British Library, India Office Records and Private Papers, London (hereafter cited as IOR), MSS Eur, E218/19 Pt. 1-3.

115 For Hyderabad and Lucknow, see Anwar-ul-Akbar, 1 January 1877, Oudh Akbar, 12 February 1877, IOR, L/R/5/54, 5, 102. For the Saharanpur district, see Najim-ul-Akbar, 24 December 1876, IOR, L/R/5/54, 5.

116 Even the Viceroy was infuriated, see Lord Lytton Papers, IOR, Mss.Eur E.218/19 - Pt. 1, 190.

117 Rahbar-i-Hind, 21 November 1876, IOR, L/R/5/53, 679.

118 Samaya Vinod, 1 December 1876, IOR, L/R/5/53, 709.

119 Urdu Akbar, 19 August 1876, IOR, L/R/5/53, 429, 103.

120 Nur-ul-Anwar, 5 November 1876, IOR, L/R/5/53, 646.

121 Christine Dobbin, Urban Leadership in Western India: Politics and Communities in Bombay City, 1840–1885 (London: Oxford University Press, 1972), 229–35 and Nile Green, Bombay Islam, 34–48.

122 Husain Tyabji, Badruddin Tyabji: A Biography (Bombay: Thacker, 1952), 83. For the Rogays, see Aziz Ahmad, ‘Afghani’s Indian Contacts,’ Journal of the American Oriental Society 89, no. 3 (1969): 479.

123 A.G. Noorani, Badruddin Tyabji (New Delhi: Publications Division, 1969), Moin Shakir, Muslims and Indian National Congress: Badruddin Tyabji and His Times (Delhi: Ajanta, 1987).

124 Eminent Mussalmans (Madras: Natesan, 1926), 113–28.

125 The Times of India, 25 September 1876, 2.

126 The Times of India, 2 October 1976, 2.

127 Abdul Karim, “Nawab Abdul Latif and Modern Education of the Muslims of Bengal,” Islamic Studies 9, no. 4 (1970): 279–93; Abdool Luteef, A short account of my public life (Calcutta: Newman, 1886).

128 The Englishmen, 9 October 1876, 3.

129 The Pioneer, 18 November 1876, 3.

130 For Lucknow, Anwar-ul-Akbar, 1 January 1877, IOR, L/R/5/54, 5; Baroda, Anand Lahri, 17 November 1876, ibid, 676; Amritsar, Rahbar-i-Hind, 21 November 1876, ibid, 679; Dacca, Nurul-Anwar, 10 February 1877 and Benares Akbar, 28 June 1877; ibid., 103–4, 441; Aligarh, The Aligarh Institute Gazette, 11 April 1877, ibid., 222; Mirzapur, Nur-ul-Anwar, 14 April 1877 and Benares Akbar, 5 April 1877, ibid., 256, 293; Gorakhpur, Oudh Akbar, 19 June 1877, ibid., 424; Rawalpindi and Abbottabad, Koh-i-Nur, 16 June 1877, ibid., 424; Gurdaspur, Rahbar-i-Hind, 23 June 1877, ibid., 441; Rampur, Oudh Akbar, 26 June 1877, ibid., 442-443; Bulandshahr, Ashraf-ul-Akhbar, 1 July 1877, ibid., 460.

131 For Bangalore, Vrit Dhara, 7 May 1877, IOR, L/R/5/54, 324; Hyderabad, Nur-ul-Anwar, 12 May 1877, ibid., 348.

132 For Kathiawar, Vrita Dhara, 8th January 1877, IOR, L/R/5/54, 19; Gondwana Princely state, Urdu Akbar (Akola), 7 October 1876, L/R/5/53, 569; Rampur, Sholai Tur, 8 May 1877, IOR, L/R/5/54, 324; Bhopal, Punjabi Akbar, 7 July 1877, IOR, L/R/5/54, 474.

133 Urdu-Akbar, Akola, 29 June 1877; IOR, L/R/5/54, 461.

134 The total amount was mentioned in a letter of the Turkish Consul at Bombay to the proprietor of a vernacular paper, see Punjabi-i-Akbhar, 9 March 1878, IOR, L/R/5/55, 201.

135 Gill, Calculating Compassion, 75.

136 Anwar-ul-Akhb’ar, 1st October 1876, IOR, L/R/5/53, 548.

137 Koh-i-Nu’r, 30 December 1876, IOR, L/R/5/54, 6.

138 Benares Akbar, 2 November 1876, IOR, L/R/5/53, 633–34

139 Walter Richmond, The Circassian Genocide (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2013).

140 Januarius MacGahan, Campaigning on the Oxus, and The Fall of Khiva (London: Sampson, 1876); The Times of India, 26 October 1876, 2.

141 Mihi Darakhshan, 21 June 1877, IOR, L/R/5/54, 442.

142 Oudh Akbar, 23 June 1877, IOR, L/R/5/54, 426.

143 Khair Kwah-i-Alam, 7 August 1877, IOR, L/R/5/54, 542.

144 Mashir-i-Qaisar, 3 February 1878, IOR, L/R/5/55, 106–7.

145 The Sadadarsh, 30 August 1875, IOR, L/R/5/52, 420, 423.

146 Judith Rowbotham, “Miscarriage of Justice? Postcolonial Reflections on the Trial of the Maharaja of Baroda, 1875,” Liverpool Law Review 28 (2007): 377–403.

147 Punjab-i-Akhbar, 20 May 1876, Najum-ul-Akhbar, 1 June 1876 and Punjab-i-Akhbar, 10 June 1876, IOR, L/R/5/52, 245, 265, 278.

148 Wakil-i-Hindustan, 21 August 1875, IOR, L/R/5/52, 393.

149 Aligarh Institute Gazette, 7 July 1876, IOR, L/R/5/53, 527.

150 Vakil-i-Hindustan, 29 June 1877, IOR, L/R/5/54, 465.

151 Anjuman-i-Punjab, 3 November 1876, IOR L/R/5/53, 649.

152 Vakil-i-Hindustan, 14 December 1876, ibid., 741.

153 Sadadarsh, 26 July 1875, IOR, L/R/5/52, 362.

154 Aligarh Institute Gazette, 15 October 1875, IOR, L/R/5/52, 538, 539.

155 David Lelyveld, Aligarh’s First Generation: Muslim Solidarity in British India (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978).

156 Sayyid-ul-Akhbar, 1 September 1875, IOR, L/R/5/53, 437–8.

157 Louh-i-Mahfuz, 1 September 1875, IOR, L/R/5/52, 488.

158 Dirk Kolff, Naukar, Rajput, and Sepoy: The Ethnohistory of The Military Labour Market in Hindustan, 1450–1850 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990).

159 Thomas Metcalf, Aftermath of Revolt: India, 1857–1870 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1965).

160 Thus the frequent call to form volunteer corps, see Vakil-i-Hindustan, 22 July 1876, IOR, L/R/5/53, 370.

161 For similarities of humanitarianism and Islamic militant practices, see Faisal Devji, ‘The Terrorist as Humanitarian,’ in Social Analysis, 53, no. 1 (2009): 173–92.

162 Lawrence Gazette, 8 August 1876, IOR, L/R/5/53, 409. There are scattered references in the vernacular papers about a handful of Indian Muslims who allegedly went to the battlefields. See, Naiari-Azam, 3 January 1877; Oudh Akhbar, 9 June 1877, IOR, L/R/5/54, 19, 395.

163 The Anwar-ul-Akhbar, 1 October 1876, IOR L/R/5/53, 548. This is in line with the exceedingly broad meaning of Jihad, see Rudolph Peters, ‘Jihad’ in The Oxford encyclopedia of the Islamic world, ed. John Esposito (vol. 3, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 252–56.

164 Luteef, A Short Account of My Public Life, 29–30.

165 Ira Klein, ‘When the Rains Failed: Famine, Relief, and Mortality in British India,’ The Indian Economic & Social History Review, 21, no. 2 (1984):199, 209–11.

166 William Digby, The Famine Campaign in Southern India (Madras and Bombay Presidencies and Province of Mysore) 18761878, vol. 2 (London: Longmans, 1878); Christina Twomey and Andrew May, ‘Australian Responses to the Indian Famine, 1876–78: Sympathy, Photography and the British Empire,’ Australian Historical Studies 43, no. 2: 233–52; Gill, Calculating Compassion, 75.

167 Mike Davis, Late Victorian Holocausts: El Niño Famines and The Making of the Third World (London: Verso, 2002), 25–59;

168 The Anti-Charitable Contributions Act of 1877 was a skit in the Indian newspapers, not a reality as it is often maintained in the scholarship on the great famine, see Kate Currie, ‘British colonial policy and famines: some effects and implications of free trade’ in the Bombay, Bengal and Madras presidencies, 1860–1900,’ South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies 14, no. 2 (1991), 23–56; Mike Davies, Victorian Holocausts, 39–40; The original source is quite clear about this, see Digby, The Famine Campaign, vol. 2, 55.

169 B.M. Bhatia, Famines in India: A Study in Some Aspects of the Economic History of India, 1860–1965 (2nd ed. London: Asia Pub. House, 1967), 102–33; Hari Shanker Srivastava, The History of Indian Famines and Development of Famine Policy, 1858–1918 (Agra: Sri Ram Mehra, 1968), 131–71.

170 Leela Sami, Famine, Disease, Medicine and The State in Madras Presidency (1876–78) (unpublished PhD thesis, University College London, University of London, 2006), 140–1.

171 Missionaries in India frequently tried to exploit the social, economic and human tragedies during famines, epidemics, and natural disasters for conversion, see Dick Kooiman, ‘Change of Religion as a Way of Survival,’ in Religion and Development: Towards an Integrated Approach, eds. Q. van Ufford and M. Schoeffleers (Amsterdam: Free University Press, 1988), 167-85; S.K. Datta, The Desire of India (London: CMS, 1908), 180–1.

172 Aligarh Institute Gazette, 31 December 1875, IOR, L/R/5/53, 24.

173 Rahbar-i-Hind, 14 August 1877, IOR, L/R/5/54, 556–7.

174 Rahbar-i-Hind, 21 November 1876, IOR, L/R/5/53, 679.

175 Times of India, 9 November 1876, 3.

176 Ibid ., 21 April 1877 and 28 April 1877, 3.

177 The letter seems to have originated from the Sufi Jiladi shrine (Abdul-Qadir Gilani) in Baghdad. Rahbar-i-Hind, 16 December 1876, IOR, L/R/5/53, 742.

178 Benares Akhbar, 2 November 1876, IOR, L/R/5/53, 634; Nusrat-ul-Akhbar, 11 April 1877, IOR, L/R/5/54, 255.

179 Mihr-Darkshan, 11 January 1877, IOR, L/R/5/54, 31-2.

180 Nusrat-ul-Akhbar, 11 April 1877, IOR, L/R/5/54, 255.

181 The Times of India, 4 December 1876, 3.

182 Luteef, A Short account, 39.

183 Aligarh Institute Gazette, 25 May 1877, IOR, L/R/5/54, 378–9.

184 See, note in IOR, L/R/5/54, 380, 443.

185 Stark, An Empire of Books, 362–5.

186 Aligarh Institute Gazette, 19 June 1877, IOR, L/R/5/54, 424.

187 Oudh Akhbar, 17 August 1877, IOR, L/R/5/54, 559.

188 Ralph Russell, The Pursuit of Urdu Literature: A Select History (London: Zed Books, 1992), 26–52; Oudh Punch, IOR, IOR, L/R/5/54, 797–8; Nusrat-ul-Akbar, 11 November 1877, IOR, L/P&S/7/16, Home Department, No. 111 of 1877.

189 Francesca Orsini, Print and Pleasure: Popular Literature and Entertaining Fictions in Colonial North India (Ranikhet: Permanent Black, 2009), 179–80.

190 Fredrick Wyman, The War: A Summary and Compilation of All Historical and Current Information in Connection with The Present War & The Eastern Question (Calcutta: Wyman, 1877), 76.

191 The Times of India, 3 October 1876, 3.

192 Benares Akhbar, 5 April 1877; Sholai Tur, 8 May 1877; Khair Khwah-i-Alam, 19 June 1877, IOR, L/R/5/54, 293, 324, 426.

193 Rahbar-i-Hind, 21 November 1876, IOR, L/R/5/53, 659.

194 The Sadharani, 30 September 1877, IOR, L/P&S/7/16, Home Department, No. 96 of 1877.

195 The Oudh Akbar, 12 February 1877, IOR L/R/5/54, 102. The Duke of Sutherland had accompanied the Prince of Wales on his highly publicised tour in India in 1875–6, see William Russell, The Prince of Wales’ tour: a diary in India; with some account of the visits of His Royal Highness to the courts of Greece, Egypt, Spain, and Portugal (2nd ed. London: Sampson, 1877).

196 The Times of India, 26 April 1877, 3.

197 The Morning Post, 2 March 1877, 5.

198 Stafford House Committee, Report and record of the operations, 2.

199 Peter Morris, ed., First aid to the battlefront: life and letters of Sir Vincent Kennett-Barrington (18441903) (Stroud: Alan Sutton, 1992).

200 Liverpool Mercury, 28 August 1877, 7.

201 Wyman, The War: A Summary, 102–3.

202 Burak Akçapar, People’s Mission to the Ottoman Empire: M. A. Ansari and the Indian Medical Mission, 1912–13 (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2014); British Red Crescent Society, The Work of the British Red Crescent Society in Three Continents, 1912–1914 (London: British Red Crescent Society, 1915).

203 “The All-India Medical Mission”, The Comrade, 24 May 1913, 414.