Periodic Reporting for period 2 - AISLES (Archipelagic Imperatives: Shipwreck and Lifesaving in European Societies since 1800)
Période du rapport: 2021-11-01 au 2023-04-30
Lifeboat associations are an early, neglected case of humanitarian movement. Humanitarian movements are commonly defined as predominantly secular collective initiatives to bring succor to distant suffering strangers. The project makes use of the case of saving lives from shipwreck to explore a peculiar feature of humanitarian movements, in general: their reliance on moral imperatives that are directed exclusively at specific types of situation (shipwreck, but not e.g. the often miserable working lives of sailors). The “single issue” nature of humanitarian concerns is analyzed also through a study of the relations lifeboat associations maintained with other humanitarian movements, concerning proximate matters such as first aid, or, less adjacently, the abolition of slavery. The wider aim is to understand how the tremendous spread of often incoherent humanitarian “issues” over the course of the modern era has created a novel moral culture that also continues to shape our present time.
The project therefore also brings its historical insights to bear on the analysis of the changing perceptions of shipwreck relief in the present. On account of the ongoing, seemingly permanent crisis of refugee and migrant shipwreck especially in the Mediterranean Sea, the rescue of the shipwrecked has of late seen an unprecedented level of politicization. The historical perspective helps us to explain many of the respective patterns of public reaction as following the linguistic and practical patterns produced by the history of humanitarian morality. This appears significant for the improvement of the self-understanding of modern societies.
The primary objective of the project is to work out a comprehensive historical account of the humanitarian saving of lives from shipwreck, in the form of a scholarly monograph by the PI and accompanying studies by the team.
In 2022 a first project conference on the significance of humanitarian moral culture in the visual history of the sea has been held (as a cooperation with the University of Vienna), and a publication of the results is in progress.
The PI has published a short, explorative monograph on the broad outlines that a history of humanitarianism as moral culture will take and on the consequences this has for our understanding of morality at large.
Various articles have appeared that have, in particular, treated aspects of the cultural significance of “rescue” in European modernity. These article also contribute to the wider understanding of humanitarian moral culture.
A sizeable database has been established on the funders of early lifeboat movements.
Further envisaged results will include a conference and collective publication on social imaginaries of extreme emergencies at sea; a conference and collective publication on the history of maritime search and rescue in the overall history of sovereignty and international legal order in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries; and a conference and collective publication on humanitarian morality and moral theory. There will be stand-alone articles by the postdoctoral researchers in addition to their contributions to these efforts. The PI will continue to produce research articles and a monograph on the humanitarian saving of lives from shipwreck.