The project pursues the history of humanitarian shipwreck relief in European societies from c. 1800 onward. Around this time, in the context of a wider social movement for the formation of volunteer lifeboat stations a novel moral imperative emerged: to always attempt the rescue of the shipwrecked almost regardless of the personal danger to the rescuers, in short, to risk lives to save lives. Previously, rescues had not been uncommon, but occurred typically in opportune circumstances only. Seeking existential risk had been treated as beyond what could be required of reasonable moral subjects. Some formulations of the ethos of saving lives from shipwreck went so far as to do away with rationality as a key to morality. A "folie de dévouement," a "frenzy (or madness) of devotion" was demanded of volunteers in France, for instance.
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.
