Idealism beyond Borders
The French Revolutionary Left and the Rise of Humanitarianism, 1954–1988

A major new study of the political and intellectual origins of modern humanitarianism from the 1950s to the 1980s.

Eleanor Davey (Author)

9781107069589, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 17 December 2015

346 pages
23.5 x 15.8 x 2.2 cm, 0.63 kg

'Eleanor Davey's book makes enjoyable reading, with its caustic and forceful view of the pedigree of 'sans-frontiérisme', mapping an intellectual landscape which spreads beyond the borders of France and which is still to a large extent ours to this day.' Frédéric Thomas, Humanitarian Alternatives

This is a major new account of how modern humanitarian action was shaped by transformations in the French intellectual and political landscape from the 1950s to the 1980s. Eleanor Davey reveals how radical left third-worldism was displaced by the 'sans-frontiériste' movement as the dominant way of approaching suffering in what was then called the third world. Third-worldism regarded these regions as the motor for international revolution, but revolutionary zeal disintegrated as a number of its regimes took on violent and dictatorial forms. Instead, the radical humanitarianism of the 'sans-frontiériste' movement pioneered by Médecins Sans Frontières emerged as an alternative model for international aid. Covering a period of major international upheavals and domestic change in France, Davey demonstrates the importance of memories of the Second World War in political activism and humanitarian action, and underlines the powerful legacies of Cold War politics for international affairs since the fall of the Iron Curtain.

Introduction
Part I. Idealism beyond Borders: 1. A revolution in aid: the creation of sans-frontiérisme
2. Aiding the revolution: influences on tiers-mondisme
Part II. Violence and Morality: 3. The struggle for international justice: tiers-mondiste engagement on the outskirts of May
4. Complicity, conscience and autocritique: reconfiguring attitudes to political violence
5. A rhetoric of responsibility: Vichy, the Holocaust, and suffering in the third world
Part III. Ethics and Polemics: 6. Idealism beyond borders: the turn to sans-frontiériste spectacle
7. Controversy in a humanitarian age: attacks on tiers-mondisme in the 1980s
Conclusion
Notes
Index.

Subject Areas: International human rights law [LBBR], Human rights [JPVH], International relations [JPS], 20th century history: c 1900 to c 2000 [HBLW], European history [HBJD]