Medicine, war and humanitarianism: the Red Cross movement in the Third Carlist War

The international movement, the Red Cross (RC) paradigmatically illustrates the way modern humanitarianism penetrated into the sphere of war, as well as the inextricable links between this new sensibility and the demands of the Second Industrial Revolution (European expansion, industrial war, political liberalism, recruited armies, revolution in communications, etc). Spain was one of the 12 European states that first joined this international movement, and was an original signatory of the first "International agreement to improve the lot of soldiers wounded on the battlefield", better known as the Geneva Convention of 1864.

In all, the Spanish section of the Red Cross (CRE) did not receive its baptism of fire until eight years after its founding, following the outbreak of the civil wars of the Sexenio Democrático and, especially, of the Third Carlist War (1872-1876). After a succinct presentation of the way the Spanish Red Cross was organised and deployed the during the 1860s, the speaker will go on to examine the organisation's humanitarian actions within the framework of the last Carlist War, paying particular attention to the problems generated within and outside the RC as a result of its intervention in a form of conflict – civil war – that was not originally envisaged in the Geneva Convention.