This chapter traces the origins of the NGO moment to the humanitarian crisis precipitated by the Nigeria-Biafra War. It describes humanitarianism as a key component of the West’s response to decolonisation, linking imperial notions of charity, relief and development to the practices adopted by NGOs. The principle of ‘access’ is at the heart of this chapter. ‘Access’ was central to the public narrative of intervention in Biafra: through the NGO-inspired model of ‘people-to-people’ action that drew so much popular support for the region, and in the televised images of the aid airlift that brought supplies into the region. It was important in a practical sense, too: in the continuities of personnel (missionaries and former colonial officials) from empire that were vital in the operation of non-governmental aid. And, this chapter argues, it also offered a reminder of the importance of Third World governments in shaping the territory of emergency relief. In Biafra, the relationship that NGOs cultivated with the local regime lay at the heart of their claims to legitimacy in the West, while also granting considerable agency to local authorities in setting the agenda of non-governmental aid.

This chapter examines the lessons of the NGO moment for how we write the history of globalisation. It suggests that we need to think more deeply about the boundaries of the ‘global’, and of where and how ‘global’ narratives are constructed. By looking beyond states and international organisations to NGOs, churches and civil society groups – and, indeed, to the Third World and the experiences of small and middling powers in the West – we can render visible the world system on which ideals such as humanitarianism, human rights, justice and development rested. That process, like the story of post-war globalisation, has three layers. First, the NGO moment helps to illuminate the places (physical, intellectual, and ideological) where globalising ideals were made. Second, it allows us to explore the patterns that underpinned those relationships: the connections between individuals, groups and institutions through which global compassion was constituted. Finally, by tracing how and where NGOs operated, this chapter argues, we gain a much fuller appreciation of how power was distributed in purportedly ‘global’ movements. Taken together, these elements allow us to paint a more nuanced picture of how outwardly ‘global’ ideas were understood, assimilated, rebuffe, and reframed in a variety of social and political contexts.

This chapter describes how NGOs adapted the language of scientific rationality – here labelled ‘humanitarian modernity’ – to construct a sustainable model of intervention based on the idea of universal needs. It does so by examining the sector’s response to the conflict that created independent Bangladesh in the early 1970s and the refugee crisis that it created. In South Asia, the need to negotiate access, first to refugees, then to the welfare systems of the new state, created the conditions of what this chapter terms a ‘compassionate space’ that would have long-term consequences for how NGOs were embedded in Third World contexts. This was a unique type of association, which could not be shoehorned into conventional categories of Western domination or neocolonial influence. As this chapter shows, collaboration with Third World authorities became a vital currency in convincing supporters of the NGO sector’s legitimacy, based on its ability to reach those in need, while in the field it paved the way for long-term engagement with postcolonial governments. It also became integral to the concept of protection that emerged in this period: the tropes it employed, the problems it faced and the communities of practice that flourished in that context.

This chapter examines the lessons of the NGO moment for how we write the history of globalisation. It suggests that we need to think more deeply about the boundaries of the ‘global’, and of where and how ‘global’ narratives are constructed. By looking beyond states and international organisations to NGOs, churches and civil society groups – and, indeed, to the Third World and the experiences of small and middling powers in the West – we can render visible the world system on which ideals such as humanitarianism, human rights, justice and development rested. That process, like the story of post-war globalisation, has three layers. First, the NGO moment helps to illuminate the places (physical, intellectual, and ideological) where globalising ideals were made. Second, it allows us to explore the patterns that underpinned those relationships: the connections between individuals, groups and institutions through which global compassion was constituted. Finally, by tracing how and where NGOs operated, this chapter argues, we gain a much fuller appreciation of how power was distributed in purportedly ‘global’ movements. Taken together, these elements allow us to paint a more nuanced picture of how outwardly ‘global’ ideas were understood, assimilated, rebuffe, and reframed in a variety of social and political contexts.

This chapter sets out three claims about the NGO moment. First, it argues for viewing the history of non-governmental aid in terms of moments of acceleration: bursts of activity that refreshed the sector while carrying with them the baggage of what had come before. While the specific dynamics of the period between Biafra and Live Aid were vital in facilitating the sector’s emergence, the moral frameworks that guided those organisations were equally the product of a much longer formative process. Second, this chapter explains how those dynamics helped non-governmental aid to supplant other forms of compassion in this period to become the dominant expression of popular benevolence towards the Third World. The broad remit of those organisations’ activities not only subsumed ‘aid’ under a single umbrella; its ideological underpinnings gave it an unprecedented justification to intervene anywhere there was suffering in the world. Finally, this chapter suggests that the story of the NGO moment provides us with several lessons for the writing of global history. It argues for describing globalisation as a constructed, context-contingent process that can only be understood as the product of the interactions between individual, organisational, national and supra-national actors.

This chapter traces the origins of the NGO moment to the humanitarian crisis precipitated by the Nigeria-Biafra War. It describes humanitarianism as a key component of the West’s response to decolonisation, linking imperial notions of charity, relief and development to the practices adopted by NGOs. The principle of ‘access’ is at the heart of this chapter. ‘Access’ was central to the public narrative of intervention in Biafra: through the NGO-inspired model of ‘people-to-people’ action that drew so much popular support for the region, and in the televised images of the aid airlift that brought supplies into the region. It was important in a practical sense, too: in the continuities of personnel (missionaries and former colonial officials) from empire that were vital in the operation of non-governmental aid. And, this chapter argues, it also offered a reminder of the importance of Third World governments in shaping the territory of emergency relief. In Biafra, the relationship that NGOs cultivated with the local regime lay at the heart of their claims to legitimacy in the West, while also granting considerable agency to local authorities in setting the agenda of non-governmental aid.

This chapter sets out three claims about the NGO moment. First, it argues for viewing the history of non-governmental aid in terms of moments of acceleration: bursts of activity that refreshed the sector while carrying with them the baggage of what had come before. While the specific dynamics of the period between Biafra and Live Aid were vital in facilitating the sector’s emergence, the moral frameworks that guided those organisations were equally the product of a much longer formative process. Second, this chapter explains how those dynamics helped non-governmental aid to supplant other forms of compassion in this period to become the dominant expression of popular benevolence towards the Third World. The broad remit of those organisations’ activities not only subsumed ‘aid’ under a single umbrella; its ideological underpinnings gave it an unprecedented justification to intervene anywhere there was suffering in the world. Finally, this chapter suggests that the story of the NGO moment provides us with several lessons for the writing of global history. It argues for describing globalisation as a constructed, context-contingent process that can only be understood as the product of the interactions between individual, organisational, national and supra-national actors.

This chapter describes how NGOs adapted the language of scientific rationality – here labelled ‘humanitarian modernity’ – to construct a sustainable model of intervention based on the idea of universal needs. It does so by examining the sector’s response to the conflict that created independent Bangladesh in the early 1970s and the refugee crisis that it created. In South Asia, the need to negotiate access, first to refugees, then to the welfare systems of the new state, created the conditions of what this chapter terms a ‘compassionate space’ that would have long-term consequences for how NGOs were embedded in Third World contexts. This was a unique type of association, which could not be shoehorned into conventional categories of Western domination or neocolonial influence. As this chapter shows, collaboration with Third World authorities became a vital currency in convincing supporters of the NGO sector’s legitimacy, based on its ability to reach those in need, while in the field it paved the way for long-term engagement with postcolonial governments. It also became integral to the concept of protection that emerged in this period: the tropes it employed, the problems it faced and the communities of practice that flourished in that context.

This chapter looks at the functioning, politics and experiences of the extraordinary assemblage of institutions and individuals that ultimately constituted the emergency response to cholera. The process of coordinating a large-scale humanitarian relief effort was riven with competing claims to leadership, authority and legitimacy within and between different government and humanitarian bodies. However, as I argue in this chapter, these heterogeneous positions converged on the ineluctable and morally unimpeachable logic of ‘saving lives’. I call this logic ‘the salvation agenda’. The salvation agenda represented a bottom-line agreement that reconciled competing experiences of and viewpoints about the crisis to offer necessary and vital palliation in the face of cholera. Nevertheless, the exigency of saving lives did not, and could not, address the background socio-economic conditions that led to the epidemic. As such, I suggest that the salvation agenda inadvertently helped to perpetuate and, in some ways, exacerbate existing social hierarchies in Zimbabwe while ceding ‘moral ownership’ of the outbreak to a technical, internationalised, ostensibly ethical and apolitical humanitarian apparatus.