Jean Henri Dunant´s life (May 8, 1828-October 30, 1910) is a study
in contrasts. He was born into a wealthy home but died in a
hospice; in middle age he juxtaposed great fame with total
obscurity, and success in business with bankruptcy; in old age he
was virtually exiled from the Genevan society of which he had once
been an ornament and died in a lonely room, leaving a bitter
testament. His passionate humanitarianism was the one constant in
his life, and the Red Cross his living monument. The Geneva
household into which Henri Dunant was born was religious,
humanitarian, and civic-minded. In the first part of his life
Dunant engaged quite seriously in religious activities and for a
while in full-time work as a representative of the Young Men´s
Christian Association, traveling in France, Belgium, and Holland.
When he was twenty-six, Dunant entered the business world as a
representative of the Compagnie genevoise des Colonies de Sétif in
North Africa and Sicily. In 1858 he published his first book,
Notice sur la Régence de Tunis [An Account of the Regency in
Tunis], made up for the most part of travel observations but
containing a remarkable chapter, a long one, which he published
separately in 1863, entitled L´Esclavage chez les musulmans et aux
États-Unis d´Amérique [Slavery among the Mohammedans and in the
United States of America]. Having served his commercial
apprenticeship, Dunant devised a daring financial scheme, making
himself president of the Financial and Industrial Company of
Mons-Gémila Mills in Algeria (eventually capitalized at 100,000,000
francs) to exploit a large tract of land. Needing water rights, he
resolved to take his plea directly to Emperor Napoleon III.
Undeterred by the fact that Napoleon was in the field directing the
French armies who, with the Italians, were striving to drive the
Austrians out of Italy, Dunant made his way to Napoleon´s
headquarters near the northern Italian town of Solferino. He
arrived there in time to witness, and to participate in the
aftermath of, one of the bloodiest battles of the nineteenth
century. His awareness and conscience honed, he published in 1862 a
small book Un Souvenir de Solférino [A Memory of Solferino],
destined to make him famous. A Memory has three themes. The first
is that of the battle itself. The second depicts the battlefield
after the fighting - its «chaotic disorder, despair unspeakable,
and misery of every kind» - and tells the main story of the effort
to care for the wounded in the small town of Castiglione. The third
theme is a plan. The nations of the world should form relief
societies to provide care for the wartime wounded; each society
should be sponsored by a governing board composed of the nation´s
leading figures, should appeal to everyone to volunteer, should
train these volunteers to aid the wounded on the battlefield and to
care for them later until they recovered. On February 7, 1863, the
Société genevoise d´utilité publique [Geneva Society for Public
Welfare] appointed a committee of five, including Dunant, to
examine the possibility of putting this plan into action. With its
call for an international conference, this committee, in effect,
founded the Red Cross. Dunant, pouring his money and time into the
cause, traveled over most of Europe obtaining promises from
governments to send representatives. The conference, held from
October 26 to 29, with thirty-nine delegates from sixteen nations
attending, approved some sweeping resolutions and laid the
groundwork for a gathering of plenipotentiaries. On August 22,
1864, twelve nations signed an international treaty, commonly known
as the Geneva Convention, agreeing to guarantee neutrality to
sanitary personnel, to expedite supplies for their use, and to
adopt a special identifying emblem - in virtually all instances a
red cross on a field of white1. Dunant had transformed a personal
idea into an international treaty. But his work was not finished.
He approved the efforts to extend the scope of the Red Cross to
cover naval personnel in wartime, and in peacetime to alleviate the
hardships caused by natural catastrophes. In 1866 he wrote a
brochure called the Universal and International Society for the
Revival of the Orient, setting forth a plan to create a neutral
colony in Palestine. In 1867 he produced a plan for a publishing
venture called an «International and Universal Library» to be
composed of the great masterpieces of all time. In 1872 he convened
a conference to establish the «Alliance universelle de l´ordre et
de la civilisation» which was to consider the need for an
international convention on the handling of prisoners of war and
for the settling of international disputes by courts of arbitration
rather than by war. The eight years from 1867 to 1875 proved to be
a sharp contrast to those of 1859-1867. In 1867 Dunant was
bankrupt. The water rights had not been granted, the company had
been mismanaged in North Africa, and Dunant himself had been
concentrating his attention on humanitarian pursuits, not on
business ventures. After the disaster, which involved many of his
Geneva friends, Dunant was no longer welcome in Genevan society.
Within a few years he was literally living at the level of the
beggar. There were times, he says2, when he dined on a crust of
bread, blackened his coat with ink, whitened his collar with chalk,
slept out of doors. For the next twenty years, from 1875 to 1895,
Dunant disappeared into solitude. After brief stays in various
places, he settled down in Heiden, a small Swiss village. Here a
village teacher named Wilhelm Sonderegger found him in 1890 and
informed the world that Dunant was alive, but the world took little
note. Because he was ill, Dunant was moved in 1892 to the hospice
at Heiden. And here, in Room 12, he spent the remaining eighteen
years of his life. Not, however, as an unknown. After 1895 when he
was once more rediscovered, the world heaped prizes and awards upon
him. Despite the prizes and the honors, Dunant did not move from
Room 12. Upon his death, there was no funeral ceremony, no
mourners, no cortege. In accordance with his wishes he was carried
to his grave «like a dog»3. Dunant had not spent any of the prize
monies he had received. He bequeathed some legacies to those who
had cared for him in the village hospital, endowed a «free bed»
that was to be available to the sick among the poorest people in
the village, and left the remainder to philanthropic enterprises in
Norway and Switzerland.
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