Henry Dunant – Biography

Henry Dunant – Biography
Jean Henri Dunantʹs 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 Menʹs 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
LʹEsclavage chez les musulmans et aux États‐Unis dʹAmérique [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 Napoleonʹs 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 nationʹs
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 dʹutilité 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 lʹordre 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.