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The International Committee of the Red Cross has instituted a number of changes that seem to transform this old and widely respected organization. These changes involve an expanded role, a fuller r...

The early years of the Review, then called the Bulletin International des Sociétés de la Croix-Rouge, provide numerous insights into the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), which edited the journal. Since the ICRC was very small in those days and without support staff, one learns a great deal, especially about Gustave Moynier, who led the organization and carried out most of the editing duties at the Bulletin. The reader can trace the role of religious and other motivations, attitudes toward colonialism, the evolving nature of the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement and the ICRC's place therein, and complex relations with States. This early era, as richly recorded in the journal, stimulates a number of questions about further research into ICRC and Red Cross history.

This article examines the role of the Red Cross network in the inter-war years of 1919 to 1939 in Europe and the Middle East, as that network responded to civilian distress, particularly in the form of refugees and internally displaced persons. The article suggests that while the founding Red Cross agency, the International Committee of the Red Cross, has become known especially for its prisoner visits in war and other situations of violence, its protective efforts for civilians in the inter-war years has been important but largely unrecognized. ICRC efforts laid the foundation for expanded law and diplomacy for refugees and IDPs in the UN era. Protection of refugees is usually seen as part of modern human rights affairs. To be sure, one cannot comprehend assistance to civilians after the Great War without attention to a wide variety of actors, including the League of Nations, American Red Cross, Save the Children, etc. But, as the article argues (and documents), the ICRC was central to developments, utilizing its reputation and diplomatic contacts to expand the first organized international response to civilian distress on a large scale. This was especially evident in Eastern Europe and the declining Ottoman Empire, where Russian and Armenian civilians were the main beneficiaries of much activity. The author utilizes a number of primary sources, some in French, to develop the article.

The Endtimes of Human Rights by Stephen Hopgood. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2013. 255 pp. $19.95 paperback.The Last Utopia: Human Rights in History by Samuel Moyn. Cambridge, MA: Belkna...