Humanitarian Worldmaking in the Age of Decolonisation: Afterword

Abstract

This article concludes the special issue on humanitarianism in the age of decolonisation. It uses this opportunity to reflect on the rich contribution that the new historiography of humanitarianism has made to our understanding of the world remade through decolonisation. That contribution, it argues, has occurred in three dimensions. The first is conceptual: tracing these encounters allows us to describe the popular imaginary of the Global South, how it was constructed, and its long-term consequences. The second contribution is more tangible: the territory of the Global South was not only re-imagined by NGOs, states, and international donors; it was also re-constructed, often in quite mundane ways. The third contribution is methodological: the methods developed by historians of compassion offer compelling new ways of reading the history of decolonisation and the encounters it precipitated. The article concludes with a reflection on the future of the field, with an emphasis on recovering the voices of those on the receiving end of humanitarian interventions.