Event Details

The Centre for War and Diplomacy and the FASS Health Hub co-host this seminar.

CWD-FASS Health Hub Research Seminar: Dr Michael Brown (Lancaster), 'Bloodless surgery and surgical wars: medicine, empire, and European modernity, 1870-1902'

Tuesday 21 November, 17.15-18.45, Lancaster University Campus, Bowland Main B104

This paper uses the language of bloodshed to analyse the intertwined discourses of medico-military-imperial modernity at the turn of the twentieth century. At a time when operative surgery was being rendered increasingly bloodless, many contemporaries also conceived of war, and especially colonial conflict, in terms of its ‘bloodless’ and even ‘humanitarian’ qualities. Such discourses embodied a grotesque irony, in that the ‘bloodless’ nature of such European military endeavours was frequently predicated on a military technological advantage that gave rise to an inversely proportionate shedding of the blood of their colonial opponents. Foremost amongst those to who sought to justify and sanitise such acts of colonial violence were the very same medical practitioners, including the inventor of bloodless surgery, Friedrich von Esmarch, who were seeking to ‘humanise’ the conduct of European war through organisations such as the International Red Cross. This paper will therefore explore the complexities and contradictions medical humanitarianism, empire, and race at the dawn of the First World War.

Dr Michael Brown is Lecturer in Modern British History at Lancaster University.

Accessibility

This seminar is located on Floor B of Bowland Main. This is the first floor, where the Department of History is housed. Full information on accessibility for Bowland Main can be found on the AccessAble website.