ABSTRACT
Humanitarianism is often conceived as the act of providing the essentials of life to people in need: delivering food, water, shelter, and health care when humans are in urgent danger. Technology is central to this task. This chapter explores the origins of humanitarianism in the middle of the nineteenth century, drawing out how the concern for distant suffering drew on communication technologies, the modernization of economic structures, and changing narrative forms. It focuses on an early humanitarian product known as Extract of Meat, which demonstrates a classically modernist influence that extends to this day. The chapter focuses to look at later changes in modernist ideas, which can be categorised as “high” and “low” forms of modernism. James Scott has described high modernist ideology as an ambitious but doomed attempt to restructure society along rational lines.
