ABSTRACT
This chapter highlights the early history of humanitarianism and some of its precursors, including charitable imperatives and actions in the major religions and histories that have helped shape today’s humanitarian system. It presents a quick overview of humanitarian developments in the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth century. The chapter deals with some over-arching historical themes still critical to understanding the humanitarian world. The earliest known precursors of humanitarianism stretch back millennia. In essence, much of the international apparatus that makes up the global humanitarian system was born out of the consequences of World War II (WWII) and, in particular, the consequences of the Cold War, which in many ways started during the final phases of WWII and ended with the demise of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s. WWII and its aftermath fundamentally shaped the formal humanitarian community.
