366 THE ADVOCATE
VOL. 78 PART 3 MAY 2020
DUNANT’S ROLE
A number of wars broke out over the years following the first Geneva Convention.
In 1866 the Austro-Prussian War took place. Jean-Henri Dunant—
the Swiss businessman who, as described in Part I, played a central role in
the history leading up to the first Geneva Convention—attended the Prussian
victory celebrations in September 1866 as a guest of Queen Augusta and
was much lionized. Unfortunately, while Dunant was still on his travels, in
the spring of 1867, a personal disaster was erupting in Geneva. Dunant was
a director of the Société de Crédit Genevois, which had fallen into difficulties
as a result of ill-advised loans and purchases, including some stone
quarries in Algeria, which Dunant owned before he sold them to his fellow
directors. The case was dealt with by the Commercial Court, which in October
1867 held that “the director’s actions were grossly beyond the limits
that a vigilant and conscientious board of directors should have permitted”.
The Paris Exposition was scheduled to take place in the summer of 1867
and Dunant was to be the vice-chairman of an international conference of
aid societies to be held during the exposition (the “Paris Conference”). With
the scandal breaking in Geneva, his influential colleague Gustave Moynier
ordered Dunant to resign, and Dunant was ostracized by the respectable citizens
of Geneva. The case ruined Dunant, who slowly slid into the status of
a penniless vagabond, wandering in poverty about the cities of Europe.
Supported by a modest stipend from his family, Dunant ultimately settled,
in 1887, in Heiden in East Switzerland, where he began to write his
memoirs and work in the local hospital. A German journalist discovered
him and broadcast his whereabouts and condition. Various important people
took up his cause with the result that in 1901 he was awarded the very
first Nobel Prize for Peace, which he shared with the pacifist Frédéric Passy.
The 104,000 francs that came with the prize supported him until his death
in 1910.
PARIS CONFERENCE
The Paris Conference agreed on four modifications to the 1864 Geneva Convention,
namely:
• to extend its scope to maritime warfare;
• that belligerents police battle fields at the end of hostilities so as to
protect the wounded from looters and gratuitous injury;
• that all soldiers should wear identity tags, to facilitate the dissemination
of information about who had died and who was wounded
and in captivity; and