Abstract
The Société Centrale de Sauvetage des Naufragés (SCSN), established in 1865, was tasked with operating lifeboats and rescuing victims of shipwreck along the French coast. While it was a private humanitarian organization, its creation was largely an initiative of the Napoleonic state. Its first president was an admiral, and it received substantial financial support from Emperor Napoleon III and Empress Eugénie. This article explores the impact of these state connections on the early existence of the SCSN, focusing on the nature of its donations and the political dimensions embedded in them. It highlights the tension between presenting maritime lifesaving as a universal humanitarian cause and the political motivations surrounding the foundation of the SCSN, notably its links with Napoleon III's maritime policies. By examining the donation patterns of the 5,170 initial contributors through quantitative methods, the article sheds light on the complex networks of actors and interests that shaped the organization's early financial support.
Founded in 1865, the Société Centrale de Sauvetage des Naufragés (SCSN) was a charity responsible for rescuing shipwrecked persons on the coasts of France. For parts of its history, it was also active on the coasts of present-day Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia, 1 although not in the rest of the colonial empire. The SCSN as such no longer exists: it merged in 1967 with another French lifeboat society, the Hospitaliers Sauveteurs Bretons, to form the Société Nationale de Sauvetage en Mer (SNSM), which has taken over its activities and archives. With its claim to serving the needs of suffering humanity, the SCSN can be considered a humanitarian organization. While some institutional histories of the SCSN are available, 2 academic research remains limited, 3 although it provides useful information on the context and process of the society's founding, on which this study builds.
The SCSN's foundation was the outcome of a long series of failed attempts, beginning in the 1830s, to create a nationwide coastal lifesaving service on the British model. By 1865, the most recent initiatives had originated from the ministries of the Navy, Finance and Public Works, with the aim of creating a state-run rescue service. When this plan failed, the ministers involved decided to contact the initiator of a previous private effort which had failed a decade earlier – notably the painter of the Navy, Théodore Gudin – to assist the state in establishing such a service. The association's first president, Admiral Rigault de Genouilly, would soon become minister of the Navy, and the society was placed under the patronage of Empress Eugénie. 4 Therefore, while the SCSN was a private organization, it was closely tied to the state, and its foundation was in part a direct result of the maritime policies and patronage of the Napoleonic regime. In his work on citizenship and rescue, Frédéric Caille has described the association as a case of ‘enlightened benevolence, directed by the state’, attributing its success to its structure in local committees – responsible for actual rescue operations – coordinated by a centralized command and funded by ‘a flexible combination of public subsidies and private generosity’. 5 This article examines what such a structure and its proximity to the state meant for a humanitarian cause. I explore this question through an analysis of donations made to the SCSN, since, as I will show, these donations shed light on both the practice of giving and its political significance. More broadly, this article engages with the question of scale in the history of humanitarianism, highlighting the tension between the generality of a humanitarian cause – addressed in principle to all humanity – and the particularity of constellations of power, social networks, and relations to state sovereignty. The central hypothesis is that the model of the individual middle-class donor supporting a humanitarian cause was central to the SCSN's self-representation and to the donor make-up of the SCSN at its founding. At the same time, this humanitarian cause was fundamentally sustained by, and linked to, the imperial and colonial state, which played a role in its establishment through exchanges of funds, prestige, support and legitimacy.
These questions and this hypothesis are also inspired by, and contribute to, wider scholarship. A first central concern in this scholarship is the study of the narrative tropes and discourses advanced by the early proponents of the lifeboat movement. While the constellation of discourses surrounding the founding of the lifeboat movement has been analysed in the scholarship, 6 the focus has largely been on the British case and on the early nineteenth century. Scholars have pointed to a shift in moral culture – most notably the break with the older figure of the powerless spectator, detached from the suffering of the world 7 – as constitutive of the lifeboat movement. In the case of the SCSN, research has touched on the wreck of the Amphitrite and its role in the society's foundation, 8 highlighting how the failure to save and the experience of powerlessness against shipwreck became crucial to its creation. For this article, what matters is the question of whom the appeals for donations were directed at, and with what narrative and discursive strategies. Examining both the donor population and the organization of the donations themselves makes it possible to analyse these strategies and the responses it elicited.
The article also engages with scholarship on the relationship between humanitarianism and the state. The connections between lifesaving at sea and state sovereignty have received attention in the context of the history of empires, showing how humanitarian action could become embroiled in, and serve to justify, imperial and colonial dynamics. 9 This article examines the links between humanitarianism and the colonial project by analysing donations, with particular attention to contributions originating from the colonies. At the level of the donors, it also enters into dialogue with research on the figure of the lifesaving citizen and points out intersections between lifesaving and citizenship. 10 In a context where the SCSN is so closely intertwined with the state, the article considers whether a donation to the society can be read as an expression of citizenship, both in metropolitan France and in the colonial empire. There, donating to the SCSN could be read as an expression of belonging to the French Empire.
The central contribution of this article lies in its focus on the role of donors. 11 The ability to raise money from a range of social groups was vital to the running of such humanitarian institutions, 12 and fundraising strategies have been studied for late nineteenth-century England, framing them as forms of competition within a charity market. 13 This article examines how direct involvement of the state in the SCSN's initial funding efforts shaped donor participation. By concentrating on the donors themselves, it seeks to assess the reception of these fundraising strategies and to explore what donors gained form their contributions beyond their engagement in the humanitarian cause – whether social distinction, a demonstration of citizenship or political advantage. By focusing on the French case, the article also contributes to a broader trend in the literature on humanitarianism that moves beyond British and Protestant contexts to take into account a wider variety of circumstances. 14 To capture these specificities, it examines the SCSN's donors as an interconnected network of actors and interests. 15 Finally, it highlights the tension between the particularity of these networks and the association's attempt to present itself as a universal cause appealing to a supposedly undifferentiated donor, who in reality was overwhelmingly middle-class, French and male.
The sources used for this article are the donor listings from the SCSN's yearbook, the Annales du Sauvetage. 16 The periodical also contained accounts of rescue operations and plans for technical improvements to rescue apparatuses. The listings provide information on donor's identity, location and profession. For 1865, the year examined in this paper, 5170 donors are recorded.
The sources have been used in two ways. First, the article offers a quantitative analysis of the donor population. To this end, the information available for all these donors has been entered into a database and subjected to statistical analysis using the SPSS software. 17 Geographical data on donors’ location were also processed, with cartographic representations produced using the geographical information system software QGIS. The results of this statistical and geographical analysis form the core of the article. The decision to concentrate on the first year of donations was partly practical, as the instability of donation table formats in subsequent years made diachronic analysis difficult. The limitations of this choice should be kept in mind, as it limits the scope of the findings. Yet it also has advantages: focusing on the founding year makes it possible to consider the entirety of the donor population while also analysing the SCSN's initial fundraising strategies.
The archives of the SCSN have only been partially preserved and remain only partly accessible at the headquarters of the SNSM in Paris. It has therefore not been possible to retrieve original documents detailing the collection of donations. Nevertheless, the presentation of information in the listings published in 1866 is in itself highly revealing. Attention is also paid to the format of the donation tables and the way it affects which information is, or is not, transmitted and preserved. Analysing how the formatting and counting of donors and donations produce knowledge – but also blind spots – is part of this inquiry. 18 Following a detailed analysis of the corpus, with particular attention to the types of information requested from donors, the second section of the article examines donations from maritime commerce and insurance and their connection to the state. The third section further investigates the relationship between the SCSN and the state by analysing contributions from state employees, the military, and colonial territories. Finally, the last section turns to donations from coastal communities, highlighting the distinctive role of local solidarities in sustaining this humanitarian cause.
Generosity in mid-nineteenth-century France: characteristics of the corpus
Examining the characteristics of the corpus of 5170 donors is a first necessary step towards understanding the fundraising strategies of the SCSN and the distribution of donors. While, as noted above, information such as name, gender, location and profession is often given, some entries lack these details, and the only information consistently available is the donation amount. The total sum of donations recorded is 253,343 francs.
The first issue of the Annales du Sauvetage introduced the association's administrators and internal regulations. The Annales were intended to document and publicize the activities of the SCSN and were distributed to donors. They thus served simultaneously as a record of activity, a demonstration of transparency in the deployment of funds – important for middle-class donors accustomed to private-sector accounting practices – and a symbolic return gift to donors: the ability to see their names listed in print. This was a common practice among lifeboat associations and can also be observed in the case of the Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI), active in Great Britain and Ireland. 19 In the SCSN's case, however, the comprehensive publication of donor names and payments was relatively short-lived and inconsistently formatted. By 1870, when direct state subsidies represented more than half of the society's budget, only the principal donors were listed, and a global account was provided once a year. This shows an association experimenting with a variety of fundraising strategies in its search for a way to ensure its continued existence. 20
Donors were classified by the SCSN into those making one-time contributions and those pledging annual donations. They were then further distinguished by the size of their gift. In exceptional cases, donors were awarded the title of bienfaiteur (benefactor), a designation that appears to have been associated with the patronage of prominent dignitaries of the Second Empire. Those giving a one-time donation of more than 100 francs, or an annual donation of more than 20 francs, were designated fondateurs (founders). Those giving less than this amount earned the titles donateurs (donors) if they made a one-time donation and souscripteur (subscriber) if they promised a recurring one. These titles, prominently displayed in the listings, provided a way for the SCSN to encourage higher donations by offering social distinction to the individual middle-class donors, who could afford it. Donors also received a diploma. 21 At the same time, the society listed the names of anyone contributing more than 5 francs, though this practice became less systematic in later years. In its first year, then, the SCSN sought to reach different donors ‘markets’, and the changing formats of subsequent years attest to ongoing experimentation to achieve this objective. Figure 1 shows the distribution of these types of donors.
Type of donors: number of donors and donation amounts.
The donateurs and souscripteurs accounted for more than 70 per cent of donors but they contributed only 26 per cent of total funds. In contrast, fondateurs and bienfaiteurs – about 27 per cent of the donors – provided the remaining ∼73 per cent. The bienfaiteurs alone, representing just 0.3% of the donor base (16 individuals or businesses), contributed just over 20% of all donations. At its founding, the SCSN was therefore significantly supported by patterns of patronage. In later years, these patterns would be partly replaced by direct state subsidies, at both national and local levels. 22 In this first year, however, while donations came from state officials, départements, and municipalities, they did not take the form of direct state funding. As the presence of local authorities indicates, the SCSN's donors were not limited to individuals but also included companies and collective groups: associations, ship crews, regiments and other military units, workers from a specific factory, administrators from a particular office, or people from the same village or family (categorized in Figure 2 as ‘other collective donations’). Although individual donations remain the majority, donations from groups or companies tended to be larger.
Individual and collective donations to the Société Centrale de Sauvetage des Naufragés (SCSN).
This underscores the significance of donor groups and local solidarities as additional sources of funding. In the listings, bienfaiteurs – primarily the patrons of the SCSN – are named first, followed by the fondateurs in alphabetical order and then the remaining donors. Contributions of less than 5 francs did not warrant the inclusion of the donor's name. For less affluent donors, giving collectively allowed them to be mentioned in the listings and thus gain some social recognition. Among bienfaiteurs, social hierarchies shaped presentation: the emperor appeared first, followed by a roughly hierarchical order. The other categories (by amount given) followed alphabetical order and no distinction was made between individuals, companies or other groups.
The listings were organized in three columns. The first, labelled ‘MM’ (messieurs), contained male donors of a certain social standing, who appear to have been considered the expected donor base. Women, however, were explicitly authorized by the association's regulations to donate and they do appear in the listings, even though in small numbers – only 2.3% of overall donors. As noted, the listings also included companies and other organizations, showing that the assumed paradigm of the middle-class male donor did not fully align with reality. The second and third columns represented the donation and subscription amounts, respectively.
While this was the general format, some donations were grouped by locality, even as the three-column format was retained, if a person or organization centralized the donations locally. For instance, in Le Havre, the ship-owning company Peulvet, Petitdidier et Cie coordinated donations from 346 contributors, totalling 19,369 francs, or 7.6% of the total. Although the absence of additional archival materials makes the company's role difficult to assess, the listings present them as the organizer of these contributions. Donations from abroad, channelled through French consulates, were likewise listed by location, while donations from colonial territories (excluding Algeria, which was categorized as France) were recorded separately. The shifting structure of these monthly publications reflects the tension between the model of the individual middle-class donor and the persistence of local and collective patterns of giving.
In the following pages, the article explores the various donor groups supporting the SCSN, focusing on their connections to the imperial regime and the state. It begins with middle-class donors and their relationship with the Napoleonic state.
Commerce, maritime insurance, and the state: between mercantile interest and allegiance to the imperial regime
The involvement of the imperial state in the founding of the SCSN directly shaped the sources of donations. Giving to the SCSN meant supporting a cause that was openly backed by the state and could therefore, at least in part, be read as an expression of loyalty to the imperial regime and a means to curry political favour. This is most clearly reflected in the society's patrons. The structure of the donation listings highlights the importance of major donors in funding the SCSN. As previously mentioned, the 16 bienfaiteurs contributed 21 per cent of the total amount raised. They are excluded from subsequent statistics as outliers. Amongst these 16 donors, six alone gave 51,000 francs – 20 per cent of all donations. The following table presents their names alongside the amounts they donated (Table 1).
Patrons of the Société Centrale de Sauvetage des Naufragés (SCSN) in 1865.
These donors were patrons of the SCSN and illustrate the direct involvement of the imperial authorities in the association's funding. Their support continued until the fall of the regime. Unlike the case of the RNLI across the Channel, where the material benefits of royal patronage were not the priority, the monetary support here was substantial. It served both to attract additional donors and to present the sovereign as a philanthropist, 23 while also constituting a significant share of the SCSN's funding. For Napoleon III, this was a way to fashion himself as charitable ruler. It also highlighted his commitment to maritime commerce. This aligns with studies of the political imaginaries of the Second Empire, which emphasize the regime's strategy of combining dynastic legitimacy (reflected in the titles used here) and the rights of the people: the Emperor associated himself with a project presented as supported by the entire nation. 24 The organization of the donor lists reflects this mixed political imaginary, combining the hierarchical arrangement for bienfaiteurs with the more egalitarian alphabetical order for other categories. Bestowing so prominent a symbolic role on the emperor in the context of the humanitarian cause thus reinforced the association of the monarch with the will of the people as a collective totality ordered from the top down. In this way, the donor tables symbolize the regime's political legitimacy. Empress Eugénie was also a major donor – a common feature of imperial charitable enterprises 25 – yet the joint presence of Napoleon III and his wife further underscored the regime's engagement with the SCSN. For an emperor engaged in colonial expansion requiring a fleet and eager to strengthen commercial shipping, this was a particularly resonant cause. 26 As Michèle Battesti has noted, it was also characteristic of Napoleon III's political methods, marked by ‘recourse to private initiative as a substitution for the welfare state’. 27 Other major donations came from companies active in maritime transport or shipbuilding. While the interest of this economic sector in sea rescue might seem obvious – linked to reducing the risk of losing ships and crews – these firms were also closely tied to the imperial regime. The Compagnie des Messageries Impériales, for example, had a monopoly on official postal services, including vital communications between metropolitan France and the colonial empire, and received direct state subsidies for these operations. 28 Arguably, then, the government funded the SCSN indirectly, in this first year. The Compagnie Générale Transatlantique had a similar deal with the imperial state transatlantic postal services. 29 Finally, the Société Nouvelle des Forges et Chantiers de la Méditerranée, a shipbuilding company founded in 1853 at La Seyne-sur-Mer, was established with direct support of Napoleon III. 30 For those companies, donations to the SCSN did not only represent practical benefits but also opportunities to demonstrate loyalty to the regime.
A study of the SCSN's patrons thus illuminates the triangular relationship between the association, maritime commerce and shipbuilding, and the imperial regime. Napoleon III's patronage must be considered as part of the regime's broader maritime policies, notably its promotion of commercial shipping, while also showcasing the government's generosity. This link was strengthened by the presence among major donors of companies with direct ties to the imperial state. Further analysis, however, is needed to trace the political meaning of giving beyond the circle of patrons.
A more detailed examination both confirms and nuances this hypothesis, starting with donations from individuals whose indicated professions were connected to maritime commerce. Contributions from this sector could be expected, given their direct exposure to the risk of shipwreck. Some 38 per cent of donors did not provide any information about their profession. Among the 2629 individual donors (excluding groups and companies) who did, only 13.8% identified as working in maritime commerce or the merchant navy, and their contributions represented just 9.5% of all donations from donors with known professions. While this was the third largest group, after civil servants and military personnel, their financial weight was comparatively modest. Amongst the fondateurs, the proportion was even smaller (3.5%). Major donations from this sector were particularly exceptional, with most individuals contributing only small amounts. A similar pattern emerges for companies: among the 194 that donated, only 10 were identifiable as engaged in commercial shipping and shipbuilding. This suggests that direct commercial interests were not the primary drivers of support for the SCSN and points to the need to consider non-monetary, notably political, factors.
Insurance might also appear a likely sector for donors, particularly maritime insurance, given its direct financial stake in preventing shipwrecks. The prominent role of Lloyd's in the British case strengthens this expectation. 31 However, only 63 individual donors indicated insurance-related professions, without specifying whether they had connections to maritime insurance. To these must be added 31 maritime insurance companies, representing 16 per cent of donating firms. Nevertheless, neither individuals nor companies in this sector reached the level of bienfaiteurs, and their combined contributions amounted to a mere 5846 francs – 2.9% of total donations from 1.8% of donors.
Overall, private interests tied to maritime activities were not the main sources of SCSN funding, apart from a few cases of patronage linked to the imperial state. Other connections to imperial power appear in donations from civil servants and elected officials. These contributions were closely tied to the government's direct intervention. The founding of the SCSN was announced to military and civilian authorities by ministerial circulars of 22 April and 11 May 1865, 32 and officials were encouraged to support the society. Donating thus became in part a political and public act – an expression of loyalty to the regime – but also a reassurance to potential givers that, unlike earlier failed attempts, this initiative enjoyed state backing and was therefore more likely to succeed. In this sense, the regime gave the SCSN a privileged position in the charity landscape.
This strategy appears to have been successful. Civil servants made up 24 per cent of all donors, whose profession is identified, contributing 35 per cent of the total donations from this group, thereby lending support to the hypothesis (Figure 3).
Donors to the Société Centrale de Sauvetage des Naufragés (SCSN) working for the State.
Their donations were concentrated in a few ministries and administrations, as shown in the breakdown in Figure 4. The distribution of donors across categories of public servants and elected officials reflects the involvement of the Ministry of the Navy and the Ministry of the Colonies in fundraising for the SCSN. Civil servants were expected to contribute to the cause endorsed by their employer, echoing patterns of patronage observed in British nobility networks across the Channel. 33 Donations from the Ministry of Commerce, however, were rare (fewer than 10), confirming once again that maritime commercial interests were less central to the SCSN's foundation than the sovereign functions of the state. More than reflecting Napoleon III's commercial policies, the association's founding points to the imperial and colonial ambitions of the regime. The embedding of the SCSN within imperial sovereignty becomes even more evident when examining donations from military personnel and from the colonies.
Type of donor activities directly linked to the State.
Sovereignty, citizenship, empire: donations from the army and from the colonies
A further dimension of this entangled network of donations is the place of military personnel and contributions from the colonies, which highlight the SCSN's links to the imperial and colonial project. Many of the society's initial donors were members of the military, who tended to give slightly larger amounts than other groups. Military donors (army and navy) represented 32 per cent of the total and accounted for 34 per cent of donations. This overrepresentation further reflects the close ties between the SCSN and the sovereign functions of the imperial state. For military personnel, giving could serve both as a demonstration of political loyalty, and as a response to encouragement or pressures from the hierarchy, in a context where admirals ranked among the major donors to the SCSN. Of these donors, 74 per cent come from the navy and 26 per cent from the army. Colonial troops and infantry – those most likely to be transported on naval ships – each accounted for about 50 donors, while the bulk of donations came from naval crews and officers. The prominence of naval contributions corresponds with the central place of admirals and other high-ranking navy officers in the SCSN's leadership. Most donations came from individual donors, especially officers, who contributed as wealthy individuals but also made sure to note their status as navy personnel. Group donations, however, were also significant: 16.5% of military donors – accounting for 47 per cent of the total given by the military – were organized at the level of the regiment, ship, or colonial station. Group giving partly reflects a threshold effect, since donations under 5 francs were recorded anonymously: less wealthy donors could only appear in the listings by pooling their contributions. It also reflects the way collections were organized in these settings and underscores the close connection between the SCSN and the navy and its crews. Military donations thus linked the SCSN to the imperial state not only at the leadership level but also within the broader donor population. Even though naval ships were comparatively safer than commercial ones, at least in times of peace, their crews were overrepresented among donors. 34 Many donations also originated from colonial stations and navy vessels stationed in the colonial empire. Donors often volunteered information about their colonial postings, suggesting that they considered this detail significant. This link is even clearer in the case of donations coming directly from the colonial empire. These donations were identified separately in the listings for two reasons: first, for practical reasons, as colonial donations took longer to reach Paris and were often processed later in the year; second, because their identification carried political weight, portraying the empire as a unified whole and the SCSN as an organizer of generosity across its entirety. Still, donations coming from the colonies are presented separately, the SCSN thus retaining its character of a primarily national organization. Plans to establish rescue stations in the colonies were made, though apparently never realized. 35 The distribution of donors and donations from both the colonial empire and abroad (via French consulates) is shown in Figure 5. The 16 most generous bienfaiteurs are excluded from the calculations.
Repartition of donors between France, other countries and the colonial empire.
While most donations and donors came from metropolitan France, contributions from the colonies were still significant – especially considering that no lifeboat stations operated along colonial coasts. Algeria is included with metropolitan France here, as its donations were not recorded separately in the sources, owing to its status as three French departments since 1848. Notably, one of the first SCSN stations was located on the Algerian coast. Further research into this station could shed valuable light on the relationship between maritime rescue and empire, offering a promising avenue for future study. This article suggests that the strong presence of donations from the colonial empire reflects donors’ desire to affirm their sense of belonging to the metropole.
Caille's work on the link between citizenship and the figure of the rescuer
36
– emphasising the role of individual heroism in the republican imaginary of citizenship – applies to a slightly later period and a different political context. Yet the Annales’ presentation of rescuers’ bravery and the appeals for donations partly correspond to this model, even though the SCSN's sources of legitimacy were more varied. Colonial donors, in particular, may have responded to the SCSN's self-representation as result of the action of French citizens. The SCSN framed its appeal in the first issue of the Annales in the following terms: Her Majesty the Empress, whose name is associated with all the great conceptions of charity, has deigned to grant [the SCSN] her high protection. On the coast, our brave mariners are ready to dedicate themselves to the noble but perilous trade of rescuer, and the Société has endeavoured to provide them with the equipment they are lacking. It is therefore in their name that [the SCSN] addresses a call to the country, hoping that everyone, rich or poor, living on the coast, in the cities or in the countryside will want to, by giving, participate in this work of salvation.
37
The passage assigns several sources of legitimacy to the SCSN's mission: the Empress, linking the society from the outset with monarchical and imperial sovereignty; the recognition of mariners’ heroism if supplied with equipment; and the religiously inflected notion of rescue as a ‘work of salvation’ (‘oeuvre de salut’) on behalf of the entire nation. Later in the same issue, more sources of legitimation are added: The lifesaving equipment […] does not protect property, and most often assists people from outside the town, or even the country in which it is established […] No man, no matter how far from the sea he may live, can swear that he will not someday bless the boat that will, through the storm, come to snatch him or one of his family members away from a horrible death. The establishment of means of rescue is therefore primarily a charitable cause, to which the maritime centres themselves, then the cities inland and even the countryside, in one word the whole country, must participate in some proportion. Each person is called to participate in it precisely because that organization does not interest anyone in particular; because it cannot be the source of any industry, and finally because it is the most needed where there are the least resources to create it.
38
Here again, different motivations are mobilized: self-interest is acknowledged but immediately rejected, while rescue is framed as a ‘charitable cause’ that should engage the entire nation. The appeal thus constructs a sense of community among donors, presenting the SCSN as part of the formation of an ‘imagined community’ in Benedict Anderson's sense. 39 Colonial donors, by contributing, positioned themselves within this national whole. Distance from the sea and the place of rescue was not to be considered an obstacle to participation, since the cause was presented as inherently general. This strategy of appealing to varied sources of legitimacy while foregrounding the national dimension of the cause parallels the rhetoric of other lifeboat associations, notably William Hillary's appeal to the British public half a century earlier, which led to the creation of the RNLI. 40 In this context, donating to the SCSN can be read both as an act of adhesion to the imperial regime and as a form of participation in the imagined community of the nation – an interpretation that also encompasses contributions from the colonial empire. A closer look at the professions of colonial donors lends further weight to this hypothesis. Figure 6 presents the number of donors and donation amount by professions among individual colonial donors.
Professions of donors from the colonies.
Once again, the majority of colonial donors and donations came from professions directly linked to the imperial state, though civilian maritime activities were also represented. Most donors were sailors, naval crews, military personnel, or members of the colonial administration. Donations from the colonies thus confirmed the strong connection between and those donations appear as a political act.
A small minority of colonial donors, however, came from the colonized population. Their professions are particularly revealing for understanding the relationship between the SCSN, state sovereignty, and the imagined national community. Though there are too few cases (17 in total) for statistically significant conclusions, the small number makes it possible to examine individual cases in detail. Table 2 presents the available information on these 17 donors.
Data on colonized donors of the Société Centrale de Sauvetage des Naufragés (SCSN).
These donors were present across the French colonial Empire, with Cochinchina, India and Senegal as the main locations. In terms of professions, aside from the case of the opium farmers, who probably required good relations with the local colonial administration, the other donors whose professions are known were either engaged in maritime commerce, including some shipbuilders, or directly connected with the colonial administration, particularly through the legal system. The case of Pomaré IV is noteworthy: as a monarch her contribution may be understood as a form of diplomatic gift. Overall, the evidence suggests that donations from colonized individuals were consistent with the broader findings of this article on the close ties between the SCSN and the colonial state. The donors and the ways in which they presented themselves reveal an SCSN that was, from its very inception, intrinsically linked to Napoleon III's imperial project – not only in its initial impulse and direction but also in its sources of funding. For these donors, as for others, giving to the SCSN is at least in part a way of positioning themselves vis-à-vis the imperial state and, potentially, of seeking political favour. The regime's presentation of such donations as politically meaningful, in turn, shaped the kinds of contributions the SCSN received in practice.
Solidarity, humanitarianism and distance: donations from coastal communities
The donations examined so far have highlighted the SCSN's ties to the imperial state. They sketched the portrait of a body of donors from metropolitan France and the colonial empire contributing to a cause framed on a national scale and devoted to rescuing strangers. These donors were also supporting a cause backed by the imperial regime, giving their contribution a political dimension: the scale of donation was that of an imagined community at a distance. Yet the corpus also records donations – particularly, though not exclusively, small ones – that point to patterns of local solidarity, with donors in direct social and geographical proximity to lifeboat crews. This does not mean that those rescued could not be strangers – they often were, as the surviving station records show. 41 Still, the dimension of local solidarity further complicates the entanglement of social networks and representations that underpinned the humanitarian cause and merits specific attention. Many of these communities were also places where smaller-scale lifeboat stations and rescue efforts had pre-existed. Their donations added another layer of complexity to what was an otherwise largely top-down political initiative. As previously noted, the majority of donations came from metropolitan France. Examining their exact locations in more detail makes it possible to classify contributions by distance from the sea. This distribution is shown in Figure 7.
Donations in metropolitain France by distance to the sea
Outside Paris, most donations from metropolitan France came from coastal areas, with 1018 donors in this category. At the same time, there were also donors from inland regions, suggesting that the SCSN already had national reach at its founding. Still, the coastal concentration is notable: even in an institution promoting a universal cause intended for all citizens, the connection to the sea remained strong. In these coastal communities, 67 per cent of donors (accounting for 37 per cent of the total) worked in maritime-related occupations, reinforcing their proximity to lifeboat crews. Yet this link was not prominently emphasized by the SCSN itself. These coastal communities were not the main audience for the association's appeals, which focused instead on the national imaginary and on political and economic elites. The presence of coastal donations thus nuances the main argument of this article: while the SCSN presented itself as linked to the state, and giving to it could be interpreted as an expression of citizenship, social distinction, or a way to obtain political favour, other patterns of local solidarity complicate the picture.
This importance of donations from people in direct geographical and social proximity to lifeboat crews is reinforced by the role of anonymous and collective contributions gathered at collection points or through donations of under five francs. Because of the limited information available about them, such donations partly escape statistical analysis. They are visible in objects such as donation boxes, which the SCSN used, but they are only rarely mentioned in the listings of the Annales. These patterns of local giving do not contradict the conceptualization of humanitarianism as ‘suffering at a distance’, 42 especially if ‘distance’ is not understood strictly in spatial terms but also as a metaphor. At the same time, they underline the importance of direct proximity to the lifeboat crew themselves in donation patterns. Although often not the primary target of the SCSN's appeals and partly rendered invisible by the sources themselves, these donors also contributed to the association's finances. Their presence reflects a less direct result of the imperial regime's political activities, even if it did not contradict its aims. They also point to a grassroots dimension of humanitarian giving – similarly observed and actively encouraged, in the case of the RNLI 43 – and to a more popular interaction between giving and citizenship. 44
Conclusion
The establishment of the SCSN was intrinsically tied to the imperial state and the political regime of the Second French Empire. By so closely associating itself with the organization, the regime pursued elements of its maritime and colonial policy while at the same time shifting responsibility to private initiative. As patron of the SCSN, it presented itself as acting for the good of the broader population and of humanity. The decision to leave the SCSN to private hands while nevertheless contributing substantially to its finances and promoting its existence also had an impact on the society itself. The appeals for funds in the Annales du Sauvetage drew simultaneously on the patronage of the imperial family and on references to a broader humanitarian cause.
An examination of the SCSN's donors reveals the effects of this policy. While the society presented itself as a humanitarian organization supported by individual male middle-class donors contributing to a cause that served both humanity and the French nation and empire, its donation patterns point to a more nuanced reality. Middle-class male donors did form the majority, and the donation table allowed them to display their social distinction through the act of giving. Yet the structure of these tables also produces a bias: since small donations were not recorded individually, the system privileged wealthier donors by rendering smaller contributions invisible. Those donors, who were listed individually, appear closely connected to state interests, and their professions highlight the importance of imperial patronage and links to the regime. Giving to the SCSN thus appears partly as a political act and a means to securing favour. Supporting an association backed by the state also reassured donors and gave the SCSN an advantage in the charity landscape. The visible support of the state functioned as a fundraising strategy, and the patterns of giving underline the role of admirals, ministers, and local notables in attracting funds.
The significant number of donations from the military – particularly from the colonial empire – alongside the relatively limited contributions from maritime commerce point to the role of national and imperial imagined communities in the constitution of this humanitarian cause. At the same time, attention to donations from coastal communities shows the importance of local solidarities in sustaining the same cause.
The donation market was therefore organized as a complex network of values. This network, however, was very much hierarchized. It was dominated by values related to nation, state, empire, and sovereign authority and centred on a normative male bourgeois subject. In contrast, it was not dominated by values of financial profit connected to shipping, salvage, and insurance. Even values emanating from a community bond to seafarers appeared to play a more significant role than outright economic interests, in eliciting donations.
This case study, by showing the entangled networks and multiple scales of actions of a humanitarian organization, contributes to the broader understanding of fundraising strategies in the humanitarian sector and interactions with state sovereignty. A similar attention to donors and the effects of fundraising strategies could be applied fruitfully to other contexts.
Footnotes
Acknowledgments
I would like to thank Ionela Roharik for her help with the database, Jean-Patrick Marcq from the SNSM archives in Paris for the access to the archives, as well as my colleagues Lukas Schemper and Henning Trüper for their corrections and suggestions.
Data availability statement
The dataset for this article is available at 10.5281/zenodo.17105457.
Ethical approval and informed consent statements
This article does not contain any studies with human or animal participants and informed consent is not required.
Funding
The author disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This project has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grand agreement N°863393, AISLES, 2020-2025.
