In the humanitarian field those we rather mockingly call "French doctors" seem always to be in the vanguard, the first to arrive in any critical situation. If they hold such a position in modern humanitarian intervention it is because Medecins Sans Frontieres, and its 'little sister' Medecins du Monde, have drawn on the experiences of other organizations gradually to develop their particular brand of intervention; France was after all the last to join the group of so-called "founder democracies" in the humanitarian field.
This detailed study of the comparative history of humanitarianism...