The conference discusses the intricate connections of maritime rescue, as an instance of humanitarian morality, with the symbolism and exercise of sovereignty. These connections are of a certain period. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, notions of bringing relief to distant suffering strangers became a key to the understanding of collective, societal agency. The sovereign state was increasingly influenced by—and was also expected to appropriate— this type of agency. The interaction of state and society in organized maritime lifesaving can be traced in the history of moral culture as well as in that of law. Lifesaving—both in the humane society format of saving people from drowning and in the lifeboat society format of volunteerism and increasingly technological solutions—serves as a privileged site of this interaction. Yet, the resulting arrangements of legal and moral orders are unstable. The present-day situation demonstrates how lifesaving is becoming politically contentious in novel ways.

Owing to the divergence of the legal traditions informing it, the interplay of societal and state-led forms of rescue has a complicated history that requires a long view and a global perspective, as other systems of laws, rules, and practices need to be considered. When exploring these complexities, it becomes clear that the understanding of rescue is inseparable from adjacent issues such as salvage or the territoriality of the sea, or, in more recent times, of the sea itself becoming an object of moral and legal human agency. The conference thus seeks to facilitate a discussion on the intersections between the diverse legal histories of sovereignty and the evolution of moral norms, particularly in the context of maritime humanitarianism and maritime law.

Fig. above: The floating of the lifeboat, Riva. Photograph by Abdullah Frères, Constantinople [between 1880 and 1893]. Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, Abdul Hamid II Collection, [reproduction number, LC-USZ62-82127].