British Women-volunteers on Balkans in First World War

Abstract

Discovering volunteer movements in war has become especially relevant in nowadays conditions, which makes it important to study not only our own, but also foreign, including historical, experience. The aim of the study is to shed light on the activities of the British voluntary women's medical missions in the Balkans during the First World War, namely on the Serbian and Thessaloniki fronts. The research methodology is based on the principles of historicism, objectivity and systematicity. Among the general scientific methods, the methods of analysis and synthesis were used, and among the special-historical ones – the problem-chronological method. This survey is the first in Ukrainian historical science devoted to the outlined problem.

During the First World War, British doctors and nurses initiated a voluntary movement to help the British and Allied forces. Many of the activists of this movement intended to join the army themselves, but were refused, so they found themselves in volunteer organizations. The largest and most famous of such initiatives is the so-called Scottish Women's Hospitals (SWH). In addition to them, Red Cross units and a number of smaller organizations and groups were active. The activities of the medical missions were directed primarily against the epidemics that broke out in the Balkans during and after the war – typhus, malaria and the Spanish flu. The help of mentioned organizations was positively received by the Serbs, whose forces were catastrophically lacking. Some of the British volunteers died. Many female doctors continued their work in the Balkans even after the war, as they established friendly relations with the local citizens and with public and political figures of Serbia and the future Kingdom of Yugoslavia. The activities of the participants of the volunteer movement continued to be directed against the spread of epidemics, as well as on the organization of canteens, children's shelters, etc., and in general on overcoming the severe consequences of the war.