From Spain to Tuyunguan

The integration of a medical team of the International Brigades in China’s Red Cross, 1939-1940

Abstract

This article analyses the reception of an international medical team in the Medical Relief Corps (CAM) of China’s Red Cross (CRC). A team of seventeen doctors and two nurses who participated in the Spanish civil war as volunteers in the International Brigades joined the CAM in Tuyunguan, in the province of Guizhou, between July 1939 and October 1940. This article profits from several primary sources, amongst them, the archive of the CAM, and the memoires of some of these doctors. The article aims to draw general conclusions from a specific case study by using the methodology of global microhistory. The incorporation of a sanitary team from the International Brigades to the CAM was possible thanks to the efforts of several internationalist associations. However, this process was fraught with difficulties, due to individual divergences, institutional constraints, and the global instability during the first year of the Second World War. The article analyses these problems, which hindered the practice of internationalist actions in that context of total war. However, despite these impediments, the CAM ultimately benefited from the experience of that sanitary team to improve its know-how in war medicine.