35

This case study of the Hanseatic cities, Saxony and Great Britain addresses relationships across state borders through letters, print culture, and philanthropy, and examines the emergence of wartime civil associations designed to mitigate wartime suffering in an early transnational relief effort in the final years of the Napoleonic Wars. This article argues that the Napoleonic Wars mobilized more than soldiers and patriotic support for the war effort; the scale and scope of the conflict also rallied civil society to address noncombatant hardships on the local and international level. In fact, the emergence and actions of local relief associations in the north German Hanseatic cities and Saxony between 1813 and 1816 and their relations with the British Committee for Relieving the Distress in Germany provides the first modern example of transnational humanitarianism in a war context and created a foundation for humanitarian efforts in subsequent wars in the nineteenth and early twentieth century.