Henry Dunant came from a devout and charitable Calvinist family. After incomplete secondary schooling, he was apprenticed to a Geneva bank. In 1853, he travelled to Algeria to take charge of the Swiss colony of Sétif. He started construction of a wheat mill, but could not obtain the necessary land concession. Dunant approached Napoleon III where he was commanding the Franco-Sardinian troops fighting the Austrians in northern Italy, to obtain the necessary business documents.Thus he was present at the end of the battle of Solferino, in Lombardy.
Returning to Geneva, Dunant wrote A Memory of Solferino, which led to the creation of the International Committee for Relief to the Wounded, the future International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). Dunant was a member and acted as secretary. However Dunant was declared bankrupt in 1867, in debt for almost a million Swiss francs (1860s value). He resigned from his post as secretary of the International Committee as a result of the scandal.
Dunant left for Paris, where he was reduced to sleeping on public benches. However the Empress Eugénie summoned him to the Tuileries Palace to consult him on extending the Geneva Convention to naval warfare. Dunant was made an honorary member of the national Red Cross societies of Austria, Holland, Sweden, Prussia and Spain.
During the Franco-Prussian War of 1870, Dunant visited and comforted the wounded brought to Paris and introduced the wearing of a badge so that the dead could be identified. When peace returned, Dunant travelled to London, where he endeavoured to organize a diplomatic conference on the problem of prisoners of war. Dunant initiated an international congress for the "complete and final abolition of the traffic in Negroes and the slave trade" in London on 1 February 1875.
There followed years of wandering and utter poverty for Dunant. In 1887, he ended up in the Swiss village of Heiden, where he fell ill. In 1895 journalist Georg Baumberger wrote an article about him which was reprinted throughout Europe. Overnight he was once more famous and honoured. In 1901, he received the Nobel Peace Prize.
Henry Dunant died on 30 October 1910. The date of his birth, 8 May, is celebrated as World Red Cross and Red Crescent Day.
