What happened to Henry Dunant’s ideal of neutral medical assistance as it travelled to geographies of imperial rule and conquest? The Dutch East Indies Red Cross, 1870–1950 targets this question by offering a case study of the Dutch East Indies Red Cross movement (NIRK) in colonial Indonesia. This account is primarily based on published materials, as the archives of the NIRK disappeared in the final days of the Indonesian revolution (1945–49). van Bergen makes the case that the colonial division of the Dutch Red Cross acted as an extension of the military-medical apparatus of the colonial state. His ultimate conclusion is that the movement was ‘a mainstay of Dutch colonialism’ and ‘an indispensable link in the political-military policy of the Netherlands’ during the decolonisation war (pp. 175, 177).