The Ottoman Red Crescent Society began its evolution when a delegate from the “Society for Aiding Wounded and Ailing Ottoman Soldiers” based in Istanbul signed the first Geneva Convention on behalf of the Ottoman Empire in 1865. The American Red Cross Association joined the Geneva Convention in 1882. Both had origins in the civic voluntarism that arose from conflicts of the mid-19th century. By the 1890s, both began to develop humanitarian assistance missions in addition to their original battlefield roles. This humanitarian dimension was emphasized by Clara Barton. Barton, founder of the American Red Cross, built on her experiences caring for wounded soldiers in the American Civil War. As one of her first humanitarian missions, she reached out to Ottoman subjects, particular Armenians, suffering at the hands of Sultan Abdülhamit II. In this project, Barton relied on the core Red Cross principle of neutrality: non-partisan aid to all in need. The Ottoman government at first was very wary of her. With its growing awareness of the impact of Western press reports on such interventions though, it finally permitted her to proceed. Barton thus in 1896 staged a humanitarian intervention in certain areas of Anatolia, the point of which was not actually to get aid to all who needed it (an unachievable goal anyway). It was more to show how this could be done without alienating local authorities—an alternative model from previous Western aid projects with overtly sectarian agendas. While the long-term effects of her mission were not so substantive in material terms, it was “performative” by showing Ottoman and American audiences how non-partisan aid systems might be made effective. After initially rebuffing her, the Ottomans carried out their own “performative” dimension of this encounter: awarding her the most prestigious official medal ever given to a woman in the Ottoman Empire up to that time. Parallel processes of change on both sides spurred by this episode reflected the increasing acceptance of Red Cross/Red Crescent neutrality. Although severely tested in the next few decades, this concept led finally to the establishment of the American Red Cross and the Ottoman Red Crescent as international partners, despite both organizations’ complex and problematical relationships with their respective governments, societies, and each other. Sources for this study will include contemporary press reports, as well as official records of Barton’s mission.