Epidemic Encounters, Communities, and Practices in the Colonial World

Poonam Bala is visiting scholar at Cleveland State University and professor extraordinarius at the University of South Africa.Russel Viljoen is professor of history at the University of South Africa

Bala and Viljoen have edited and contributed to a collection of well-chosen essays analyzing the impact of contagious disease on colonial societies…. three threads applicable to European imperialism at large emerge. First, the epidemics that occurred were the products of European agency. Contagious diseases appeared in the regions marked by European trade, settlement, and the requisition of labor. Second, the epidemics aggravated existing divisions in colonial societies. The common experience of death and disruption did not bring settlers and Indigenes together, but rather fostered suspicion and contention. In the examples presented, both the colonizers and Indigenous peoples invoked their own healers and remedies, while the European administrators stood aloof as they imposed quarantine and sanitation measures. Third, the epidemics allowed Europeans to regard the bodies of the Indigenes as reservoirs of contagion, a view that facilitated the construction of hierarchical and parallel colonial societies. Taken together, the essays illustrate a needed focus on the historical role played by contagious diseases in the progress and manifestations of European imperialism. Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates. Graduate students and faculty.

• Chapter 1 Quarantine, Epidemic and Health: Framing Indigenous Engagements and Resistance in Colonial IndiaPoonam BalaChapter 2 The Uncouth Woes: The Prevalence of Venereal Disease in the British or European Troops in India c 1864-1918Apalak DasChapter 3 Bubonic Plague and State Control in Zanzibar c.1897 1905 Amina Ameir IssaChapter 4 Cape of Contagion: Cape Town, Contagion and the Curse of Smallpox c.1713, 1755 and 1767Russel S.ViljoenChapter 5 Measles: The Undercover KillerElizabeth van HeyningenChapter 6 Slave Traders, Merchants, Explorers and Academicians: The Historiography of Scientific Travel from the Seventeenth to Nineteenth CenturiesMatthew E. FrancoChapter 7 The Continuing Search for Green Gold: Quest for Medical Plants in Colonial PeriodSohini DasChapter 8 Disease and Dependency in Kweneng Botswana, c.1880-1930Jeff RamsayChapter 9 Colonialism, Epidemics and the Indian Experience c.1817-1920Saurav Kumar RaiChapter 10 Colonisation, Disease and Displacement in Aust