A Tool of Empire

medicine, and its handmaiden, public health, served as 'tools of Empire,' of both symbolic and practical consequence, and as images representative of European commitments, variously to conquer, occupy or settle.... served as an instrument of empire, as well as an imperializing cultural force itself.... ' So argued Roy MacLeod 1988. William Bynum stated tropical itself grew from mid-180Os on because of the intensification of rivalries and because of its increased capacity ... to aid Christianizing, civilizing, commercialising, or simply dominating new territories had come under European rule. could tame diseases rampant tropics, had undoubted political force as a of empire... .2 There those late 180Os who felt that itself justified imperialism.3 David Arnold asserted 1988 medicine was a part of ideology ... of empire and imperial powers beginning [in late 1800s] to use as a way of winning support from a newly subject population, of balancing out coercive features of colonial rule, and of establishing a wider hegemony than could be derived from conquest alone.4 The position colonial medicine, especially its tropical component, was a of European imperialism-both its establishment and its justification-is an interpretation common among scholars, especially those interested non-Western cultures.5 It has arisen, part, from an effort by many scholars from 195Os on to reevaluate imperialism from perspective of colonial peoples and their cultures, and I have no quarrel with those who argue such revisionism.6 In such reevaluations of imperialism and role of colonial and public health therein, however, is essential to maintain objectivity and avoid judgments based upon current values often held by those educated Western liberal tradition. It is also essential to compare effects of imperialism and colonial upon indigenes living colonies with effects of European government and upon citizens of metropoles. Gwyn Prins, for example, asserts in old-fashioned disease environment of colonial Africa, Hygaea ... was for many Africans seen as colonialist's whore because district commissioner's public health orders were among most intrusive rural Africa.7 With respect to Feierman's stress upon reckoning social costs of production, Prins states it will complete destruction of image of allopathic medicine's political detachment and tighten linkage of occupational epidemiology to study of political economy of colonialism.8 Accepting colonial was an integral part of typical colonial administration and can thus be described as a tool of imperialism, what characteristics of this tool, and what effects did actually have on health and welfare of indigenes? If there social costs of production for colonial peoples resulting from development projects (e.g., dams bringing an increase schistosomiasis and highways and railroads making spread of disease easier), must one charge colonial officials who implemented these projects with indifference to indigenes' welfare? Yet indifference and callousness have been ascribed to these officials, though they lacked knowledge scholars of late 190Os have about disease transmission and importance of good nutrition for maintenance of health.9 Feierman leans toward such imputation of guilt when he writes the cost of making working conditions healthy, cost of feeding workers and their families, of maintaining retired workers, and of either controlling or suffering environmental effects of production process are among social costs of production.10 While not explicitly asserting these social costs should have been anticipated and taken into account by colonial officials of late 180Os and early 190Os, he notes the potential African beneficiaries of improved health care had little influence colonial mother-country

Ancient history · Archaeology · Colonialism · Empire · Political science · African history and culture studies · Caribbean history, culture, and politics · History

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