Imperial Contagions: Medicine, Hygiene, and Cultures of Planning in Asia Available to Purchase

Over the past twenty years, histories of colonial medicine and public health have proliferated across Asia. Mostly, these historical inquiries have traced the boundaries of the nation to come: they constitute a set of proto-national histories, whether of India, Vietnam, Taiwan, or the Philippines. Even in diverse settings, they tend to display a standard style and a predictable narrative, following the routine trajectory of “development” and “modernization,” notwithstanding a critical appraisal of these trends. Thus we learn about the recurrent racialization of Western medical theories and practices in colonial settings; the shift from maintaining sanitary enclaves for whites to interfering with the customs and habits of the locals, first in the U.S. and French empires, later in the British Empire; and the pattern of resistance or indifference toward imperial public health interventions, followed by the efforts of the decolonizing elite to adjust to them and appropriate them, to make them...