Medicine and State Rule. Fighting Malaria in Cameroon, East Africa and East Frisia, 1890-1919

• Applicant: Dr. Manuela Bauche
• Subject Area: Modern and Contemporary History
• Term: from 2017 to 2019
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 349093483

Around 1900, malaria attracted considerable attention by European colonial governments and physicians. The disease was considered as a threat for the "white man" and therefore for the European colonial project as a whole. What has been forgotten today: at the time malaria also occurred in large parts of Germany. As a consequence, measures that aimed at fighting the disease were not only tested in German colonies, but also in Germany itself. "Medicine and State Rule" reconstructs attempts to fight malaria in three areas of the German Kaiserreich – in Cameroon, German East Africa and East Frisia. For the populations concerned, the medical measures were mostly unwelcome and new. The book investigates the ways by which physicians and health authorities tried to enforce medical measures against local resistance. Moreover it discusses to what extent approaches differed between colonized and non-colonized areas. "Medicine and State Rule" thus aims at a discussion of the differences and similarities between colonial and non-colonial rule. "Medicine and rule" shows that, among others, travelling, negotiating and "instructing" ("Belehren") were central practices for the enforcement of malaria control (chapters 2 and 3). The medical programs defined their target groups along ideas of civilization, in which ideas of "race" as well as class differences were merged together (chapter 4). Many of these practices and discourses were similar both in colonized and non-colonized areas. The book argues that these similarities can be explained by the analogies in the challenges that health authorities and central government faced in their contact with local populations. The book also points at differences in the medical approaches, however it shows that these differences did not always follow the divide between "colony" and "metropole." As a result, it argues for a detailed look at mechanisms of state rule that transcend the divide between "colony" and "metropole" as well as for a detailed analysis of its local formations.

• DFG Programme: Publication Grants