Chapter ID: CBB735927645

Making Medical Ideologies: Indentured Labor in Mauritius (2016)

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This chapter investigates how and why sugar estate owners in one Indian Ocean1 context—Mauritius—contributed to the making of a medical ideology2 that regimented the “body” of labor. While existing historiography of the relationship between colonial India and the British Empire in the tropics emphasizes the role of India as a center of sub-imperialism,3 this chapter argues that plantation colonies with their regulative security state apparatus, in collaboration with the Indian colonial state, acted as the source of particular medical ideologies and practices concerning indentured workers. By drawing on the experiences of health administration of indentured immigrant workers in Mauritius, a sugar colony in the Indian Ocean, this chapter highlights how medical ideologies concerning workers’ health and the control of pandemics among workers were contingent on various factors (such as cost-cutting measures, perceptions, and physicality of climates) and were formed diversely either in Mauritius or in medical circles in Calcutta.

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Authors & Contributors
Azevedo, Mario J.
Rouphail, Robert M.
Jonathan R. Walz
Dutta, Manikarnika
Wald, Erica
Riello, Giorgio
Concepts
Cross-cultural interaction; cultural influence
Colonialism
Health
Medicine and culture
Great Britain, colonies
Public health
Time Periods
19th century
20th century, early
20th century
18th century
17th century
Premodern
Places
Indian Ocean
Mauritius
India
East Africa
Great Britain
Levant and Near East
Institutions
East India Company (English)
British Museum
Rockefeller Foundation
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