Ethnohistory and the Dead: Cultures of Colonial Epidemiology

Abstract

ABSTRACTWhat were the dead to colonial epidemiologists? Doctors and colonial scientists involved in the response to epidemics of plague in Madagascar in the first half of the twentieth century speculated about the role of Malagasy mortuary ritual in the spread of plague, and sought to bring Malagasy ritual into line with Pasteurian hygienic norms. I examine confrontations over death and the management of the dead in Madagascar, tracing the textured form of epidemiological knowledge that arose from the confrontation between Malagasy cosmology and Pasteurian counter epidemic technique.