The Army of Pasteurians: Militarisation of Hygiene and Hybrid Disease Control Measures in Fernand Visbecq’s 1919 Typhus Mission in French Algeria

Abstract

Summary During mass demobilisation following the armistice of 11 November 1918, colonial troops gradually returned to their cantonments. Algeria hosted a military penal colony under French army rules to which convicts continued to converge. As a result, soldiers and convicts became the disseminators of the typhus epidemic that swept through the armies still stationed on the Western Front, before spreading to North Africa. Based on a study of the Visbecq mission against typhus in the spring and summer of 1919 in Algeria, this article examines how Visbecq’s assignment was part of a wider process of militarisation of hygiene in France as in the Empire. It promoted hybrid measures combining the implementation of new technical processes with conventional isolation measures. In fine, Visbecq’s actions were part of a set of current technopolitics which contributed to pasteurisation of the French colonial empire.