The Social Production of Metropolitan Expertise in Tropical Diseases: The Imperial State, Colonial Service and the Tropical Diseases Research Fund

Abstract

The hegemonic authority of Western science over disease in the tropical world is not a prod uct of its inherent truth value, but rather refers to the underdevelopment of science resources under European rule. As this study will show, the emphasis on the delivery of medical care in the dependent British Empire in the second half of the nineteenth century created conditions for the domestication of tropical disease research in the twentieth cen tury. A large pool of underemployed medical practitioners in Britain enabled the Colonial Office to satisfy the personnel needs of its far-flung empire. Colonial governments, in turn, maximised the labour of imperial doctors as primary care providers through a wide range of administrative tools. This emphasis simultaneously retarded the development of labora tory research into disease in the periphery while creating an opportunity for its metropolitan appropriation. Eventually the Tropical Disease Research Fund was created to promote the understanding of disease in the empire by subsidising laboratory science in Britain.