Reviewed by: War Against Smallpox: Edward Jenner and the Global Spread of Vaccination by Michael Bennett Niels Brimnes Michael Bennett. War Against Smallpox: Edward Jenner and the Global Spread of Vaccination. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020. xii + 424 pp. Ill. $39.99 (978-0-521-14788-0). Scholars writing global health history today tend to be careful to avoid narratives that are either triumphalist, Eurocentric or both. If Michael Bennett shares these concerns—and I believe he does— he has given himself a significant challenge: writing a much-needed and comprehensive account of the global spread of vaccination against smallpox. This episode in the history of global health obviously invites the employment of both these “vices.” The vaccination-based eradication of smallpox represents, after all, a much-celebrated triumph of medical knowledge, and the practice undeniably began in Gloucestershire before it spread to the wider world. It seems impossible to write about vaccination without reference to at least elements of heroic benevolence and allusions to the blessings of “Western” medical science. The challenge is augmented by Bennett’s decision to end his narrative in 1815, which he understands as the end of the “heroic phase in the history of vaccination” (p. 352). Had he ventured further into the nineteenth century, it would have been easier to emphasize the setbacks and complexities that characterized the nineteenth-century career of vaccination. As it stands, Bennett’s book describes an effort deeply entangled with both the Napoleonic Wars and structures of colonialism. Bennett suggests that benevolent science triumphed over strife and war and often overcame racialized [End Page 269] barriers through a willingness to share the vaccine between bodies of different skin color. The account also contains outright heroic episodes, such as Jose Salvany’s “gruelling journey across the high Andes . . . [s]pitting blood from a raging tubercular infection” (p. 312). While Bennett identifies vaccination campaigns as imperial projects—in Napoleonic Europe as well as in British India—he also warns against making simplistic connections between vaccination and empire. In India, he asserts, its introduction “was driven by the same sorts of impulses, hopes and fears, visions of improvement and humanitarian concern evident in Britain and elsewhere” (p. 245). These elements are complemented by numerous references to failures, as well as widespread hesitancy and opposition toward new prophylaxis from both medical men and the wider population. On balance, Bennett’s account is not triumphalist, but he remains loyal to the notion that the spread of vaccination was “a humanitarian endeavour” (p. 6). The inherent Eurocentrism in the smallpox prevention narrative is countered by a genuine attempt to cover as much of the globe as possible and by insisting on the importance of indigenous and creole agency in India and Latin America. Bennett not only reminds us of the “need to challenge and reverse assumptions of colonial backwardness and dependency” (p. 319), he also points to the extent to which the spread of vaccination depended on the institution of slavery. I do, however, find a reminiscence of Eurocentrism in Bennett’s treatment of variolation. Given that this was predominantly an Asian practice and that it was “more routinely deployed in the Caribbean than in any other parts of the world” (p. 298), it appears unfortunate that Bennett overwhelmingly treats it in it British incarnation(s) as a practice that both rivaled and paved the way for vaccination. While this is a valid point, the global perspective seems to be lost. Bennett’s book is empirically dense, but not an easy read. While it is a gold mine of information on an impressive range of regions throughout the world, the reader looking for the bigger picture is often lost in detail. It tends to become a truism that in any particular region, significant numbers took the vaccine, while it also struggled to find acceptance among certain groups. The final chapter goes some way to lift the perspective toward significant global patterns of similarity and difference, but I would have welcomed more in that direction. War on Smallpox is the kind of book I will definitely order for the library, but rarely ask students to read cover to cover. The bulk of Bennett’s text was...
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Oct 4, 2024
Zainul Abideen Jibril 
Open Access