ESHS/HSS Annual Meeting

Shifting Empires, Changing Landscapes, and a “Dragnet” Collection of Malaysian Viral Worlds, 1940s to 1970s

• In Event: Collection Stories and Indo-Pacific worlds 1

English Abstract

From Batu Caves Virus to Keterah Virus, virological databases are littered with viruses named after Malaysian places and plants. Some are viruses of only academic interest; but others spark contemporary anxiety — like with Tembusu Virus spreading since the 2010s amongst Chinese ducks. Most of these viruses were “collected” as part of a major trans-imperial postwar effort to scan, sample, and categorize the viral ecologies of Malaysian landscapes, aiming to understand viruses in their natural cycles amidst nests, foliage, and canopies and not only when they appeared locally as human pathogens. My talk explores this “dragnet” collection of the Malaysian virosphere which lasted from roughly 1947 to the 1970s. I explicate the effort within the shift from British colonial to American military disease-ecology in Southeast Asia, making Malaysia a hunting-ground for viruses which might explain regional and hemispheric disease ecologies of concern to American imperial power across the Indo-Pacific. But if explicable within a calculus of geopolitical strategizing, I also explore the virological dragnet as casting brief but tantalizing light on Malaysian ecosystems, latent emergence possibilities, and viruses beyond disease.

Author

• Jack Greatrex, Singapore Management University