ESHS/HSS Annual Meeting

Pilgrims, Pathogens, and the Port: Environmental Crisis and Disease Control in Colonial Voyages in Colonial India (1850-1940)

• In Event: Science and Empire in the Anthropocene: Towards an Environmental Shift 4 - Imperial Medicine Contested

English Abstract

The paper argues that diseases were controlled in colonial ports and on ships that arrived in these ports, shedding light on the conditions for establishing a disease-free zone within the ports during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This paper highlights the plight of pilgrims and travelers travelling to other countries during the late nineteenth and twentieth century. The paper will also investigate unhygienic sanitary conditions existing in the colonial ports that affected the health of laborers and accidents that happened from oil spillage in colonial ports leading to environmental pollution. In the existing field of scholarship, the works of David Arnold, Projit Mukherji, Partho Dutta, Pratik Chakrabarti, and Erica Wald have argued the role of modern medicine in colonial India. However, these works have not focused on the details of diseases affecting the environment of colonial ports during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Instead, this paper suggests the importance of disease control and its environment in ports.

Author

• Sutanwi Chatterjee, University of Houston