Disease, Medicine and Empire: Perspectives on Western Medicine and the Experience of European Expansion
ISBN: 9781003278245
Platform/Publisher: Taylor & Francis / Routledge
Digital rights: Users: Unlimited; Printing: Unlimited; Download: Unlimited



Originally published in 1988, the essays in this book focus primarily on colonial medicine in the British Empire but comparative material on the experience of France and Germany is also included. The authors show how medicine served as an instrument of empire, as well as constituting an imperializing cultural force in itself, reflecting in different contexts, the objectives of European expansion - whether to conquer, to occupy or to settle. With chapters from a distinguished array of social and medical historians, colonial medicine is examined in its topical, regional and professional diversity. Ranging from tropical to temperate regions, from 18th Century colonial America to 20th Century South Africa, this book is an important contribution to our understanding of the influence of European medicine on imperial history.


Roy MacLeod is Emeritus Professor of History at the University of Sydney. He writes in the social history of science, technology and exploration in Australasia and the Pacific. His early work focused on the history of vaccination and epidemic disease, and he taught imperial and global medical and military history at Sydney for many years. His current work studies the changing dimensions of science, medicine and technology in global geopolitics and cooperation in Space.

Milton Lewis was Honorary Senior Research Fellow in the Menzies Centre for Health Policy, University of Sydney. He has had a long- term interest in how history can contribute to better understanding of health problems and policy. His last three books have focussed on the impact of globalisation on the health of the peoples of the diverse polities, economies, societies and cultures of Asia and the Pacific.

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