Public Health The Native Medical Service And The Colonial Administration In French West Africa 1900 1944

From 1900 to 1944, public health was a pillar of the French colonial project in French West Africa. African medical workers became the backbone of the Native Medical Service, which sought to "grow the race" (faire du noir) and popularize French cultural ideals while improving the general health of the African population and combating epidemic diseases. Through successive yellow fever and plague epidemics, the Medical Service honed a set of health measures that it utilized in epidemic outbreaks. These health measures remained largely unchanged throughout the period. The political environment and the reactions of African residents, especially residents of the Four Communes, to these anti-epidemic measures did change though. Intermittent popular resistance to health measures, along with persistent personnel shortages, budget constraints, the sparsely settled population, and the vast land area of West Africa conspired to make the goals of the Native Medical Service difficult to achieve. An examination of the internal profile (personnel numbers, job descriptions, evaluations, organization and organizational changes, and policies) of the Native Medical Service from 1900 - 1944 demonstrates some of the aspects of how the ideology of French colonialism was at odds with itself and with colonial realities. The Native Medical Service was an arm of the colonial government in areas where it was weak, such as spreading French civilization and appreciation for French culture. Despite being used to compensate for some of the government's shortcomings, the Native Medical Service experienced disjunctions between its goals and the means to achieve them that hindered its effectiveness. The ideological core of French colonialism was built around the Civilizing Mission, development (la mise en valeur), and the myth of the indissolubility of Greater France. The widespread French belief in African inferiority and that the benefits of French imperial rule to the subject peoples outweighed the drawbacks both worked against the success of French goals in West Africa to spread their civilization, foster economic and human development, and form a lasting addition to France Outre-Mer.

This electronic version has been made available under a Creative Commons (BY-NC-ND) open access license. The Colonial Medical Service was the personnel section of the Colonial Service, employing the doctors who tended to the health of both the colonial staff and the local populations of the British Empire. Although the Service represented the pinnacle of an elite government agency, its reach in practice stretched far beyond the state, with the members of the African service collaborating, formally and informally, with a range of other non-governmental groups. This collection of essays on the Colonial Medical Service of Africa illustrates the diversity and active collaborations to be found in the untidy reality of government medical provision. The authors present important case studies covering former British colonial dependencies in Africa, including Kenya, Malawi, Nigeria, Tanzania, Uganda and Zanzibar. They reveal many new insights into the enactments of colonial policy and the ways in which colonial doctors negotiated the day-to-day reality during the height of imperial rule in Africa. The book provides essential reading for scholars and students of colonial history, medical history and colonial administration.

Up to now far too little has been known about the influence and the effect of European medicine in colonies and not much has been known as yet about the introduction and activity of medical doctors, and public health in general, in the colony of German New Guinea. The present study examines for the first time in detail the measures and goals of the German colonial administration in relation to issues of public health. The activities of medical practitioners, medical orderlies and nurses are examined, as are problems with endemic tropical and introduced diseases, the reaction of the native population to European health measures, the training of native men as "Heiltultuls" and the efficacy of their deployment, and the introduction of western standards of hygiene. Margrit Davies scrutinises the interplay of public health and colonialism and attempts an answer to the question of how the especifically German variety of "colonial medicine" is to be evaluated.

Missing from the abundant literature on the history of British East Africa had been an evaluation of the British medical administration and its relation to the conduct of East African colonial governments. Beck's account of the modernization and development of scientific health services in Kenya, Uganda, and Tanganyika during the first half of the twentieth century not only filled that void, it also provided additional insight into the political, social, economic, and cultural aspects of the colonies. Included in her study of this complex system of colonial medical services are discussions of the changing and conflicting objectives of the colonial personnel, other influences on medical policy such as tribal traditions and varieties of climates within the region, disease control, and public health education of the Africans. She also considers the impact of World War I on the medical administration and presents her general observations on medical services in developing countries.

Kolonialmedizin / Afrika / Geschichte.

Examines colonial medical policy and the ways in which doctors of the Colonial Medical Service dealt with the day-to-day reality of care-giving in Imperial Africa.

Population Politics in the Tropics explores fears of population decline and policies in Portuguese Angola from 1890-1945. Utilising a wide range of multilingual archival research and comparative and transimperial perspectives, Samuël Coghe argues that colonial policy was driven by a persistent, but imprecise, idea of demographic crisis.

Medical histories of Belgium reshapes Belgian history of medicine by bringing together a new generation of scholars and engage with broader European developments in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.