Malarial Subjects - Empire, Medicine and Nonhumans in British India, 18201909

This book examines how and why British imperial rule shaped scientific knowledge about malaria and its cures in nineteenth-century India. This title is also available as Open Access.

List of contents

Introduction: side-effects of empire; 1. 'Fairest of Peruvian maids': planting cinchonas in British India; 2. 'An imponderable poison': shifting geographies of a diagnostic category; 3. 'A cinchona disease': making Burdwan fever; 4. 'Beating about the bush': manufacturing quinine in a colonial factory; 5. Of 'losses gladly borne': feeding quinine, warring mosquitoes; Epilogue.

About the author

Rohan Deb Roy is Lecturer in South Asian History at the University of Reading. He received his Ph.D. from University College London, and has held postdoctoral fellowships at the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences Calcutta, at the University of Cambridge, and at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin. He has been a Barnard-Columbia Weiss International Visiting Scholar in the History of Science.

Summary

Rohan Deb Roy argues that British imperial rule occasioned the attribution of medical properties to a range of nonhuman entities including plants, quinine, and mosquitoes in nineteenth-century India. Malarial Subjects is a major new contribution to science studies and the histories of the British Empire, colonial medicine and South Asia. This title is also available as Open Access.

Product details

• Authors: Rohan Deb Roy, Rohan (University of Reading) Deb Roy, ROY ROHAN DEB
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press ELT
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 30.09.2017
• EAN: 9781107172364
• ISBN: 978-1-107-17236-4
• No. of pages: 346
• Series: Science in History; Science in History
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > History > Regional and national histories; Natural sciences, medicine, IT, technology > Medicine > General; Non-fiction book > History > Miscellaneous; Regional & national history, Social & cultural history, MEDICAL / History, History of Medicine, Asian History