Decolonizing International Health: India and Southeast Asia, 1930-65 (Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies Series)

In the middle decades of the twentieth century, Asia was at the heart of international efforts to create a new utopia: a world free from disease. Positioned at the unexplored boundary between international history and the history of colonial/postcolonial medicine, the book is a political, intellectual, and social history of public health in Asia, from the 1930s to the early 1960s. The discussion takes India as its core focus, but highlights the international networks connecting developments in India with the Asian region and the wider world, from Rangoon to New York. Drawing on a diverse range of sources, the book contributes to debates on nationalism, internationalism and the post-colonial State. This book offers a history of international public health spanning the colonial and post-colonial eras. The volume focuses on India and the transnational networks connecting developments in India with Southeast Asia, and the wider world and contributes to debates on nationalism, internationalism and science in an age of decolonization. In the middle decades of the twentieth century, Asia was at the heart of international efforts to create a new utopia: a world free from disease. At the unexplored boundary between international history, South Asian history, and the history of medicine, this book tells the story of public health in Asia during an era of upheaval, from the late colonial period to the 1960s. While focusing on India, the book suggests that public health was a pan-Asian, even global, enterprise from the 1930s. Examining the grand ambitions for a post-colonial world free from disease, the book suggests that fundamental problems-political, economic and intellectual-beset the project from the start. Throughout, the work examines the scope and the limitations of medical power, and the relationship of colonial to postcolonial public health. Drawing on material from archives and libraries on three continents, the book contributes to debates on nationalism, internationalism and science in the age of decolonization "In the middle decades of the twentieth century, Asia was at the heart of international efforts to create a new utopia: a world free from disease. At the unexplored boundary between international history, South Asian history, and the history of medicine, this book tells the story of public health in Asia during an era of upheaval, from the late colonial period to the 1960s. While focusing on India, the book suggests that public health was a pan-Asian, even global, enterprise from the 1930s. Examining the grand ambitions for a post-colonial world free from disease, the book suggests that fundamental problems - political, economic and intellectual - beset the project from the start. Throughout, the work examines the scope and the limitations of medical power, and the relationship of colonial to postcolonial public health. Drawing on material from archives and libraries on three continents, the book contributes to debates on nationalism, internationalism and science in the age of decolonization."--Jacket Front Matter....Pages i-xiii Introduction....Pages 1-20 Depression and the Internationalization of Public Health....Pages 21-46 War and the Rise of Disease Control....Pages 47-71 The Political Culture of International Health....Pages 72-98 Building a New Utopia....Pages 99-120 The Techno-politics of Public Health....Pages 121-148 The Limits of Disease Control....Pages 149-178 Conclusion....Pages 179-191 Back Matter....Pages 192-261