Vice in the Barracks [electronic resource] : Medicine, the Military and the Making of Colonial India, 1780-1868 /
Wald, E.author.
Shortlisted for the 2014 Royal Historical Society’s Gladstone Prize and the 2014 Templer Award for the Best First Book by a New Author. Sex and alcohol preoccupied European officers across India throughout the nineteenth century, with high rates of venereal disease and alcohol-related problems holding serious implications for the economic and military performance of the East India Company. These concerns revolved around the European soldiery in India – the costly, but often unruly, 'thin white line' of colonial rule. This book examines the colonial state's approach to these vice-driven health risks. In doing so it throws new light on the emergence of social and imperial mindsets and on the empire, fuelled by fear of the lower orders, sexual deviation, disease and mutiny. An exploration of these mindsets reveals a lesser-explored fact of rule – the fractured nature of the Company state. Further, it shows how the measures employed by the state to deal with these vice-driven health problems had wide-ranging consequences not simply for the army itself but for India and the empire more broadly. By refocusing our attention on to the military core of the colonial state, Wald demonstrates the ways in which army decision-making stretched beyond the cantonment boundary to help define the state's engagement with and understanding of Indian society.
Description based upon print version of record.
Cover; Contents; List of Illustrations; Acknowledgements; Note on Transliteration, Currency and Military Ranks; Map; Introduction; Unpicking the Contagious Diseases Acts; Approaches to the European soldier; (Re)Shaping Indian health and society; Organisation and structure; 1 The East India Company, the Army and Indian Society; The East India Company and its army; Begums and Bibis; The re-construction of the ''prostitute''; Conclusion; 2 Regulating the Body: Experiments in Venereal Disease Control, 1797-1831; Medical conceptions of venereal disease
Early experimentation with lock hospitals and regulationBalancing the budget: the costs of regulation; ''Martyrs to the effects of their licentiousness'': morality and disease; Excuses, solutions and the production of racial and cultural stereotypes; Conclusion; 3 Medicine and Disease in the ''Age of Reform''; Surgeons and administrators in the Age of ''Reform''; Essays, societies and journals; The 1831 Bengal Medical Board circular on venereal disease; Journals and venereal disease; Conclusion; 4 The Body of the Soldier and Space of the Cantonment; Intemperance and the soldier
Military and medical descriptions of the European soldierCanteen and cantonment: medical theories and proposals for military spaces; Ordering the cantonment: military and government regulations; Disorderly European women; Courts martial and punishment; Disgraceful and unbecoming conduct; Conclusion; 5 ''Unofficial'' Responses to Lock Hospital Closure, 1835-1868; Responses to the closure of lock hospitals in the 1830s; The dispensary and charity hospital; Working around the abolition; Wars and sanitary commissions; Conclusion; Conclusion; Appendix 1; Appendix 2; Notes; Glossary; Bibliography
Index
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Shortlisted for the 2014 Royal Historical Society’s Gladstone Prize and the 2014 Templer Award for the Best First Book by a New Author. Sex and alcohol preoccupied European officers across India throughout the nineteenth century, with high rates of venereal disease and alcohol-related problems holding serious implications for the economic and military performance of the East India Company. These concerns revolved around the European soldiery in India – the costly, but often unruly, 'thin white line' of colonial rule. This book examines the colonial state's approach to these vice-driven health risks. In doing so it throws new light on the emergence of social and imperial mindsets and on the empire, fuelled by fear of the lower orders, sexual deviation, disease and mutiny. An exploration of these mindsets reveals a lesser-explored fact of rule – the fractured nature of the Company state. Further, it shows how the measures employed by the state to deal with these vice-driven health problems had wide-ranging consequences not simply for the army itself but for India and the empire more broadly. By refocusing our attention on to the military core of the colonial state, Wald demonstrates the ways in which army decision-making stretched beyond the cantonment boundary to help define the state's engagement with and understanding of Indian society.
Imperialism.
Great Britain-History.
Social history.
History.
International relations.
Asia-History.
Imperialism and Colonialism.
History of Britain and Ireland.
Social History.
History of Science.
International Relations.
History of South Asia.