The politics of disease control : sleeping sickness in eastern Africa 1890 1920 A history of epidemic illness and political change The Politics of Disease Control focuses on epidemics of sleeping sickness (human African trypanosomiasis) around Lake Victoria and Lake Tanganyika in the early twentieth century as well as the colonial public health programs designed to control them. Mari K. Webel prioritizes local histories of populations in the Great Lakes region to put the successes and failures of a widely used colonial public health intervention the sleeping sickness camp into dialogue with African strategies to mitigate illness and death in the past. Webel draws case studies from colonial Burundi Tanzania and Uganda to frame her arguments within a zone of vigorous mobility and exchange in eastern Africa where African states engaged with the Belgian British and German empires. Situating sleeping sickness control within African intellectual worlds and political dynamics The Politics of Disease Control connects responses to sleeping sickness with experiences of historical epidemics such as plague cholera and smallpox demonstrating important continuities before and after colonial incursion. African strategies to mitigate disease Webel shows fundamentally shaped colonial disease prevention programs in a crucial moment of political and social change Part I. The Ssese Islands. Orienting to the Ssese Islands c. 1890 Finding Sleeping Sickness on the Ssese Islands Healing Mongota Treating Trypanosomiasis : Research on the Ssese Islands Part II. The Kingdom of Kiziba c. 1890 Orienting to the Kingdom of Kiziba c. 1890 The Prince and the Plague : Politics Public Health and Rubunga in Kiziba Gland Feelers Elusive Patients and the Kigarama Camp Part III. The Southern Imbo c. 1890. Orienting to the Southern Imbo c. 1890 Mobility Illness and Colonial Public Health on the Tanganyika Littoral.