Item Details | Research Catalog

Vice in the barracks : medicine, the military and the making of colonial India, 1780-1868

Title

Vice in the barracks : medicine, the military and the making of colonial India, 1780-1868 / Erica Wald.

Published by

Basingstoke : Palgrave Macmillan, 2014.
©2014

Author

Wald, Erica

Items in the library and off-site

Filter by

Format

Status

Displaying 1 item

Status	Format	Access	Call number	Item location
Status Request for on-site use Request scan How do I pick up this item and when will it be ready?	FormatText	AccessUse in library	Call numberDS465 .W35 2014	Item locationOff-site

Details

Description

xii, 273 pages : illustrations (black and white); 23 cm

Summary

"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 on 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."--Back cover.

Series statement

Cambridge imperial and post-colonial studies series

Uniform title

Cambridge imperial and post-colonial studies series

Subject

Genre/Form

History.

Contents

Unpicking the Contagious Diseases Acts 5 -- Approaches to the European soldier 7 -- (Re)Shaping Indian health and society 10 -- Organisation and structure 13 -- 1 The East India Company, the Army and Indian Society 16 -- The East India Company and its army 19 -- Begums and Bibis 24 -- The re-construction of the 'prostitute' 37 -- Conclusion 45 -- 2 Regulating the Body: Experiments in Venereal -- Disease Control, 1797-1831 48 -- Medical conceptions of venereal disease 51 -- Early experimentation with lock hospitals and regulation 54 -- Balancing the budget: the costs of regulation 65 -- 'Martyrs to the effects of their licentiousness': morality and disease 69 -- Excuses, solutions and the production of racial and cultural stereotypes 72 -- Conclusion 82 -- 3 Medicine and Disease in the 'Age of Reform' 84 -- Surgeons and administrators in the Age of 'Reform' 86 -- Essays, societies and journals 94 -- The 1831 Bengal Medical Board circular on venereal disease 105 -- Journals and venereal disease 110 -- Conclusion 113 -- 4 The Body of the Soldier and Space of the Cantonment 118 -- Intemperance and the soldier 120 -- Military and medical descriptions of the European soldier 122 -- Canteen and cantonment: medical theories and proposals for military spaces 125 -- Ordering the cantonment: military and government regulations 131 -- Disorderly European women 140 -- Courts martial and punishment 146 -- Disgraceful and unbecoming conduct 153 -- Conclusion 155 -- 5 'Unofficial' Responses to Lock Hospital Closure, 1835-1868 157 -- Responses to the closure of lock hospitals in the 1830s 160 -- The dispensary and charity hospital 171 -- Working around the abolition 176 -- Wars and sanitary commissions 179 -- Conclusion 189.

Owning institution

Princeton University Library

Bibliography (note)

Includes bibliographical references (pages 244-263) and index.