(Re-)negotiating Masculinities in the Kampoeng: Medical Mercenaries and the Aceh War, c. 1880–1890

Abstract

Around 300 physicians from Switzerland, the German as well as the Austro-Hungarian Empire joined the Dutch Colonial Army between 1814 and 1914. While their motives to volunteer in the first place could widely differ, many among them eagerly published on their experiences as medical officers ‘Far East’, presenting their alleged heroic deeds and the struggles they faced as medical men in the tropics to a broad readership in Germanophone Europe. This article zooms in on the lives of three such ‘medical mercenaries’ deployed in Aceh, where the Dutch fought one of the longest, most costly, and deadly wars in their Imperial history: the Swiss Dr. Heinrich Erni, Austrian Dr. Heinrich Breitenstein, and Prussian Dr. Friedrich Wilhelm Stammeshaus. By analysing their testimonies of the daily lives in the military camps, it asks how European masculinities were forged, challenged, and contested through medicine and medical experts in colonial wars fought in from a European perspective remote, unknown tropical outdoor spaces.