Harnessing the power of difference: Colonialism and British chronic disease research, 1940-1975

Abstract

Recent studies of post-war chronic disease epidemiology have generally focused on the histories of research in the USA and UK. Using the archival records of a major British funding body, the Colonial Medical Research Committee and its successor the Tropical Medical Research Board, this article demonstrates the advantages of bringing a post-colonial analytic to this historiography. It highlights how the administrative and medical interests in population difference at the centre of the new epidemiology came to map onto political apparatus initially created to know, reform and govern colonial subjects.Although detachedfrom imperialaims, Britishmedical scientistsnonetheless attached value to colonial populations on the basis of British benefit and turned various sites into laboratories to extract it. This relationship did not die with the endof imperial rule. British scientists continuedtopursue chronic diseaseepidemiologyinformercolonies well into the post-war period, informing debates about Britain's own public health concerns.