Synopses & Reviews
The Emergence of Tropical Medicine in France examines the turbulent history of the ideas, people, and institutions of French colonial and tropical medicine from their early modern origins through World War I. Until the 1890s colonial medicine was in essence naval medicine, taught almost exclusively in a system of provincial medical schools built by the navy in the port cities of Brest, Rochefort-sur-Mer, Toulon, and Bordeaux. Michael A. Osborne draws out this separate species of French medicine by examining the histories of these schools and other institutions in the regional and municipal contexts of port life. Each site was imbued with its own distinct sensibilities regarding diet, hygiene, ethnicity, and race, all of which shaped medical knowledge and practice in complex and heretofore unrecognized ways.
and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;
Osborne argues that physicians formulated localized concepts of diseases according to specific climatic and meteorological conditions, and assessed, diagnosed, and treated patients according to their ethnic and cultural origins. He also demonstrates that regions, more so than a coherent nation, built the empire and specific medical concepts and practices. Thus, by considering tropical medicineand#8217;s distinctive history, Osborne brings to light a more comprehensive and nuanced view of French medicine, medical geography, and race theory, all the while acknowledging the navyand#8217;s crucial role in combating illness and investigating the racial dimensions of health.
Review
and#8220;In the masterly hands of Eric Jennings, the history of Dalat becomes, not just a case study of a colonial holiday site, but a window into the dreams, fears and tension of colonialism.and#8221;
Review
and#8220;An outstanding book. . . . In a riveting sequence of chapters, the author develops a multilayered analysis of life in Dalat.and#8221;
Review
and#8220;An excellent work. . . . Jenningsand#8217; book testifies to his prominent position in the field of French colonial history.and#8221;
Review
and#8220;Professor Jennings of the University of Toronto is a specialist in French colonial history and this work reflects his expertise in the subject.and#8221;
Review
and#8220;[A] remarkable book, which is impeccably researched. . . . An eye-opening, eminently readable, highly impressive work.and#8221;
Review
and#8220;An important contribution to our growing understanding of colonial and military medicine. The French story provides an illuminating contrast to its more familiar English counterpart. Osborne paints a finely wrought picture of a world of naval medicine and medical training heretofore obscured by our canonical focus on Parisian institutions, ideas, and practitioners; professionalization and bureaucracy can assume a variety of shapes, and Osborneand#8217;s study provides a fresh contribution to the history of the professions as well as to the circumstances and rationales of French colonial policy.and#8221;
Review
and#8220;In this illuminating history of French colonial medicine during the long nineteenth century, Osborne shows how naval medical officers brought home the tropics and domesticated the exotic. Sensitive to the terrain of ship, port, and colony, naval physicians sought to chart the medical geography and racial diversity of the world. In widening our knowledge of the history of tropical medicine, Osborne crucially turns our attention to maritime France and thus provincializes Paris in the history of French medicine.and#8221;
Review
and#8220;Deeply researched in a dozen archives, this concise book shows how nineteenth-century French naval and colonial medicine came to grips with an expanding empire and its bewildering assortment of peoples, places, and diseases. Osborne combines the study of institutions, individuals, and ideas into an elegant essay that everyone interested in the history of disease, health, and medicine will want to read.and#8221;
Review
andquot;Thoroughly yet concisely discusses the development of French colonial and naval medicine from the 17th through the early 20th centuries. . . . Beginning with the construction of the three oldest naval medical schools using prison labor, Osborne meticulously discusses naval physicians and etiological theories across centuries. . . . One of the most interesting facets is how the concept of race inside France influenced the perception of the colonized races and the resulting Creole populations.andquot;
Review
andquot;Osborne has written a superb and foundational study. Rather than engaging in the kind of sweeping discursive analysis associated with Michel Foucault, Edward Said, and Ann Laura Stoler, he focuses more upon the specific personnel, institutions, and policies that shaped the rise of tropical medicine. Throughout, Osborne emphasizes the concrete material realities that influenced colonial practitioners and how these realities structured and often limited practices in the oft-vaunted and#39;colonial machine.and#39; For these reasons, his book is essential reading for historians of science and medicine, as well as those scholars working more generally on the history of European imperialism.andquot;
Synopsis
Intended as a reminder of Europe for soldiers and clerks of the empire, the city of Dalat, located in the hills of Southern Vietnam, was built by the French in an alpine locale that reminded them of home. This book uncovers the strange 100-year history of a colonial city that was conceived as a center of power and has now become a kitsch tourist destination famed for its colonial villas, flower beds, pristine lakes, and pastoral landscapes. Eric T. Jennings finds that from its very beginning, Dalat embodied the paradoxes of colonialismand#151;it was a city of leisure built on the backs of thousands of coolies, a supposed paragon of hygiene that offered only questionable protection from disease, and a new venture into ethnic relations that ultimately backfired. Jenningsand#8217; fascinating history opens a new window onto virtually all aspects of French Indochina, from architecture and urban planning to violence, labor, mand#233;tissage, health and medicine, gender and ethic relations, schooling, religion, comportments, anxieties, and more.
Synopsis
and#147;By using both macro and micro lenses, Eric T. Jennings has written a book which is a model of global history under the guise of a monographic study. He convincingly demonstrates that throughout fifty years, Dalat as a climatic resort built by the French colonizers in the Central Highlands of Vietnam, was upgraded to far more than a mere RandR place for white people. Jennings has kneaded together a huge and rich amount of primary and secondary sources that he masters perfectly due to his sound and balanced method of critical analysis. As we say in French: de la belle ouvrage.and#8221;
and#151;Pierre Brocheux, author of Indochina: An Ambiguous Colonization, 1858-1954
and#147;Written in a vivid and engaging style, Imperial Heights is an exceptional piece of scholarship. It is impeccably researched, drawing on private, institutional, and national archives in at least five countries. Making wonderful use of and#145;thick description,and#8217; Jennings brilliantly recreates the story of one small town to capture the varied and complex history of French colonialism and its afterlives in Southeast Asia.and#8221;
and#151;J.P. Daughton, author of An Empire Divided
About the Author
Michael A. Osborne is professor of history at Oregon State University and the author of Nature, the Exotic, and the Science of French Colonialism.
Table of Contents
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. Escaping Death in the Tropics
2. Murder on the Race for Altitude
3. Health, Altitude, and Climate
4. Early Dalat, 1898and#150;1918
5. Colonial Expectations, Pastimes, Comestibles, Comforts, and Discomforts
6. Situating the and#147;Montagnardsand#8221;
7. A Functional City? Architecture, Planning, Zoning, and Their Critics
8. The Dalat Palace Hotel
9. Vietnamese Dalat
10. Some Colonial Categories: Children, European Women, and Mand#233;tis
11. Divine Dalat
12. The Maelstrom, 1940and#150;1945
13. Autonomous Province or Federal Capital?
14. Dalat at War and Peace, 1946and#150;1975
Epilogue
Notes
Select Bibliography
Index