This article is looking at colonial governance with regard to leprosy, comparing two settings of the Dutch colonial empire: Suriname and the Dutch East Indies. Whereas segregation became formal policy in Suriname, leprosy sufferers were hardly ever segregated in the Dutch East Indies. We argue that the perceived needs to maintain a healthy labour force and to prevent contamination of white populations were the driving forces behind the difference in response to the disease. Wherever close contact between European planters and a non-European labour force existed together with conditions of forced servitude (either slavery or indentured labour), the Dutch response was to link leprosy to racial inferiority in order to legitimise compulsory segregation. This mainly happened in Suriname. We would like to suggest that forced labour, leprosy and compulsory segregation were connected through the 'colonial gaze', legitimising compulsory segregation of leprosy sufferers who had become useless to the plantation economy.
BT - Social history of medicine : the journal of the Society for the Social History of Medicine C1 - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34084094 DA - 05/2021 DO - 10.1093/shm/hkz079 IS - 2 J2 - Soc Hist Med LA - eng N2 -This article is looking at colonial governance with regard to leprosy, comparing two settings of the Dutch colonial empire: Suriname and the Dutch East Indies. Whereas segregation became formal policy in Suriname, leprosy sufferers were hardly ever segregated in the Dutch East Indies. We argue that the perceived needs to maintain a healthy labour force and to prevent contamination of white populations were the driving forces behind the difference in response to the disease. Wherever close contact between European planters and a non-European labour force existed together with conditions of forced servitude (either slavery or indentured labour), the Dutch response was to link leprosy to racial inferiority in order to legitimise compulsory segregation. This mainly happened in Suriname. We would like to suggest that forced labour, leprosy and compulsory segregation were connected through the 'colonial gaze', legitimising compulsory segregation of leprosy sufferers who had become useless to the plantation economy.
PY - 2021 SP - 611 EP - 631 T2 - Social history of medicine : the journal of the Society for the Social History of Medicine TI - Leprosy and the Colonial Gaze: Comparing the Dutch West and East Indies, 1750-1950. UR - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8162854/pdf/hkz079.pdf VL - 34 SN - 0951-631X ER -