Colonialism created exclusive economic and segregatory social spaces for the exploitation and management of natural and human resources, in the form of plantations, ports, mining towns, hill stations, civil lines, and new urban centres for Europeans. This book studies the social history of medicine within two intersecting enclaves in colonial India: the hill-station of Darjeeling, which incorporated the sanitarian and racial norms of the British Raj; and in the adjacent tea plantations of North Bengal, which produced tea for the global market. It explores the demographic and environmental tran ... More

Colonialism created exclusive economic and segregatory social spaces for the exploitation and management of natural and human resources, in the form of plantations, ports, mining towns, hill stations, civil lines, and new urban centres for Europeans. This book studies the social history of medicine within two intersecting enclaves in colonial India: the hill-station of Darjeeling, which incorporated the sanitarian and racial norms of the British Raj; and in the adjacent tea plantations of North Bengal, which produced tea for the global market. It explores the demographic and environmental transformation of the region; the racialisation of urban spaces and its contestations; the establishment of hill sanatoria; the expansion of tea cultivation; labour emigration; and the paternalistic modes of healthcare in the plantation. The book also examines how the threat of epidemics and riots informed the conflictual relationship between the plantations and the adjacent agricultural villages and district towns. It reveals how tropical medicine was practised in its ‘field’; researches in malaria; how hookworm, dysentery, cholera, and leprosy were informed by investigations here; and how the exigencies of the colonial state, private entrepreneurship, and municipal governance subverted their implementation. The book establishes the vital link between medicine, the political economy, and the social history of colonialism, demonstrating that while enclaves were essential and distinctive sites of the articulation of colonial power and economy, they were not isolated sites. It shows that the critical aspect of the colonial enclaves was in their interconnectedness; with other enclaves, with the global economy, and with international medical research.