In A History of Plague in Java, 1911–1942, Maurits Bastiaan Meerwijk demonstrates how the official response to the 1911 outbreak of plague in Malang led to one of the most invasive health interventions in Dutch colonial Indonesia. Eager to combat disease, Dutch physicians and officials integrated the traditional Javanese house into the "rat-flea-man" theory of transmission. Hollow bamboo frames and thatched roofs offered hiding spaces for rats, suggesting a material link between rat plague and human plague. Over the next thirty years, 1.6 million houses were renovated or rebuilt, millions more were subjected to periodic inspection, and countless Javanese were exposed to health messaging seeking to "rat-proof" their beliefs along with their houses. The transformation of houses, villages, and people was documented in hundreds of photographs and broadcast to overseas audiences as evidence of the "ethical" nature of colonial rule, proving so effective as propaganda that the rebuilding continued even as better alternatives, such as inoculation, became available. By systematically reshaping the built environment, the Dutch plague response dramatically expanded colonial oversight and influence in rural Java.

In A History of Plague in Java, 1911–1942, Maurits Bastiaan Meerwijk demonstrates how the official response to the 1911 outbreak of plague in Malang led to one of the most invasive health interventions in Dutch colonial Indonesia. Eager to combat disease, Dutch physicians and officials integrated the traditional Javanese house into the "rat-flea-man" theory of transmission. Hollow bamboo frames and thatched roofs offered hiding spaces for rats, suggesting a material link between rat plague and human plague. Over the next thirty years, 1.6 million houses were renovated or rebuilt, millions more were subjected to periodic inspection, and countless Javanese were exposed to health messaging seeking to "rat-proof" their beliefs along with their houses. The transformation of houses, villages, and people was documented in hundreds of photographs and broadcast to overseas audiences as evidence of the "ethical" nature of colonial rule, proving so effective as propaganda that the rebuilding continued even as better alternatives, such as inoculation, became available. By systematically reshaping the built environment, the Dutch plague response dramatically expanded colonial oversight and influence in rural Java.

Rural Disease Knowledge examines the ways in which knowledge of rural spaces and environments, on the one hand, and infectious diseases, on the other, have become inter-constituted since the late nineteenth century. With contributions by leading anthropologists and historians of medicine, it examines the epistemic co-constitution of the rural and of infectious diseases. Ranging from Brazil, Argentina, and Colombia to Java, Tanzania, West and South Africa, and Britain, the chapters cover diverse geographies, timelines, and diseases, including plague, brucellosis, leishmaniasis, yaws, yellow fever, nagana, sleeping sickness, and Chagas disease. The book considers how human interactions with infectious diseases have impacted ways of knowing and acting on rural spaces and environments, and in turn how human interactions with rural spaces and environments have impacted ways of knowing and acting against infectious diseases. It reflects on how the rural has been configured as a space of either health or sickness over the centuries and around the globe, the role of rural landscapes in the epistemic emergence of microbiology and tropical medicine, and the interaction with global processes such as European imperialism, the emergence of capitalism, and postcolonial nation-building projects. The studies engage with current debates on decolonizing knowledge and highlight how local disease knowledge has troubled and unsettled hegemonic medical perspectives and created new ways of understanding the relationship between diseases and rural spaces and environments. The volume will be of particular interest to scholars of medical anthropology, global health, and the history of medicine.

It is widely accepted that population growth in the final decades of colonial rule foreshadowed the accelerated growth observed in post-colonial Asia. Little is known, however, about the actual rates of growth and the considerable regional variations in demographic processes characterizing those final decades. The author offers a reconstruction of regional variations in the growth of the indigenous population of Indonesia from 1880 till the Japanese invasion in 1942. The demographic components of population growth (migration, fertility and mortality) are not only presented as demographic statistics but also interpreted as the aggregate effects of major events in the lives of indigenous people. Hence, migration is described in relation to employment opportunities, the social structure, and tradition; fertility is examined in the light of aspects of family formation, including marriage customs and birth control practices; and mortality is linked to epidemics and Western health care.

103 entries to important medical topics. Intended for the general reader, students of history, and students of medicine. Entries are essays that include references and cross references. General index.