"I believe that the white race should colonize the world."
(Patrick Manson, English physician, founder of tropical medicine and the first mega reference in this range)
With the outbreak of the Corona virus in India for the first time in March 2020, the government announced a package (1) of legal measures that allowed for a more flexible and firm dealing with the epidemiological situation in the country, starting with the closure of schools, obliging people to their homes and fines, and ending with declaring exposure to doctors a crime. It puts the citizen under the authority of the law, but these laws are in fact not new. Rather, they are a modified form of the "Epidemic Diseases Law" issued by British colonialism in 1897 to confront the plague that spread in several Indian regions.
English colonialism did indeed contain disease, but for many years things like this law were seen as the achievements of colonialism in the land of ignorance. In fact, the philosophy of colonialism itself, and we mean those fundamental ideas lying in the background of every colonial act as a justification for undertaking it, was based on the leadership of these peoples that were described as ignorant to the light of science, knowledge and civilization, but that - especially in the case of epidemics - was far from being For the truth.
For example (2), one of the most common features of medical intervention in colonial countries was its association with military aspects, not only because many of the medical directors of those medical policies were military, or that the only work devices that participated in Tropical Medicine were military, but politics. The clear colonialism - according to David Arnold in his book Imperial Medicine and Local Societies - was that the treatment of the health battle was a military operation, while in the meantime the armies were allowed to cross borders, and the epidemics were used to suppress the movements of rejection and opposition.
In India in particular, you could easily notice that the introduction of vaccination for epidemics at the end of the nineteenth century was based mainly on the "health belt" policy, meaning that the closest to the Indians to vaccinate was only the closest in distance to the English, so workers came in their factories, servants and health-care workers participating Indian In the medical teams and those dealing directly with British doctors at the top of the list, after that comes the closest to these, and then the vaccination continues, with the English being its center.
In fact, this prompted the Indians themselves to question the intentions of the British, at first glance you might think that a people rejecting the vaccine due to an epidemic that kills it is an ignorant people who support the idea of the colonizer about it, but put yourself in their place, from their point of view, this occupier offers a medicine that he claims is a cure for the disease. But what if he wants - through medication - to reduce my fertility or just encourage me to work like a donkey and use that as an excuse? There are many indications that the Indians ’position on the vaccine was logical, for example that the vaccine was being damaged during its trip in the ocean and did not protect against disease, which confirmed to the Indians their vision.
In addition to that, the interest in tropical medicine (3), in Asia, Africa and Latin America, was based on diseases that could cause infection for the colonizer, and researchers and doctors neglected other diseases related to the inhabitants of those regions themselves, such as tuberculosis, gonorrhea, dysentery and pneumonia, these diseases continued. Without treatment for long periods, it ate from the bodies of the indigenous people, increasing their ignorance, poverty and vulnerability, but the worst of that is what the colonialists brought about in terms of change in their country.
The environmental changes brought about by colonialists, whether through the construction of factories, mines, roads and railways on the continent of Africa, for example, contributed to the spread of epidemics at a greater rate, because they push the elements of infection - such as mosquitoes - from their environment to nearby cities and villages, which the indigenous population was not prepared for. , In addition to that, colonialism contributed to the spread of diseases by moving citizens, workers and slaves, from one region to another, so they contributed to the spread of epidemics, but the most important of all is that - often - colonialism brought new diseases to a land that had not previously spread to it, we talk Here about epidemics powerfully with smallpox, the plague and the Spanish flu.
Specifically, we can take a closer look (4) at the spread of the Spanish flu, in 1918 in Southern Rhodesia, which is now known as Zimbabwe. The British occupation administration worked - the first thing it worked - to mitigate the news that spread among people, saying that the new deadly epidemic that does not Leaves a village and ate of its residents until satiety caused by the British, who came from Europe affected by the epidemic at that time.
The Spanish flu killed 3% of the population of some areas, and with poverty and malnutrition in other areas, it killed 10% of the population.
In fact, in that period between 1890 and the First World War, Africa embraced the greatest epidemic disasters in its history, whether due to the occupation's modification of its environment, or because of the movement of citizens as slaves or workers, or because of the arrival of epidemics from Europe to it, especially those that it has become accustomed to Europeans developed resistance to it over time while it was new to Africans.
On the other hand, according to Sheldon Watts in his book "Epidemics and History ... Disease and Imperial Power", you can easily notice that the emergence of Tropical Medicine was not only aimed at serving the philosophy of colonialism, but also at researching whether those Asian and African regions were suitable for the presence of employees. Europeans, before colonialism, medicine was based on one perception of the human being and the other, regardless of the surrounding environment, but with the emergence of epidemics such as yellow fever and malaria in the African colonies, for example, there was a need to amend this model.
Africans had become accustomed to these diseases, but the Europeans did not. This led to the emergence of a racist perception, or attitude (5), among doctors from colonial countries that says that “blacks fall into inferior status to whites” because of these differences. However, these people have their diseases that differ from the "usual diseases", and that they are a source of severe, "unnatural" epidemics that threaten the life of whites, due to their ignorance and backwardness, a matter that has been exploited culturally to justify the necessity of colonialism in general, and it is still being used by many Politicians in their political wars against Africa, Asia and South American countries, for example, you can contemplate the response of former US President Donald Trump, former US President to an Asian-ethnic journalist who asked him about the epidemic, saying: "Ask China."
In fact, the reason for the flourishing of Tropical Medicine schools in Europe and America, specifically the London and Liverpool schools, was the political and economic concerns of those countries in Africa, Asia and South America, one of the most famous examples of contemporary research interest (6) is the relationship between the emergence and prosperity of the Department of Medicine Hot areas at Harvard University and American interests in Liberia in Africa, specifically for the establishment of the "Firestone" Natural Rubber Company in 1926, the largest company in this field in the world, which was created in response to the restrictions that other colonial countries practiced on the United States in the special order With rubber, I headed to Liberia.
Medicine does what weapons do not make, as it prepares the world that the colonizer carries a message of peace not consumption, and wants to bring people out of the darkness of ignorance to the light of civilization, and in the case of epidemics, you can use your abilities to control disease in subjugating peoples, and you can suppress any opposition in Complete silence, you can see this now - but in a different way - in the case of the new Corona, there are fears of turmoil in democratic countries because it is easy for people to bargain about their health in exchange for dispensing with privacy.
But colonialism did not introduce civilization to the inhabitants of the world that we now call "the third", it left that country equipped for health and political unrest in consequence, and it was only in the seventies of the last century when the World Health Organization decided to follow a medical system of hot regions that cared about real interest in the interests of those inhabitants. Regions, stemming from their environment and diseases, but what was left by colonialism is still remnants of an extended catastrophe until now.
For centuries, epidemics were the closest thing to a biological weapon used by some towards others who were more vulnerable, which is preceded by what we talked about at the end of the nineteenth century, in fact, epidemics were deliberately used to subjugate the natives in the Americas to the forces of European colonialism, one of the most famous examples It was in this zone that during the Pontiac Rebellion of 1763, a group of Native American tribes who were upset with British policies united for war.
Meanwhile, William Trent (7), the leader of the local military force, was reported to have written in a letter to his commander: “We gave them a set of blankets and napkins from the smallpox hospital, I hope that this will have the desired effect.” Smallpox spread among the natives, and there are indications that He had a strong role in ending that rebellion, but according to Jared Diamond, the American multidisciplinary scientist, in his book "Weapons, Germs, and Steel," it was more than just a blanket and a handkerchief, it was the cause of the fall of two ancient civilizations forever.
Diamond believes that the Western supremacy over the Aztec and Inca civilizations in the sixteenth century is not related to a unique intelligence, but to a geographical circumstance that the colonizer lived through for many years, while the professor of geography and physiology confirms that germs in particular were one of the most important reasons for the death of the vast majority of the Aztec and Inca peoples, Besides the advanced weapon, some viruses easily passed from the Spaniards to the Native Americans and wiped out them.
According to the hypothesis (8) Diamond, humans have managed - throughout their history - to domesticate about 15 animals, the vast majority of them found in the Fertile Crescent, and it refers to the region that begins across rivers from Iraq, then Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Palestine, and northern Egypt. .
The experiences of domestication of these animals then moved to the east and west of the Fertile Crescent over thousands of years, from China in the east to Spain in the west.
The inhabitants of these areas lived for thousands of years alongside many animals, some of which transmitted to them highly contagious viruses that, in the past, killed millions of them, but with time they developed immunity to these diseases and remained dormant in them over time, and with the first encounter between Europeans and the inhabitants of the Americas, These epidemics passed on to them, and caused their extermination, sometimes unintentionally, and at other times the transmission of epidemics was intentional.
During our battle with the epidemic throughout our history, the tragedy was not only limited to the actions of the epidemic with us, but about what we did to each other, taking advantage of the epidemic, even medicine was not spared from exploitation, but rather became a tool in the hand of racism that moves it as it wished, and we can see that clearly - on Example - In a famous quote by Patrick Manson, the English physician, founder of Tropical Medicine and the first and foremost author of a monumental reference in this field, when he said: "I believe that the white race should colonize the world."
Shall we do that now?
Will some of us take advantage of the epidemic to subjugate others?
What we see now in terms of a conflict between several major countries does not bode well, and the same cycle may be repeated: the epidemic kills some, and some searches for political and economic interests that can be achieved at the expense of those killed.
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Sources:
How India is fighting Coronavirus with a colonial-era law on epidemics
David Arnold - Imperial and Communal Medicine.
Epidemics in Western Society Since 1600 - frank Snowden.
David Arnold - Imperial and Communal Medicine.
Sheldon Watts - Epidemics and History ... Disease and Imperial Power.
Forgotten Paths of Empire: Ecology, Disease, and Commerce in the Making of Liberia's Plantation Economy: President's Address.
HISTORY OF BIOLOGICAL WEAPONS: FROM POISONED DARTS TO INTENTIONAL EPIDEMICS.
Jared Diamond - Weapons, Germs, and Steel.