Main description:

This volume views the study of disease as essential to understanding the key historical developments underpinning the foundation of contemporary Indian Ocean World (IOW) societies. The interplay between disease and climatic conditions, natural and manmade crises and disasters, human migration and trade in the IOW reveals a wide range of perceptions about disease etiologies and epidemiologies, and debates over the origin, dispersion and impact of disease form a central focus in these essays. Incorporating a wide scope of academic and scientific angles including history, social and medical anthropology, archaeology, epidemiology and paleopathology, this collection focuses on diseases that spread across time, space and cultures. It scrutinizes disease as an object, and engages with the subjectivities of afflicted inhabitants of, and travellers to, the IOW.

Contents:

1. Introduction

Eva-Maria Knoll and Gwyn Campbell

2. The Evolution and Spread of Major Human Diseases in the Indian Ocean World

Monica H. Green and Lori Jones

3. The 'Frankish Disease' and its Treatments in the Indian Ocean World

Anna Winterbottom

4. Reconsidering the Early History of Leprosy in Light of Advances in Paleopathology

Eric Strahorn

5. Climate, Weather and Pestilence in the Philippines since the Sixteenth Century

James Warren

6. Malaria in Precolonial Malagasy History

Gwyn Campbell

7. Disease Alcohol Consumption, and Excise in Nineteenth-Century British India

Peter Hynd

8. European Sailors, Alcohol and Cholera in Nineteenth-Century India

Manikarnika Dutta

9. Chikungunya and Epidemic Disease in the Indian Ocean World

Edward A. Alpers

10. Challenging Chikungunya: Resistance to Public Health Measures and Etiology during the 2005-2007 Epidemic in Reunion

Karine Aasgaard Jansen

11. Inherited without History? Maldive Fever and its Aftermath

Eva-Maria Knoll