Sex work, containment and the new discourse of public health in French colonial Levant

This article addresses how French academics, doctors and state bureaucrats formulated sex work as a pathology, an area of inquiry that had to be studied in the interest of public safety. French colonisation in the Levant extended the reach of this ‘expertise’ from the metropole to Lebanon under the guise of public health. Knowledge produced by academics was used to buttress colonial state policy, which demanded that sex workers be contained to protect society against medical contagion. No longer drawing conclusions based on speculation, the medical establishment asserted its authority by harnessing modern advances in science and uniting them with extensive observation. ‘Empirical facts’ replaced ‘opinions’, as doctors forged new approaches to studying and containing venereal disease. They accomplished this through the use of statistics and new methods of diagnosing and treating maladies. Their novel approach was used to treat sex workers and to support commercial sex work policy both at home and abroad. Sex workers became the objects of scientific study and were consequently problematised by the state in medicalised terms.

Cholera, British seamen and maritime anxieties in Calcutta, c.1830s–1890s ‘The William Bynum Prize Essay’

From the mid-nineteenth century, seamen were increasingly identified as vectors of epidemic diseases such as cholera. The rising acceptance of the germ theories of disease and contagion and the transition from sail to steam at this time increased the fear of the rapid spread of contagious diseases through these mobile people. This article examines how the British naval authorities, ship surgeons and the medical and municipal authorities in the Calcutta sailortown sought to improve maritime health and hygiene to prevent the spread of cholera among and by British seamen. Nineteenth century Calcutta is an ideal context for this study on account of its epidemiological notoriety as a disease entrepot and the sea route between Calcutta and British ports was one of the most closely monitored for disease in the Empire. The article argues that a study of cholera among British seamen can generate important insights into the relationship among disease, medicine and colonialism and in doing so shed light into a neglected aspect of the history of nineteenth century cholera, the British anxiety regarding disease dispersion, practice of hygiene and sanitation and British seamen’s health.

Assessing the conduct of juveniles: diagnosis and delinquency, 1900–2013

American child psychiatrists have long been interested in the problems of delinquent behaviour by juveniles. With the rise of specific psychiatric diagnoses in the 1960s and 1970s, delinquent behaviour was defined within the diagnosis of conduct disorder. Like all psychiatric diagnoses, this concept was shaped by particular historical actors in context and has been highly contingent on assumptions related to race, class and gender. The history of conduct disorder illustrates the tensions in child psychiatry between the expansive goals of the field and the often limited uses of its professional authority, as well as individual children as the target of intervention and their interactions in groups.

Negotiating South–South cooperation for mental health: the World Health Organization and the African Mental Health Action Group, 1970s–90s

This article explores the African Mental Health Action Group (AMHAG), one of the earliest examples of the World Health Organization’s (WHO) attempts to promote ‘ownership’ over development through the South–South cooperation envisaged in Technical Cooperation in Developing Countries. Formed in 1978, the AMHAG was intended to guide national and regional policy on mental health, while also fostering national and collective self-reliance. For a short period, between the late 1970s and the early 1990s, it was central to the WHO’s strategy for promoting policies of mental health in primary healthcare in Africa. It was a largely ineffective tool, with national governments having different opinions on the value of mental health, and poor coordination between AMHAG countries. Approaching the AMHAG as a regional project and transnational network, however, the article provides explores the importance of regions and regionalism in international health cooperation, as well as the inequities of participation in health development. Drawing on WHO archival material spanning over twenty countries and two national liberation movements, it argues that participating countries were differently positioned not only to navigate relationships between countries, but also to contend with the shifting landscape of international assistance, as well as – for some – contexts of war, violence and political and economic instability. The article not only serves as a case study of power imbalances in a failed development initiative, but also sheds light on the WHO’s engagement with mental health during a period that historians of psychiatry in Africa have tended to overlook.