DECOLONIZING INTERNATIONAL HEALTH: INDIA AND SOUTHEAST ASIA, 1930-65

About this book

"In the middle decades of the twentieth century, Asia was at the heart of international efforts to create a new utopia: a world free from disease. At the unexplored boundary between international history, South Asian history, and the history of medicine, this book tells the story of public health in Asia during an era of upheaval, from the late colonial period to the 1960s. While focusing on India, the book suggests that public health was a pan-Asian, even global, enterprise from the 1930s. Examining the grand ambitions for a post-colonial world free from disease, the book suggests that fundamental problems - political, economic and intellectual - beset the project from the start. Throughout, the work examines the scope and the limitations of medical power, and the relationship of colonial to postcolonial public health. Drawing on material from archives and libraries on three continents, the book contributes to debates on nationalism, internationalism and science in the age of decolonization."--Jacket.