01883nas a2200181   4500000000100000008004100001260003800042653002200080653002600102653001200128653002400140100001500164245014100179300001000320520132800330022002501658020001801683       2024                            d  bSpringer International Publishing10aTropical Medicine10aDutch colonial empire10aLeprosy10aDrug policy history1 aSnelders S00aDutch Colonial Medicine and Empire Building in the Tropics: The Cases of Leprosy and Drug Use in the Dutch East and West Indies Compared  a53-713 a<p>In the second half of the nineteenth century, the Dutch started to modernize their empire and attempted to build ‘modern colonial states’ in their territories in the East Indies (present-day Indonesia) and West Indies (Suriname/Dutch Guiana, and the Dutch Caribbean islands). The endemic presence of certain diseases and behaviours was felt to threaten the colonial project. Colonial medicine played a key role in managing these ‘problems’. This chapter investigates and compares polices and attitudes around two very different cases: leprosy and drug abuse. Colonial policies towards these cases show remarkable similarities: in both, a translation took place of an international global ‘colonial framing’. Non-white leprosy sufferers and drug users from different ethnic and cultural backgrounds (African, Indian, Chinese, Indonesian) were constructed by colonial medicine as being passive, undisciplined, disturbing labour efficiency, and threatening to contaminate whites (through sexual contacts and other means) or to seduce them in ‘going native’. Colonial strategies against these dangers included compulsory segregation of leprosy sufferers and the first prohibitive drug laws in Dutch territories. These policies created a legacy of a colonial cultural archive that is still around today.</p>
  a2947-9142, 2947-9150  a9783031388040