Administering Vaccination in Interwar Algeria: Medical Auxiliaries, Smallpox, and the Colonial State in the Communes mixtes

Clark, Hannah-Louise

doi:10.3167/fpcs.2016.340203

Cited by 10 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 3 publications

(3 reference statements)

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“…30 For example, the putative relationship between variolization, "native" smallpox, and European victims gave rise to racialized smallpox vaccination legislation for the communes mixtes. 31 Other differences were more subtle, but no less significant for villagers in the duwwār. Sanitary regulations were to be distributed in bilingual format, both French and Arabic.…”

Section: E D I C a L P O L I C I N G I N A L G E R I Amentioning

confidence: 97%

Expressing Entitlement in Colonial Algeria: Villagers, Medical Doctors, and the State in the Early 20th Century

Clark¹

2016

Int. J. Middle East Stud.

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Abstract:This article expands our understanding of state-society interactions in rural Algeria under French colonial rule, focusing specifically on villagers in the eastern department of Constantine. I analyze previously untapped administrative records, newspapers, petitions, and complaints to show how sanitary regulations and medical expertise came to shape relationships among villagers, local elites, and the colonial state from the early twentieth century. Villagers responded to state-led medicalization by seeking the protection of medical doctors, not only from disease but also from the state itself. In particular, they hoped to avoid heavy-handed treatment by qaids and local elites who applied emergency disease control measures without appropriate medical knowledge. Furthermore, close examination of petition literature suggests that hardships experienced by rural communities during the First World War accentuated nascent feelings of entitlement towards state medical treatment that crossed demographic, ethnic, and religious communal boundaries. The "great disease" was only the most recent misfortune to afflict the villagers in Runda.Four months previously, small-scale acts of resistance to compulsory conscription in neighboring communes mixtes and in Belezma itself had developed into widespread insurrection. 4 French troops descended on the Aurès region-a contingent of 6,142 soldiers and 106 officers in November 1916, increasing to 13,892 soldiers and 217 officers in January 1917-and engaged in a range of repressive tactics to quell resistance and enforce conscription. 5 Soldiers seized livestock and grain, destroyed silos, took hostages from the families of men refusing conscription, and burned villages; the air force bombarded the presumed mountain hideouts of deserters and resisters. 6 Predictably, epidemic disease followed in the wake of misery. In the month prior to the outbreak of disease in Runda, ninety-three of the hostages taken in the communes mixtes of Aïn Touta (ʿAin al-Tuta), Batna, Belezma, and Corneille died from typhus. 7The "great disease" in Runda may itself have been typhus, the symptoms of which were known to include fever, a rash, and altered mental states. 8 By appealing to local authority figures for a doctor to treat a terrifying affliction, villagers and elders sought the protection of the state. They did so even as French soldiers were depriving households of their men, beasts, and grain, and civil agents of the state were rounding up and isolating vulnerable members of their community.How was it that villagers in the remote mountain hamlet of Runda came to seek the aid of a French doctor? Why did they view the provision of a doctor as the authorities' responsibility?In contrast to scholarship on medicine and the state in sub-Saharan Africa and Egypt, the majority of work the history of medicine in Algeria has had little to say about how ordinary people responded to state medicine. 9 The reasons for this are partly methodological, and partly due to the perception that state medici...

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Section: E D I C a L P O L I C I N G I N A L G E R I Amentioning

confidence: 97%

Expressing Entitlement in Colonial Algeria: Villagers, Medical Doctors, and the State in the Early 20th Century

Clark¹

2016

Int. J. Middle East Stud.

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“…Hannah-Louise Clarck insiste spécialement sur l'importance de la mobilisation d'un personnel médical local à travers l'étude du rôle des auxiliaires médicaux 80 . Ces derniers jouent un rôle décisif dans le déploiement des campagnes de vaccination antivariolique pendant la période de l'entre-deux-guerres 81 . Ces recherches prolongent celles d'Heather Bell qui observe qu' « en Afrique, la grande majorité des praticiens qui mettent en oeuvre la médecine occidentale ne sont pas des médecins européens mais non-européens, généralement des auxiliaires africains formés dans cette science » 82 .…”

Section: Des Sociétés éProuvéesunclassified

La Méditerranée et les grandes épidémies. Retour sur un demi-siècle de travaux historiques

Pouget¹

2021

cdlm

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“…Middle East claimed authority over medical knowledge and struggled for professional mobility within colonial hierarchies and power relations (ʿAbabnah 2010;Blecher 2002;Bourmaud 2004Bourmaud , 2012Chiffoleau 1997;Clark 2016aClark , 2016bDewachi 2017;Erdemir 1995Erdemir , 1997Gallagher 1983;Kozma and Furas 2020;Mahfuz 1935;al-Manawi 1999;Rafeq 2015;Sonbol 1991;Verdeil 2008). Graduates of medical schools in Istanbul, Beirut, Cairo, and several North American and European cities sought to replace earlier forms of healing with modern scientific methods.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Gendered Struggles over the Medical Profession in the Modern Middle East and North Africa

Kozma¹,

Khayat²

2022

Journal of Middle East Women's Studies

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Historians of the professionalization of medicine in colonized regions, including the Middle East, have mostly focused on male practitioners, whereas histories of women in the medical professions are mostly centered in Western societies. The present issue examines histories of female medical practitioners by looking at case studies spanning the twentieth century from Algeria, Palestine, Israel, Iran, and Iraq. The introduction to this issue offers an overview of existing scholarship and charts sources and directions for future research and historical actors yet to be studied. The articles examine microlevel contact zones, in which women’s agency shaped and was shaped by colonial and postcolonial encounters, decolonization, and the formation of national professions. They reveal tensions within the medical sphere, between men and women, foreign and local, colonizer and colonized.

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Administering Vaccination in Interwar Algeria: Medical Auxiliaries, Smallpox, and the Colonial State in the Communes mixtes

Cited by 10 publications

References 3 publications

Expressing Entitlement in Colonial Algeria: Villagers, Medical Doctors, and the State in the Early 20th Century

Expressing Entitlement in Colonial Algeria: Villagers, Medical Doctors, and the State in the Early 20th Century

La Méditerranée et les grandes épidémies. Retour sur un demi-siècle de travaux historiques

Gendered Struggles over the Medical Profession in the Modern Middle East and North Africa

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