Borrowing, Adapting, and Learning the Practices of Smallpox: Notes from Colonial Goa

Abstract

In this article I will address colonial state policies toward smallpox in nineteenth-century Goa. The picture that emerges from the analysis of health services documents suggests a broad variety of coexisting practices. While the actions of some of the Portuguese head physicians epitomized the conflict between state-sponsored vaccination policies and local preferences for smallpox inoculation, others showed sympathy for and developed arguments in favor of inoculation as practiced by indigenous experts. Still others observed the existence among the population of hybrid practices combining elements of vaccination and inoculation. The diversity of Goan combinations along the violence/collaboration continuum should be interpreted within the context of current trends in the analysis of smallpox in British India--which replace the paradigm of vaccination: variolation :: state violence: native resistance with a more nuanced understanding of a variety of combinations throughout the subcontinent in the nineteenth century.