Sex and Control: Venereal Disease, Colonial Physicians, and Indigenous Agency in German Colonialism, 1884-1914

✍ Scribed by Daniel J. Walther

• Publisher: Berghahn Books
• Year: 2015
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 197
• Series: Monographs in German History; 36
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

In responding to the perceived threat posed by venereal diseases in Germany’s colonies, doctors took a biopolitical approach that employed medical and bourgeois discourses of modernization, health, productivity, and morality. Their goal was to change the behavior of targeted groups, or at least to isolate infected individuals from the healthy population. However, the Africans, Pacific Islanders, and Asians they administered to were not passive recipients of these strategies. Rather, their behavior strongly influenced the efficacy and nature of these public health measures. While an apparent degree of compliance was achieved, over time physicians increasingly relied on disciplinary measures beyond what was possible in Germany in order to enforce their policies. Ultimately, through their discourses and actions they contributed to the justification for and the maintenance of German colonialism.

✦ Table of Contents

CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
ABBREVIATIONS
INTRODUCTION
PART I Male Sexuality and Prostitution in the Overseas Territories
Chapter 1 DOCTORS, PROSTITUTION, AND VENEREAL DISEASE IN GERMANY
Chapter 2 MALE COLONIAL SEXUALITY
Chapter 3 PROSTITUTION IN GERMANY’S COLONIES
PART II Venereal Disease in the Colonial Context
Chapter 4 THE THREAT OF VENEREAL DISEASE
Chapter 5 ASSESSING THE THREAT STATISTICALLY
Chapter 6 RACIAL CATEGORIES, VENEREAL DISEASE, AND THE COLONIAL ORDER
PART III Fighting Venereal Disease in the Colonies
Chapter 7 PREVENTATIVE MEASURES
Chapter 8 DISCIPLINING THE BODY
Chapter 9 TREATING THE BODY
Chapter 10 ASSESSING THE SURVEILLANCE
Chapter 11 PERCEIVED ONGOING CHALLENGES
CONCLUSION
APPENDIX
BIBLIOGRAPHY
INDEX