The state of vaccination: British doctors, indigenous cooperation, and the fight against smallpox in colonial Burma.

Abstract

While many forms of British medical knowledge were used to complement preexisting indigenous medical knowledge, throughout the colonial-era dialogue, vaccination made very little head-way. This is remarkable as the operation was portrayed by colonial medical authorities as a quintessential example of the supremacy of Western medical science. This Dissertation examines British vaccination efforts in colonial Burma from the mid-nineteenth century to the 1920s, in order to explain why vaccination failed to become popular among the indigenous population of Burma. This dissertation does not view the colonial vaccination project as a medical failure, for medical technical problems were gradually resolved over time. Rather, the vaccination project failed for the same reasons that brought down the colonial state, with which its fortunes were intimately related. The major problem was that the colonial medical establishment was confused as to why the Burmese did not voluntarily submit to their 'superior' medicine. Rather than regard inoculation as a competing medical system, the British chose to interpret indigenous support for inoculation as an anti-colonial political statement. Seen in this light, to question the superiority of vaccination over inoculation was to question British superiority over the Burmese, and thus the legitimacy of the entire colonial project.