| Popis: |
This chapter analyzes the Dutch response to plague in Java. It stands at the intersection of colonial, medical, and environmental histories of Southeast Asia and outlines how plague triggered a tremendous expansion of Dutch state power and cultural influence at a time when—as has been suggested—the “gangrene” had already set its claws into the colonial project. The chapter argues that plague prompted a colonial health intervention that was both unprecedented in scale and uniquely invasive in scope. It presents two significant contributions to the body of scholarship on this disease. First, plague has tended to be studied and framed as a “house disease” with a distinct urban preference. Second, plague scholarship has shown a tendency to focus on epidemic outbreak moments and the immediate responses they triggered—with less attention given to their endemic afterlives. To elucidate the importance of this disease to colonial governance despite its modest burden to the Indies death rate, the chapter suggests that plague and plague control in Java offered the Dutch a platform: an epidemic drama against which they could assert themselves locally, nationally, and internationally as an advanced colonial and scientific power. |
