Endorsements

Leprosy and colonialism investigates the history of leprosy in Suriname within the context of Dutch colonial power and racial conflict, from the plantation economy and the age of slavery to its legacy in the modern colonial state. It explores the relationship between the modern stigmatization and exclusion of people affected with leprosy, and the political tensions and racial fears originating in colonial slave society, exerting their influence until after the decolonization and up to the present day. In the book colonial sources are read from shifting perspectives, of the colonial rulers as well as, 'from below', the ruled. By investigating the complex reciprocities between knowledge, attitudes and practices towards leprosy over time, the book investigates the Caribbean origins of modern framing and management of leprosy; origins that have so far been neglected in the historiography of colonial and imperial medicine. The book is of interest to all students of colonial history, of colonial medicine, and of management of infectious disease in multi-ethnic and multi-cultural societies - aiming at people working on an academic level as well as the general educated public. Although leprosy is today a neglected tropical disease, recognizing influences of our colonial heritage in our management of health and disease, and exploring the perspectives of other cultures are essential in a time in which global migration movements make the permeability of boundaries and transmission of humans, and therefore of diseases, more common than perhaps ever before in human history.