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 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. In the book colonial sources are read from both the perspective of the rulers and of 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.Although leprosy is now a neglected tropical disease, its study today is vital in recognising the the influence of our colonial heritage and in exploring the perspectives of other cultures on the contemporary management of health and disease. this is in light of the current global migration movements which make the permeability of boundaries and the transmission of humans and therefore diseases, more common than perhaps ever before in human history.The book will be of interest to students of colonial history, colonial medicine, and management of infectious disease in multi-ethnic and multi-cultural societies.

IntroductionPart I: Leprosy in a slave society1. The making of a colonial disease in the eighteenth century2. A policy of 'Great Confinement', 1815-18633. Slaves and medicine: black perspectives4. 'Battleground in the jungle': the Batavia leprosy asylum in the age of slaveryPart II: Leprosy in a modern colonial state5. Transformations and discussion, Suriname and the Netherlands, 1863-18906. Towards a modern colonial state: reorganizing leprosy care, 1890-19007. Developing modern leprosy politics, 1900-19508. Colonial medicine and folk beliefs in the modern era9. Complex microcosms: asylums and treatments, 1900-1950ConclusionSources and select bibliography