Imperial landscapes of health: Place, plants and people between India and Australia, 1800s-1900s.
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Citation
Export citationBettie, J. (2012). Imperial landscapes of health: Place, plants and people between India and Australia, 1800s-1900s. Health and History, 14(1), 100-120.
Permanent Research Commons link: https://hdl.handle.net/10289/6989
Abstract
In the nineteenth century, place bore immediately and urgently on questions of imperialism, race, and health. This article considers European strategies to control local environments and improve healthiness through the exchange of people, plants, ideas and garden designs between India and Australia. Migration removed Europeans from unhealthy environments, either permanently (to Australia and elsewhere) or temporarily (to hill stations in India). Trees like the eucalyptus were introduced into India to enhance European health, based on belief they drained sources of disease. I argue a crucial new understanding of the intersection between health and place in the nineteenth-century British Empire can be provided by tracing the networks through which people, plants, and ideas moved to consider the broader imperial frameworks.
Date
2012Type
Publisher
Australian and New Zealand Society of the History of Medicine
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Copyright 2012 Australian and New Zealand Society of the History of Medicine. This article has been published in the journal: Health and History. Used with permission.