Empire, Epidemics, and Health in Assam, 1860–1940

Abstract

This thesis explores the extent to which epidemic diseases were integral to the shaping of social, material, and political conditions of colonial Assam and not just transitory events. The rich historiography of Assam has provided a detailed picture of the region’s transformations under British colonial rule. However, the historiography of disease and medicine has largely focused on their impact and responses in the context of tea plantations. The significance of epidemic diseases amidst the region’s larger socio-economic and political landscape remains understudied. A conservative estimate reveals that twenty-five-lakh people died due to overlapping epidemic outbreaks of malaria, kala-azar, cholera, and smallpox during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Diseases orphaned children, forced people to abandon their cultivated fields and left an intergenerational impact. This thesis attempts to locate epidemic diseases and their lived experiences in the context of British colonialism during 1860–1940.