Company surgeons, domestic life and medical practice in colonial India, 1750s-1850s (360G-Wellcome-091841_Z_10_Z)

This research on East India Company surgeons contributes to the PI's larger project on the role played by family structures in promoting British imperialism in India c. 1757-1857. It analyses the familial matrices that sustained imperialism and the ways in which social life shaped dominant systems of knowledge, including medical theories of race. Previous studies have demonstrated the contribution that eighteenth- and nineteenth-century East India Company surgeons made to the elaboration of new racial theories, upon which later nineteenth- and twentieth-century Western imperial expansion was to build. Extant research has focused on surgeons' use of new scientific tools, such as medical statistics and morbid anatomy, to address the health needs of male troops in India. This project expands beyond these perspectives, situating Company surgeons' racial theorizing within the two-fold context of their role as the medical attendants of white and mixed race colonial families and their aspirations for marriage, parenthood and financial independence. By assessing surgeons' theories of racial health alongside their experiences in India an man-midwives, family doctors, eligible bachelors and the fathers of children, this study reveals the myriad ways in which social and domestic life shaped the medical profession's scientific understanding in a colonial context.