Ethnographic Plague: Configuring Disease on the Chinese-Russian Frontier

218 Pages·2016·2.48 MB·English

by  Christos Lynteris (auth.)

ethnographic
plague
Confi guring Disease on the
Chinese-Russian Frontier
christos lynteris
Ethnographic Plague
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Christos   Lynteris
Ethnographic Plague
Confi guring Disease on the Chinese-Russian
Frontier
Christos   L ynteris
University of Cambridge, UK
ISBN 978-1-137-59684-0 ISBN 978-1-137-59685-7 (eBook)
DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-59685-7
Library of Congress Control Number: 2016948418
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2 016
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in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the
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The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this
publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specifi c statement, that such names are
exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information
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Cover illustration: Mukden Plague Hospital, Mukden, Manchuria.
Courtesy of the Centre for the Study of World Christianity, University of Edinburgh.
Printed on acid-free paper
This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by Springer Nature
The registered company is Macmillan Publishers Ltd. London
To the memory of David J. Riches (1947–2011),
anthropologist, teacher, and friend.
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N T T
OTE ON RANSLATION AND RANSLITERATION
Romanisation of Russian follows the British Standard (BS 2979:1958),
with the exception of endings in surnames, where –i ĭ is rendered –y
(hence Zabolotny and not Zabolotniĭ). In the case of Cherkassov and
Beliavsky, the names as appear here have been retained in accordance to
established bibliographical reference in English (instead of Cherkasov and
Bêlyavsky). I would like to thank Anna Afanasyeva for her generous help
in proofreading these transliterations. Romanisation from the Chinese fol-
lows the pinyin system, with the exception of direct quotes and biblio-
graphical notes, where the original Wade-Giles transliteration is retained.
Throughout the book the Siberian marmot is spelled tarbagan , with the
exception of direct quotes where the original text or direct translitera-
tion is retained. Translations from the German are by Emily Stavridis with
editorial help by Lukas Engelmann. Translations from the French are the
author’s, with due thanks to Frédéric Keck for suggestions and correc-
tions. Translations from the Russian are by Nikolai Ssorin-Chaikov unless
otherwise stated. The author retains all responsibility for mistakes in trans-
lation and transliteration.
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P
REFACE
My interest in plague and its relation to marmots began in the course
of conducting anthropological fi eldwork in a local Centre for Disease
Control and Prevention in China in 2008. Examining medical jour-
nals and archives in search of epidemic events that shaped the modern
Chinese state, I quickly came to realise what a series of medical histori-
ans had already detected: the birth of Chinese epidemiology, even of the
biopolitical paradigm in China as such, could be traced to the 1910–11
Manchurian pneumonic plague epidemic. Reading through published and
archival material, I became fascinated by the role attributed to marmots as
the origin of the outbreak that left 60,000 dead and radically reshaped the
relation between state and population in China.
Faced by the devastating epidemic, Chinese and Russian epidemiolo-
gists seemed to agree that the source of plague amongst humans was not
the usual suspect, the rat, but an altogether different rodent species: mar-
mots. Noting that the animal had become a lucrative source of income
due to the unprecedented demand for its fur by the European markets
after 1908, Chinese medical authorities blamed marmot hunting for the
spread of the disease from the wild rodents to humans. Yet, to my fas-
cination as an anthropologist, I soon realised that the hunters blamed
univocally for the disaster were not native Mongols or Buryats, who were
relying on marmots for meat, fat, and fur, but Chinese migrant workers
fl ocking to the region for quick profi t.
This outbreak narrative lauded natives as knowing everything about
plague, including how to prevent it, and blamed Chinese migrant work-
ers, who were employed in the mass-hunt of the particular animal, as an
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