Table Of ContentPasteur’s Empire
Pasteur’s Empire
Bacteriology and Politics in France, its
Colonies, and the World
ARO VELMET
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In memory of Mary Velmet
A bacteriological laboratory at a Dakarois hospital, early 1930s.
Amicale Santé Navale et Outre-Mer.
List of Illustrations and Maps
Illustrations
1. Epigraph: A bacteriological laboratory at a Dakarois hospital, early 1930s.
Amicale Santé Navale et Outre-Mer. 2
1.1 Portrait of Alexandre Yersin at age thirty in 1893. Photo by Pierre Petit.
© Institut Pasteur/M usée Pasteur. 24
1.2 Staffordshire Regiment cleaning plague houses, Hong Kong. CC4.0 Wellcome
Library. 28
2.1 Postcard of an indigenous distillery of flowers and alcohol. Collection of the
author. 52
2.2 The factory of the French Society of Distilleries of Indochina, 1921. Bonnet,
Pierre (1888– 1965). Paris, Musée Guimet—M usée national des Arts asiatiques.
© RMN- Grand Palais / Art Resource, NY. 60
3.1 The inauguration of the Pasteur Institute in 1888. L. Tinayre, Le Monde Illustré,
15 November 1888. 86
3.2 Students and researchers working on microbe colonies at the Pasteur Institute.
Alexis Lemaistre. © Institut Pasteur / Musée Pasteur. 87
3.3 Cover of Journal des Voyages, 26 May 1895. “Doctor Yersin in the Land of the
Mois.” © Institut Pasteur / Musée Pasteur. 94
3.4 Institut Pasteur of Dakar. © MJ Photography / Alamy Stock Photo. 113
4.1 “The German Eagle will be defeated. Tuberculosis must be defeated, too.”
TB propaganda during World War I. Rockefeller Archive Center. 125
4.2 Cover image for a Rockefeller educational publication for French children. Some
two million copies of similar literature were distributed during the Rockefeller
Foundation mission to France. Rockefeller Archive Center. 127
4.3 Traveling tuberculosis unit used by the Educational Division, Committee for
the Prevention of Tuberculosis, in France, 1919. Rockefeller Archive Center. 128
5.1 Anti- TB stamp of Albert Calmette, “savior of the newborns with BCG.”
© Institut Pasteur / Musée Pasteur. 164
6.1 French constructions in Dakar. The two men are standing in front of a memorial
to those who perished in the 1878 yellow fever epidemic, ca. 1928. Rockefeller
Archive Center. 178
x List of Illustrations and Maps
6.2 An African homestead in Thies, Senegal. This building would have been
incinerated in case of a yellow fever outbreak. Rockefeller Archive Center. 181
6.3 A Clayton apparatus at work in Dakar in 1927. Rockefeller Archive Center. 185
7.1 Delegates at the 1928 yellow fever conference in Dakar. In the first row, third
from the left, is Jean Laigret, third from the right is Henry Beeuwkes, first from
the right is A. Watson Sellards, and second row third from the right is Constant
Mathis. Rockefeller Archive Center. 190
Maps
1. F rench empire and the Pasteur Institutes, ca. 1939 2
2. A lexandre Yersin’s plague expeditions 18
3. Y ellow fever vaccine laboratories 190
A ll maps by Kate Blackmer
Acknowledgments
Much has changed in the world and in the historical discipline since this
book began as a doctoral dissertation at New York University in 2013. I came
to NYU’s Institute of French Studies with an interest in the history of exper-
tise and the use of scientific discourses in politics. At the time, a generation of
scholars had reframed the history of France around its relationship to coloni-
alism and highlighted the centrality of race, immigration, and demography
in the country’s political past. Following a project on French imaginations
of colonial beauty and fertility in the “age of depopulation,” it made perfect
sense to study the history of public health programs and the rise of Pastorian
bacteriology. After all, it was hard to read through a single official document
on colonial policy without encountering a reference to the vital importance
of improving colonial birth rates, public health, and other demographic
factors. How did the new laboratory science of bacteriology shape these
visions of colonialism?
As is in the nature of research, the focus of this project shifted over time.
I realized that, rather than being solely about expertise and discourse, this
book was ultimately about imaginations of ecology clashing with actually ex-
isting environments. In other words, it was about the different ways experts,
administrators, and activists imagined the interactions of humans, medical
technologies, and microbes, but equally important, it was about the humans,
medical technologies, and microbes themselves. The book ultimately looks
at the politics produced by the increasing chasm between an idea of ecology
that portrays humans and microbes as abstracted from any sense of place and
local specificity, and a reality that reinforces precisely the opposite. It looks at
the scientific, political, and economic forces that make the idea of universal-
izing abstraction so appealing, and the conflicts generated by the moments
when the unpredictable interdependence of tools, microbes, and men make
the Pastorian idea fall apart.
Over the years, this project has become both more global and more gran-
ular, focusing more on networks extending beyond the French empire, as
well as on the nitty-g ritty of vaccine engineering, yeast cultivation, and mu-
rine biology. These moves were inspired by both intellectual and archival
xii Acknowledgments
explorations. In terms of theoretical influences, this book owes its greatest
debts to Frederick Cooper, Gabrielle Hecht, Ruth Rogaski, and Keith Wailoo.
For sheer inspiration, mentorship, and ongoing feedback, Herrick Chapman,
Guy Ortolano, and Stefanos Geroulanos deserve infinite credit. Many friends
and colleagues at New York University, the University of Oxford, and the
University of Southern California have read partial or full drafts of var-
ious versions of this manuscript. I cannot thank them enough for their pa-
tience, generosity, and sharp feedback. They include, in no particular order,
Stéphane Gerson, Frédéric Viguier, Liz Fink, Evan Spitzer, Jessica Pearson,
Ian Merkel, Erik Meddles, Sarah Griswold, Alexander Arnold, Larry Wolff,
Jane Burbank, Molly Nolan, Myles Jackson, Robyn d’Avignon, and Julie
Livingston at NYU; Mark Harrison, Claas Kirchhelle, Martin Conway, and
Erica Charters at Oxford; and Paul Lerner, Wolf Gruner, Vanessa Schwartz,
and Elinor Accampo at USC. Scholars at other institutions have been no less
influential. During my travels I have learned immensely from Eric Jennings,
Alice Conklin, Emmanuelle Saada, Guillaume Lachenal, Gilles Pécout,
Susannah Wilson, Sarah Easterby- Smith, Albert Wu, Camille Robcis, Tyler
Stovall, Kate Brown, Mary Mitchell, Gerard Sasges, Erica Peters, Mitchitake
Aso, and Fredrik Meiton.
I have had to navigate archives on four different continents, and the gener-
osity and assistance I have received from local archivists and administrators
cannot be overstated. In particular, I would like to thank Daniel Demellier
at the Archives of the Institut Pasteur in Paris, André Spiegel at the Institut
Pasteur of Dakar, Do Kien at the Vietnamese National University, and Tom
Rosenbaum at the Rockefeller Archive Center. Archivists at the League of
Nations Archives in Geneva and the National Archives in France, the United
Kingdom, Senegal, and Vietnam (Ho Chi Minh City, Dalat, and Hanoi) all
deserve credit, as do librarians at the Bodleian Library in Oxford, the Bobst
Library in New York, the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, and the Estonian
National Library in Tallinn.
This project has benefited from financial support from the Estonian
Ministry of Education and Research, the Michel Beaujour Fellowship, the
Rockefeller Archive Center, the American Historical Association, the
Josephine De Karman Dissertation Fellowship, the Jerrold Seigel Fellowship
in Intellectual or Cultural History, the NYU Remarque Institute Fellowship,
and numerous other grants and fellowships at NYU, as well as research
funding from the University of Oxford and from the University of Southern
California. The Wellcome Unit for the History of Medicine and Wadham
