Paper short abstract:

Via the example of medical maps produced during the sleeping sickness epidemics in colonial Africa, this paper illuminates how spatial practices shaped colonial conceptions of territory, nature and disease.

Paper long abstract:

At the beginning of the 20th century, sleeping sickness epidemics broke out in various parts of colonial Africa. Particularly in the densely-populated areas along the shores and on the islands of Lake Victoria, the disease spread unhampered and caused escalating death tolls. Colonial responses to the epidemic were closely tied to colonial governance, combining pharmaceutical with ecological techniques of disease control. Maps were crucial for this new field of inquiry. For officials managing the challenges of colonial administration, knowledge gathered in sleeping sickness maps and documentation was interesting for many more reasons than the disease itself. Conversely, for scientists participating in the sleeping sickness expeditions, the relative openness of their field of inquiry allowed for testing their own hypotheses about the relation between disease and place. Using sleeping sickness maps as a way of exploring entanglements between medical concerns and colonial governance, this paper illuminates how spatial practices shaped conceptions of territory, nature and disease. Through examining medical maps not only as visual representations but also as sources of knowledge, shapers of assumptions and as tools of political power, it seeks to explore in which ways disease control created openings for the articulation of colonial visions of the African environment.