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Paper short abstract:

This paper illustrates a paradigm shift in the Belgian approach to combatting vector-borne infectious diseases by discussing how insect mobility influenced the development of eco-medical knowledge and the spatiality of colonial healthcare measures in the Belgian Congo (1908-1960).

Paper long abstract:

Mosquitos and tsetse flies were highly influential in shaping the course of colonial expansion in the Belgian Congo (1908-1960), especially for their ability to transmit parasites that cause malaria and sleeping sickness. These insects adapted swiftly to the large-scale human alteration of their habitats by resettling into newly created urban and industrial landscapes. Their movement forced colonial administrators to respond to their behaviour and associated health risks. In this paper, I will examine how mosquito and tsetse fly mobility influenced the development of colonial healthcare in the Belgian Congo, in order to show that the Belgian approach to combatting vector-borne infectious diseases witnessed a paradigm shift. I will discuss how public health administrators increasingly adopted ecologically oriented preventive healthcare measures targeted at vector control, which they based on newly developed expertise on insect behaviour. This analysis runs counter to prevailing views in historiography that Belgian colonial disease control was purely medical and not concerned with environmental approaches to healthcare like vector elimination. My analysis will be based on reports of Belgian medical experts and on annual charts of Congolese ‘sanitary brigades’ employed by the colonial Public Hygiene Department. These brigades were expected to examine mosquito mobility, to transfer the insects to laboratories for medical entomological research and to eliminate the species’ breeding grounds. By focusing on the influence of insect agency, this paper will shed new light on the development of colonial eco-medical knowledge production, the spatiality of colonial healthcare measures and their consequences for human lives and more-than-human landscapes.