Empire and Britain's chronic-disease science
Moore argues that Britain's post-war hunt for chronic-disease causes turned colonial populations into comparative research material, not just tropical medicine leftovers.
Source
Harnessing the Power of Difference: Colonialism and British Chronic Disease Research, 1940-1975
What they did
Reads Jerry Morris's Uses of Epidemiology alongside published CHD/hypertension studies and Colonial Medical Research Committee (later Tropical Medical Research Board) files, especially the Epidemiological Research Unit in Jamaica and its afterlife.
What they found
Comparative epidemiology treated communities 'at an early stage of development' as a way to untangle 'ways of living' behind a 'modern epidemic' of middle-aged male CHD. Difference-seeking sent British researchers to colonial subjects. After decolonisation the Board still wanted an 'overseas base in a shrinking world'; the Jamaican unit later shifted toward sickle-cell work.
The limits
What it doesn't show
This is not a new cohort study of hypertension, nor proof that colonial comparison was the only origin of risk-factor epidemiology. It does not measure present-day Caribbean heart-disease rates.
Key terms
- Ways of living
- Morris's phrase for culturally inflected behaviours thought to drive rising chronic-disease mortality.
- CMRC / TMRB
- Colonial Medical Research Committee, later the Tropical Medical Research Board, a major British funder of overseas medical research.
- Epidemiological Research Unit (Jamaica)
- MRC unit used for chronic-disease comparison in the Caribbean, later recast toward other diseases of post-colonial interest.
- Modern epidemic
- Morris's label for middle-aged (especially male) mortality from conditions such as coronary heart disease.
Flashcards
Research intelligence for this paper
See its role on concept claims, tensions it is part of, placement history, and related discoveries.
Quiz yourself
Morris's 1964 book was?
Common questions
Why look at colonial populations?
Starkly different living conditions were supposed to isolate causes that were too common and interwoven in industrial Britain.
Which disease focus?
Coronary heart disease, especially hypertension as a risk factor.
What sources?
Published epidemiology plus CMRC/TMRB records.
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