La plus grande richesse est la santé : l’impérialisme médical en Algérie, années 1920-1930

Based upon my ongoing doctoral research into colonial medicine in French Algeria in the early 20th century, my presentation will focus on a particular aspect of that larger subject: the collaboration of different aid societies, both French and international, in the French colonial project. In particular, I will discuss the Pasteur Institute and their vaccination campaigns on Algerians, the Rockefeller Centre and their creation of a French Hygiene Office in Algeria, the International Red Cross and their nursing and doctoral training programs on colonial medicine in Algerian hospitals, and how the League of Nations collected information on epidemics in North Africa. I will demonstrate how colonial medicine was integral to French colonialism and argue that the French colonial project was one facet of a multi-national system of institutionalized prosperity and disparity created to maintain European and North American control on the global stage. My research, therefore, argues for Historians to situate French colonialism in a global context: in many respects, what my research uncovers in North Africa might be better understood as “western” rather than specifically “French” colonialism, given the deep involvement of non-French institutions in it.