British Colonial Healthcare in a Post-Emancipation Plantation Society: Creolising Public Health and Medicine in Trinidad, to 1916.

Abstract

<p>This study examines the advent of state public health and medical services in Trinidad in the post-emancipation colonial period, to 1916. Britain's sugar-producing plantation societies were structured to allow the small white Creole plantocracy to exploit the labour of the African and East Indian lower orders and keep the people in a perpetual state of poverty. Trinidad established the Government Medical Service (GMS) in 1870 in response to an edict from the Colonial Office. The civilising mission had clearly gone awry and state-provided western medical services would henceforth be mandatory to mitigate the excessive mortality and morbidities amongst the subject peoples.</p><p>The GMS rapidly evolved into a major provider of medical care services. However, the form and function of the GMS remained contested terrain, due to the enduring disagreements about the causes of the widespread impoverishment and illhealth amongst the people. The Creole plantocracy used the poverty and poor health of the Africans as proof of their regression into barbarism after emancipation. Conversely, some British officials believed that plantation society colonialism created adverse conditions of life, thus obligating the state to alleviate its effects. The Afro-and IndoTrinidadian people emerged as a powerful force in the process of creolising the colonial state's social policies, as tens of thousands of sufferers sought assistance from the government doctors each year. The GMS thus developed as a distinctly creolised West Indian entity providing western public health and medical services to the African and East Indian residents.</p>