Overview

In The Doctor Who Would Be King Guillaume Lachenal tells the extraordinary story of Dr. Jean Joseph David, a French colonial army doctor who governed an entire region of French Cameroon during World War II. Dr. David-whom locals called ""emperor""-dreamed of establishing a medical utopia. Through unchecked power, he imagined realizing the colonialist fantasy of emancipating colonized subjects from misery, ignorance, and sickness. Drawing on archives, oral histories, and ethnographic fieldwork, Lachenal traces Dr. David's earlier attempts at a similar project on a Polynesian island and the ongoing legacies of his failed experiment in Cameroon. Lachenal does not merely recount a Conradian tale of imperial hubris, he brings the past into the present, exploring the memories and remains of Dr. David's rule to reveal a global history of violence, desire, and failure in which hope for the future gets lost in the tragic comedy of power.

Full Product Details

Author:   Guillaume Lachenal ,  Cheryl Smeall
Publisher:   Duke University Press
Imprint:   Duke University Press
Weight:   0.567kg
ISBN:  

9781478015246

ISBN 10:   1478015241
Pages:   312
Publication Date:   15 April 2022
Audience:   Professional and scholarly ,  Professional & Vocational
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   In Print  
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Table of Contents

"Introduction  1 Part I. The Mandated Territory of Cameroon, 1939–1944 1. A Showcase for Colonial Humanism  17 2. An Archipelago of Camps  22 3. Madame Ateba  26 4. Advocating for a Regime of Exception  31 5. A French Dream  36 6. Haut-Nyong Must Be Saved  40 7. Lessons in Medical Administration  45 8. Paradise: A Guided Tour (December 2013)  52 9. A Real-Life Experiment  58 10. The Invisible Men  63 11. Social Medicine, French-Style  69 12. Life Has Returned  75 13. Colonel David Will Become a General  84 14. The Missionaries' Nightmare  92 15. The Dark Waters of the Haut-Nyong  95 16. Rubber for the Emperor  100 17. ""Here We Are the Masters""  106 18. Koch! Koch!  111 Part II. The French Protectorate of Wallis and Futuna, 1933–1938 19. King David  125 20. Uvea, Desert Island  129 21. Chronicles of the Golden Age  140 22. I te Temi o Tavite (In the Time of David)  153 23. Doctor Machete  160 24. Becoming King, Part I: Coup d'état at the Dispensary  165 25. Becoming King, Part II: The Wallisian Art of Governing  172 26. Becoming King, Part III: Kicking Custom to the Curb  178 27. Te Hau Tavite  183 28. Tavite Lea Tahi (David-Only-Speaks-Once)  190 29. Doctor Disaster  198 Part III. Epilogues 30. Afelika (Africa)  215 31. Dachau, Indochina  223 32. The Light Riots  232 Afterword: Global Health Utopias from David to COVID-19  238 Acknowledgments  245 Notes  249 Index  293"

Reviews

In this riveting account, Guillaume Lachenal discovers that French doctors seeking police powers and administrative control in colonial Cameroon did not lead to a health utopia, nor did these arrangements reverse decades of demographic decline in the battered colony. What they got was their own transformation into colonial governors. A superb translation of a gifted scholar and stylist, The Doctor Who Would be King is as alive as any ethnography to social life in poorly known but much roiled parts of the French empire that once circled the globe. -- Paul Farmer, author of * Fevers, Feuds, and Diamonds: Ebola and the Ravages of History *

Author Information

Guillaume Lachenal is Professor in History of Science, médialab, Sciences Po, Paris and author of The Lomidine Files: The Untold Story of a Medical Disaster in Colonial Africa. Cheryl Smeall is an independent scholar and translator.

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