Douglas M. Peers
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Imperial vice
Sex, drink and the health of British troops in North Indian cantonments, 1800–1858
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British medical and military thinking in the nineteenth century had pinpointed Indian society as the primary source of social diseases. 1858 is often depicted as the watershed in the medical history of the British Army, both at home and abroad. This chapter looks at the problems posed by venereal diseases and alcohol, and the strategies pursued to combat cantonments. It sketches how military requirements, and North Indian military culture, shaped the cantonments where European troops were stationed (and which provided them with access to drink and to prostitutes). The chapter considers how sanitary ideas and practices established the context in which surgeons and military officers tried to cope with drunkenness and sexually transmitted diseases. The sanitary regimes which evolved in Indian cantonments were patterned according to colonial ideologies and informed by orientalist readings of Indian society.

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Guardians of empire

The armed forces of the colonial powers c. 1700–1964

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