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Pasteur's Empire - French Expertise, Colonialism, and Transnational Science

Objective

This project investigates how bacteriologists at the Pasteur Institute reimagined the French empire as a biotechnological space of experimentation in the early twentieth century, and conversely, how medical technologies developed in French colonies in Indochina, West Africa and Tunisia were enrolled to both shore up and challenge colonial power.

Scholars are increasingly interested in how global inequalities shape medical development i.e through the outsourcing of clinical trials. Yet most work has focused on the role of politicoeconomic inequalities. This project firstly investigates how the framework of empire interacted with the construction of colonial technoscience - new epidemiological data, laboratory infrastructure - that rendered French colonies legible as spaces of medical experimentation. Scientists turned the colonies into resources they could use to maneuver around metropolitan obstacles such as resistance to large-scale human trials of new vaccines, and push their projects further.

Secondly, this project focuses on plague containment, alcohol and opium fermentation, and tuberculosis and yellow fever vaccination, showing how these projects empowered French, Vietnamese and African actors in the realm of politics. French colonial administrators used vaccines and fermentation techniques as examples of rational French progress, imposing reforms that limited labor rights, centralized major industries in French hands, and restricting rights of association for colonial subjects. At the same time, Vietnamese and African activists could leverage the discourse of progress to point to the practical failures of bacteriological technologies, opening up a new language for claiming rights and criticizing the empire.

By integrating transnational history with science and technology studies, this project provides a new lens for studying the history of empire and understanding the political consequences of medical development.

Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)

CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.

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Keywords

Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)

Programme(s)

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Topic(s)

Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.

Funding Scheme

Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.

MSCA-IF - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowships (IF)

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Call for proposal

Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.

(opens in new window) H2020-MSCA-IF-2016

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Coordinator

THE CHANCELLOR, MASTERS AND SCHOLARS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
Net EU contribution

Net EU financial contribution. The sum of money that the participant receives, deducted by the EU contribution to its linked third party. It considers the distribution of the EU financial contribution between direct beneficiaries of the project and other types of participants, like third-party participants.

€ 183 454,80
Address
WELLINGTON SQUARE UNIVERSITY OFFICES
OX1 2JD Oxford
United Kingdom

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Region
South East (England) Berkshire, Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire Oxfordshire
Activity type
Higher or Secondary Education Establishments
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Total cost

The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.

€ 183 454,80
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