Foxhall, Katherine (2008) Disease at sea: convicts, emigrants, ships and the ocean in the voyage to Australia, c. 1830-1860. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

PDF WRAP_THESIS_Foxhall_2008.pdf - Unspecified Version Embargoed item. Restricted access to Repository staff only - Requires a PDF viewer. Download (32Mb)

Request Changes to record.

Abstract

This thesis explores the relationship between migration and disease in c.1830 – c.1860. Each chapter questions how convicts, emigrants and the surgeons who accompanied them thought about disease and in turn how disease changes how we understand migration historically. It is a study of the creation of medical knowledge across the geographical space of the voyage to Australia and emphasises an understanding of disease as a mental and physical interaction between humans and their environment. The thesis argues that this understanding allowed migrants and colonists to see disease at sea as a test of migrants’ and convicts’ fitness to colonise.

The point of departure for this thesis is that the Australian sailing voyage provides a unique and prolonged tension between shipboard confinement and global movements through ever-changing, often extreme, oceanic climates. From this premise, six individual chapters follow the trajectory of the voyage from Britain to Australia. These chapters analyse individual disease such as cholera, fevers, scurvy and consumption, as well as deepening our understanding of the tropics and quarantine by rethinking these histories through a maritime dynamic.

Throughout, the thesis analyses evidence in convict and emigrant ship surgeons’ journals, migrants’ diaries and published medical literature as its primary source material, supplemented by government reports and contemporary newspapers. Collectively, the chapters of the thesis connect conventionally separate histories of medicine, convict transportation, colonial emigration, and British welfare and prison reform. By exploiting a uniquely maritime tension between shipboard confinement and global migration, the thesis provides a new way to understand the persistence of ideas about the relationship between people, environment, migration and disease in the modern period.

Item Type:	Thesis (PhD)
Subjects:	R Medicine > R Medicine (General) R Medicine > RA Public aspects of medicine
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH):	Emigration and immigration -- Health aspects, Medicine, Naval -- History -- 17th century, Great Britain -- Colonies -- Oceania, Australia -- Emigration and immigration, Australia -- History -- 19th century
Official Date:	August 2008
Dates:	Date Event August 2008 Submitted
Institution:	University of Warwick
Theses Department:	Department of History
Thesis Type:	PhD
Publication Status:	Unpublished
Supervisor(s)/Advisor:	Finn, Margot C. ; Hodges, Sarah
Sponsors:	Wellcome Trust (Wellcome) ; Sir Robert Menzies Centre for Australian Studies (MCAS)
Format of File:	pdf
Extent:	311 leaves : facsims., maps
Language:	eng

Request changes or add full text files to a record

Repository staff actions (login required)

View Item