Abstract
D.Litt. et Phil. (Historical Studies)
European narratives before the 19th century represented the Gold Coast littoral as insanitary, insalubrious and the abode of diseases that killed swiftly. Such narratives grouped the Gold Coast among West African territories that acquired the dubious reputation as the “White man’s grave”, and informed colonial efforts at sanitary reforms during the late 19th century and beyond. Nonetheless, sanitation remained an enduring challenge throughout the colonial period. Curiously, the historiography on the social history of medicine and public health has largely silenced the question of sanitation. Where it is raised, it is treated as background information to explicate a specific health phenomenon. There is, thus, no comprehensive research on the history of sanitation. This study contributes to the historiography by addressing this lacuna. By focusing on the late 19th century to 1950, this research examines the management of sanitation and public hygiene, situating the analysis within the broader context of power and control to tease out its implications for public health.
Colonial measures deployed in managing sanitation and public hygiene in the Gold Coast included the use of legislative and regulatory instruments, the provision of sanitary amenities (including, public latrines, public dustbins, incinerators, potable water, etcetera.), surveillance techniques – mainly sanitary inspection and home visits, and educational prophylactic measures such as the teaching of hygiene in schools, public lectures, and the organisation of health weeks, etcetera. Other measures targeted mainly the materiality of malaria in public spaces and included segregation, drainage construction, swamp and lagoon reclamation, larvicide application and weed control. Furthermore, the colonial administration targeted the sanitary regulation of public and dwelling spaces through town planning. Additionally, the government extended control over bakeries, public eateries, market spaces, and slaughterhouses ostensibly to ensure that food items exposed for sale to the public adhered to hygienic standards.
Although these measures manifestly targeted sanitation and public hygiene in various forms, they produced something else. They provided avenues through which the colonial administration could reorder public spaces, reorient African practices in domestic and public spaces, recast the habits and attitudes of the African population and manipulate their desires towards Euro-Western conceptions of what constituted...