African Ecology and Imperial Power: Politics of Disease Control in Colonial Uganda, 1894–1962

Abstract

The relationship between political economy and public health has long shaped the trajectory of diseases in African societies, particularly under colonial rule. This paper examines how British colonial economic priorities in Uganda during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries contributed to the emergence, spread, and management of major epidemics. Driven by the imperative to secure revenue, ensure self-sufficiency, and sustain the imperial economy, the colonial administration prioritized cash-crop production, taxation, and infrastructure expansion over the health needs of local populations. These policies disrupted subsistence systems, intensified ecological exposure, accelerated mobility and urbanization, and altered social structures, conditions that heightened vulnerability to infectious diseases. Yet, when epidemics began to threaten economic productivity and administrative stability, the colonial government introduced a range of both coercive and non-coercive interventions, including sanitation campaigns, forced evacuations, and mass public-health sensitization. The paper argues that colonial economic policies disrupted the traditional set up and created fertile ground for epidemics to unfold, while the subsequent disease-control measures though some often authoritarian played a role in curbing their spread. Situating epidemics within broader historical and economic transformations, the study examines the importance of integrating community engagement and attention to social determinants of health in contemporary public health strategies in Uganda. This paper makes a significant contribution to the historiography of colonial medicine, environmental history, and public health in Uganda and Africa generally from 1894 to 1962.