The First World War and its aftermath gave birth to the trauma industry – an intellectual, political, and institutional response to the widespread experiences of disability and “shell shock” among veterans. “Disabled Empire” follows several million non-white colonial subjects from across the British Empire who fought in the War, and their experience of grievous injury, debility, and trauma. Through a comparative analysis of South Asian and West Indian servicemen, it explains how race shaped the character and goals of bodily and psychological treatments that the British wartime and post-war state offered its non-white veterans. It also analyzes the impact non-white veterans had on how white British psychologists, orthopaedists, hospital staff, policy makers and administrators understood trauma. It reveals how colonial subjects’ service in WWI destabilized long-standing ideologies about masculinity and racial difference, even as it produced an uneven system of care. Throughout the Great War, British officials struggled to resolve the paradox of enacting the Empire’s mission to restore the health of crucial manpower reserves of non-white soldiers, while reinforcing colonial gendered and racial hierarchies. Imperial constructions of race, from the fearless South Asian ‘martial races’ to the hypersexualized black masculinity of West Indians, shaped the kind of wartime service Indian and Afro-Caribbean soldiers were allowed to perform and the treatment of their psychological and physical injuries. Whether in the form of ethnic-specific diets and rations, the provision of impractical prosthetics, or discounting trauma through racialized stigmas, colonial soldiers navigated a health system whose technologies, diagnostics, and treatments denied them the same quality and level of care as their white counterparts. Yet White British Tommies’, Indian Sepoys’, and West Indian labour corps workers’ concurrent experiences of disease, disability, and trauma disrupted ideologies about colonial difference. Drawing on archives from the United Kingdom, Jamaica, and India, the thesis’s transcolonial framework demonstrates how racial ideologies simultaneously played into and were subverted by the process of offering healthcare to non-white colonial subjects. It demonstrates the war’s lasting effects on the policies and practices of healthcare and welfare throughout the Empire.
Subject (authority = RUETD)
Topic
History
RelatedItem (type = host)
TitleInfo
Title
Rutgers University Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Identifier (type = RULIB)
ETD
Identifier
ETD_8817
PhysicalDescription
Form (authority = gmd)
electronic resource
InternetMediaType
application/pdf
InternetMediaType
text/xml
Extent
1 online resource (vii, 379 p.)
Note (type = degree)
Ph.D.
Note (type = bibliography)
Includes bibliographical references
Subject (authority = ETD-LCSH)
Topic
Great Britain--Army--Colonial forces
Subject (authority = ETD-LCSH)
Topic
World War, 1914-1918
Note (type = statement of responsibility)
by Hilary R. Buxton
RelatedItem (type = host)
TitleInfo
Title
School of Graduate Studies Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Identifier (type = local)
rucore10001600001
Location
PhysicalLocation (authority = marcorg); (displayLabel = Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey)
I hereby grant to the Rutgers University Libraries and to my school the non-exclusive right to archive, reproduce and distribute my thesis or dissertation, in whole or in part, and/or my abstract, in whole or in part, in and from an electronic format, subject to the release date subsequently stipulated in this submittal form and approved by my school. I represent and stipulate that the thesis or dissertation and its abstract are my original work, that they do not infringe or violate any rights of others, and that I make these grants as the sole owner of the rights to my thesis or dissertation and its abstract. I represent that I have obtained written permissions, when necessary, from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis or dissertation and will supply copies of such upon request by my school. I acknowledge that RU ETD and my school will not distribute my thesis or dissertation or its abstract if, in their reasonable judgment, they believe all such rights have not been secured. I acknowledge that I retain ownership rights to the copyright of my work. I also retain the right to use all or part of this thesis or dissertation in future works, such as articles or books.