Manikarnika Dutta

Research Topic

“Sanitary Regulation in Britain's Maritime Empire: Disease and Naval Health in Indian Port Cities, 1800-1900”

Supervisor: Professor Mark Harrison

My doctoral thesis looked into the health and welfare of European seamen in the British naval and merchant fleet on board ships and in Indian port cities in the nineteenth century. It examined the sanitary regulations and maritime hygiene implemented by the British Empire to protect the health of their seamen. My thesis argued that seamen’s health in transit and in imperial port cities was instrumental in the development of tropical medicine and sanitary reform, which were an indispensable mechanism for empire-building. It examined the ideologies of colonial governance, the idea of public health, and the development of maritime hygiene. I am currently undertaking additional research to expand the scope of this study by looking at how merchant shipping companies provided healthcare to seamen alongside the State and the Church.  My doctoral research was funded by the the Wellcome Trust-funded project: 'From Sail to Steam: Health, Medicine and the Victorian Navy'.

My essay " 'Drunkenness, disease, and death broods over the portals: Liquor and Regulation of the Health of European Sailors in Nineteenth-century Calcutta" won the Taniguchi Medal awarded by the Asian Society for the History of Medicine, for the best graduate essay on some aspect of the history of medicine in Asia.  https://www.hsmt.ox.ac.uk/article/taniguchi-medal-2018-winner-ms-manikar...

Publication

‘European Sailors, Alcohol and Cholera in Nineteenth-Century India’, in Disease Dispersion and Impact in the Indian Ocean World, edited by Gwyn Campbell and Eva-Maria Knoll (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2020), 191-210. https://www.palgrave.com/gp/book/9783030362638

Public Engagement

‘Sailor’s Home or Public House? Confessions of a Christian Missionary in Colonial India,’ Global Maritime History, http://globalmaritimehistory.com/sailors-home-or-public-house-confessions-of-a-christian-missionary-in-colonial-india/, 4 November 2019.

Organised ‘Death at Teatime’ event as part of the Being Human Festival, in collaboration with Wellcome Centre for Ethics and Humanities and The Uncomfortable Oxford, Oxford, 23 November 2019. https://www.torch.ox.ac.uk/event/death-at-teatime

Uncomfortable Oxford (Podcast on Disease and Colonialism) https://www.buzzsprout.com/997600/3303271

Coronavirus pandemic: Is it 'unprecedented'? Historians tell us what we can learn from the past  https://www.asiavillenews.com/article/is-coronavirus-pandemic-unpreceden...

Contributor to the The Oxford COVID-19 Government Response Tracker (OxCGRT) 

https://www.bsg.ox.ac.uk/research/research-projects/coronavirus-governme...

Media interviews

https://www.indiatoday.in/coronavirus-outbreak/video/can-india-flatten-c... Today News Channel 

 https://www.asiavillenews.com/article/locating-coronavirus-pandemic-in-t...

Aaj Tak News Channel

Tweet @ https://twitter.com/DManikarnika