Health and Disease in the Tropical Zone: Nineteenth-century British and Dutch Accounts of European Mortality in the Tropics

Acclimatisation theories varied depending on the political and social contexts in which they were used. Historians of medicine have argued that the pessimism of physicians practising in British India about the acclimatisation of white settlers in the tropics increased around the turn of the eighteenth century. Both British and Dutch physicians had long commented on the proverbial unhealthfulness of Batavia, but rather than relating this to the tropical climate, they emphasised the unwholesome behaviour of Dutch inhabitants. When Dutch physicians debated the possibility of white settlement in the tropical East Indies in the 1840s, many emphasised the importance of virtuous predisposition and intelligent behaviour in adjusting to the colony’s climate, suggesting optimistically that environmental problems might be resisted.