Fleas, Knowledge-Making, and the Epidemiology of Plague in British India: Perspectives from the Bombay Epidemic, 1905–1906

Webster, Emily

Abstract

The Bombay plague epidemic is estimated to have killed over 180,000 people in the city from its arrival in 1896 to its eventual disappearance in the 1930s. This chapter explores how experiments developed by the Second Plague Commission in 1906-1907 in response to the epidemic, especially those focused on the role of the rat-flea, Xenopsylla cheopis, in plague transmission, relied on multispecies relationships and ecologies within the city to develop and test the mechanisms of the rat-flea theory. It argues that the urban ecology of Bombay and the highly specific, cyclic presentation of Yersinia pestis in the city informed the structure of experiments, allowing imperial medical officials to engineer these epizootics among “wild” rats, fleas, and experimental animals in ways that elucidated the local transmission pathways for plague. In these experiments, imperial scientists treated the urban ecologies and the multiple species that lived within them as part of an “experimental system,” and utilized the locally-specific presentation of plague to drive and design inquiry into the epizootic – with significant, long-lasting effects on the study of the disease.

Citation

Webster, E. (2024). Fleas, Knowledge-Making, and the Epidemiology of Plague in British India: Perspectives from the Bombay Epidemic, 1905–1906. In L. Hollsten, O. Latva, S. Lillbroända-Annala, S. Rytty, & T. Räsänen (Eds.), Human–Bug Encounters in Multispecies Networks (248-266). Brill Academic Publishers. https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004715448_014

• Online Publication Date: Dec 2, 2024
• Publication Date: Nov 11, 2024
• Deposit Date: Jun 5, 2025
• Publicly Available Date: Jun 6, 2025
• Publisher: Brill Academic Publishers
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 8
• Pages: 248-266
• Series Title: Brill's Series in the History of the Environment
• Book Title: Human–Bug Encounters in Multispecies Networks
• Chapter Number: 12
• ISBN: 9789004680609
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004715448_014
• Public URL: https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/4089836