Striving for Excellence at the Margins Science, Decolonization, and The
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Striving for Excellence at the Margins Science, Decolonization, and the History of the Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute ( Swiss TPH ) in ( post- ) colonial Africa, 1943 — 2000 Lukas Meier Submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of History, University of Basel, 2012 Supervisors: Prof. Martin Lengwiler, Prof. Patrick Harries — 2 — INTRODUCTION 5 Science, Medicine, and Decolonization CHAPTER 1 32 Decolonization, Development and Geographies of Knowledge, 1930—1950 CHAPTER 2 55 Postwar Switzerland and Sciences for the Colonies, 1940—1950 CHAPTER 3 93 Scientists in the Field, 1950—1960 CHAPTER 4 120 Technoscience, Development, and Nutritional Research in Switzerland and Africa, 1960—1980 CHAPTER 5 168 The Empire “Re-Treats.” Medical Research, Development and the Rise of Social Medicine in Tanzania and Switzerland, 1960—1980 CHAPTER 6 202 Towards Transnational Governmentality. Transforming Swiss Science During the Period of Structural Adjustment, 1980—1990 CHAPTER 7 236 Malaria CHAPTER 8 270 Science and Decolonization Revisited REFERENCES 280 Archives and Sources — 3 — History isn’t the lies of the victors, as I once glibly assured Old Joe Hunt; I know that now. It’s more the memories of the survivors, most of whom are neither victorious nor defeated Julian Barnes, The Sense of an Ending — 4 — ACKNOWLEDGMENTS It was in 2009 and shortly before my first departure to Tanzania when I again made a short visit to the offices of the SwiSS Tropical inSTiTuTe in Basel. As it turned out, this visit had some serious consequences because the institute’s director, Marcel Tanner, asked me to transport a suitcase from Basel to the laboratory of Ifakara in rural Tanzania. For many hours of the journey I found myself musing about the contents of this black box which travelled alongside my personal items and even without knowing it, I had the dim sensation that this unwieldy passenger which I put into circulation propelled my journey out of the ordinary and rendered it more meaningful than would probably have been without it. Much later, I learned that the unhandy luggage was a cD4 cell count machine to assist the staff of the HiV/aiDS clinic in Ifakara for a more sound diagnosis of HiV. The major protagonist of this short episode is this powerful piece of technology that proved to be vital for facilitating my entry into the “field” and for bringing me together with people and institutions without which the present study could not have been written. Apart from Marcel Tanner, who initiated and supported the project throughout the years and the staff of the Swiss TPH, I do thank the r. GeiGy STifTunG (Basel), the freiwilliGe akaDemiScHe GeSellScHafT (FAG), the commiSSion for reSearcH parTnerSHip wiTH DeVelopinG coun- TrieS (kfpe), the Dr. H. a. VöGelin-Bienz-STifTunG (Staatsarchiv Basel-Stadt) and the JoSef unD olGa TomcSik-STifTunG (Basel) for their generous financial support. In Tanzania, I thank the commiSSion for Science anD TecHnoloGy (coSTecH) for research approval as well as Frederick Kaijage and Bertram Mapunda (Department of History, University of Dar es Salaam) for their hospitality. A special thanks goes to the staff of the ifakara HealTH inSTiTuTe (iHi) in Dar es Salaam, Ifakara and Mtwara who did everything possible to fa- cilitate research at the different field-sites in Tanzania. Likewise, in Côte d’Ivoire, I am in- debted to the miniSTère De l’enSeiGnemenT Supérieur eT De la recHercHe ScienTifique (Direction Générale de la Recherche Scientifique et de l’Innovation Technologique) and the staff of the cenTre SuiSSe De recHercHeS ScienTifiqueS (cSrS) for all their generous support. In Switzerland, the study profited from the inputs of my two thesis supervisors, Martin Lengwiler and Patrick Harries, who carefully guided me over the years. Invalu- able support came from Rolf Wilhelm, Christine Walliser and the members of the advi- sory board Howard Phillips, Catherine Burns, Julie Parle, Vanessa Noble, Harriet Deacon, Lizy Hall, Helen Sweet, Anne Digby, Shula Marks, Walter Bruchhausen, Brigit Obrist, Piet van Eeuwijk, Elisio Macamo, Paul Jenkins, Socrates Litsios, Hines Mabika and Jean-Paul Bado. The intellectual generosity of all those who commented on draft chapters of the manuscript cannot be overestimated. Apart from my working colleagues Marcel Dreier, Pascal Schmid, Rita Kesselring and Nanina Guyer, this applies to Marcel Tanner, Thierry Freyvogel, Kurt Schopfer, André Aeschlimann and Bernhard Schär. Sincere thanks are also due to Tony Clarke who in uncountable hours smoothed out any English language issues. My deepest gratitude goes to Anna Schorner who has been assisting and supporting me for several years. — 5 — IntroductIon Science, Medicine, and Decolonization Day by day, Philipp Yacé, secretary general of the parTi DémocraTique De côTe D’iVoire (pDci) and president of the National Assembly would enter his office, sit on his office desk, turn his mind to Ivoirian politics and his back on a world map hanging on the wall behind his desk. The map never made it into schoolbooks. It offered a different, albeit imaginary, vision of colD war politics. Seen from the North Pole, it showed Europe – constrained between the two superpowers uSa and the Soviet Union – peculiarly merging with the African continent and thus subverting the common picture of a world divided in two. One day, Yacé would turn his head to the map and his back on Swiss vice-consul Eugen Wim- mer and declare: “If Europe and Africa could really shake hands then the world’s equilibrium would funnily be reestablished.”1 The second image reveals a completely different setting. It shows a scientific field-station set up by scientists from the SwiSS Tropical inSTiTuTe (STi) in a completely rural environ- ment probably close to the town of Ifakara in Tanzania’s rural Kilombero district sometime in the 1960s. The field-station has been constructed tentatively. It consists of no more than four wooden sticks and a rag offering some shade from the burning sun. Under this shelter a European women sits on a folding camp chair in front of a wooden desk. Her hair is combed back in order to not allow single strands of hair disturb her gazing through a microscope and analyzing what is commonly not visible to the naked eye. This scene of contemplation is contrasted by a crowd of young Africans besieging the desk. Many of them hold white sheets of paper in their hands, others are busy writing remarks into black notebooks. The faces of those closer to the field-lab show signs of tension and eagerness as if they could hardly wait for the secrets the microscope has to disclose. The caption to the 1 FonDS anDré aeScHlimann (FAA), Correspondance Côte d’Ivoire 1959–1962, André Aeschlimann, 10.07.1960, pp. 1–2, here: pp. 1–2. — 6 — Studenten bei einer Felderhebung über die Bilharziose-Wurmkrankheit: Die “zweite Generation” verkörpert gewissermassen die Entwicklung des Landes, source: Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute (Swiss TPH). picture reveals that, in the eyes of the photographer, the main protagonist is not the Euro- pean researcher but the African students. It states: “students during a bilharzia (schistosomiasis) survey. The ‘second generation’ virtually epitomizes the development of the country.” Yacé’s map talks about geography. It cunningly turns global power-relations upside down and invites one to hypothesize about the prospect of integrating Africa into world affairs and of “provincializing” Europe in turn.2 The picture of the field-station talks about practicing science in the field, the power-relations between Western researchers and African students and more generally about science being a strong metaphor for “development” and “progress” and a means for social upward mobility. The imagery provided by the two examples are direct entry points into the present history of Swiss science in Africa. Both sources are drawn from the repositories of the cenTre SuiSSe De recHercHeS ScienTifqueS (cSrS) in Côte d’Ivoire and the SwiSS Tropical inSTiTuTe fielD laBoraTory (STifl) in Tanzania, which were both built as Swiss research laboratories in the 1950s and thus at a time when relations between African colonies and the major imperial powers were about to change. 2 Dipesh Chakrabarty, Provincializing Europe. Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference, Princeton 2000. — 7 — In the following pages, I will profit from the insights provided by micro-history and use the history of the cSrS and the STifl as a lens through which the role of Switzerland in general and Swiss science in particular relate to the political and cultural processes of Af- rican decolonization. The major argument is that science and decolonization are not only closely tied together but that they are co-producing each other.3 The terms “decolonization” and “science” have many connotations and it will be necessary to clearly define what they mean when invoked throughout the study. Firstly, I use the term “decolonization” in the probably most conventional way, hinting at a historical process roughly covering the period from the 1930 to the wave of independence which many African countries were drawn into at the end of the 1950s and the beginning of the 1960s. This process can neither be understood as the result of nationalist struggle nor as a deliberate “transfer of power” from the colonial “masters” to the former colonial “subjects” and controlled by the former. As recent scholarship has hinted at, decolonization was fraught with contingencies