NINTH EUROSEAS CONFERENCE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD 16-18 AUGUST 2017 1 DAY ONE: 16.08.2017 ~SESSION 1: 9:00 AM-10:30 AM~ Room No 6 A HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE ON MALARIA AND SOUTHEAST ASIAN ARMED CONFLICTS Organizer: Atsuko Naono (University of Oxford) Panel abstract: Malaria has been one of the world’s most challenging health problems. Southeast Asia’s tropical climate predisposes the region to malaria and recent anti-malaria drug-resistant strains of Malaria reported from the Greater Mekong Sub-region have raised the importance of the region further. Historians have also identified Malaria as one of the major influences on the experience of wars in the region including WWII, Cold War, and the Vietnam War, and numerous civil wars. While the Malaria experience in these conflicts has been understood on a case by case basis, there has been no general examination of the relationship between war and Malaria across the region. This panel aims to analyze the various ways in which malaria has impacted wars in the region, including wartime anti-malarial operations, the vital strength of the military, and malaria drugs’ pharmaceutical interests, with a view toward developing a regional picture that will lend itself to comparative discussions with other regions. Searching for Alternative Malaria Strategies during the Cold War: Vietnamese Theater, 1965-1975 Annick Guénel (CNRS-EHESS) The US-Vietnam war not only triggered a regional resurgence of malaria because of massive population displacements. It was also an important step towards the failure, and the final withdrawal, of the Global Malaria Eradication Programme launched by the WHO in 1955, following promising technological advances in vector and parasite control. In North Vietnam (DRV or Democratic Republic of Vietnam), the control policy, supervised by the Institute of Malariology (created as soon as 1957) and supported by brother countries, had led to a significant decrease of malaria prevalence in some areas. The residual DDT spraying and population education had been made possible thanks to the deployment of a basic health network which was 2 badly affected by the outbreak of the war in 1965. In South Vietnam, despite some successful results, since the early 1960s, the political instability and growing insecurity in “Viêt Cong” areas impacted the program, assisted by WHO and US advisers. However, during the war, even more than the increase of insecticide resistance (and/or its shortage in North Vietnam), the loss of antimalarial drug effectiveness which was spreading all over Southeast Asia, became a critical issue for both fighting parties. The parasite resistance to chloroquine, then the most commonly available antimalarial drug, had been documented among American soldiers present in South Vietnam in the first half of the 1960s, before it was evidenced in the Vietnamese army in 1967. In this communication, I will examine the concurrent strategies conducted by the two forces at war, especially concerning the search of alternative drugs to fight malaria. I will also present an overview of how they eventually developed after the war. Bioprospecting in World War II: Japan’s Search for Anti-malarials in Southeast Asia Jeongran Kim (University of Oxford) “If you believe it works, it works.” During the Second World War, Japanese soldiers were devastated by diverse diseases and the most significant of these was malaria. It is estimated that among 2,400,000 war deaths, 1,400,000 were due to hunger and malaria. For the Japanese military, who were often isolated in marshy jungle, malaria mosquitoes were more dangerous enemies than the allied forces. Towards the end of the war, the situation became worse because shortages of anti-malarials and other military goods became severe and depletion of the drugs amplified soldiers’ anxiety. Military doctors and chemists therefore searched for herbs to make alternative medicines in the jungle. For example, in Rabaul, Japanese soldiers drank juice extracted from Ochrosia elliptica because the plant has a similar shape like cinchona, although they came to recognize that it had no remedial effects. However, the military and some medical experts argued that if they acquired effective alternative medicines or not they would make a big difference in terms of spiritual comport. Malaria in Malai: Health and Medicine during the Japanese Occupation Sandra Khor Manickam (Eramus University Rotterdam) The Japanese occupation of Southeast Asia, and of Malaya particularly, has been an unevenly researched time period which is nonetheless important in order to understand the transition of Southeast Asian states from European colonial territories to post-colonial nations. The challenges of source 3 material being in several languages, and researchers who work in either one language or another exclusively, have hampered efforts at reconstructing and understanding the basic structures of governance in Malai, as peninsula Malaya and Singapore were called jointly during the occupation period of December 1941 until August 1945. This paper will highlight some new research into the medical facilities and operations during the Japanese occupation, and the preoccupations of state governments and doctors regarding the medical situation in Malai. In the immediate post-war period, the returning British had reported that malaria infection rates had increased drastically because of the war, and that areas that once had been free from malaria were now reportedly malarial. This initial research is an attempt to understand the medical landscape of Malaya during the occupation and the concerns of doctors and government officials with regards to handling malaria. However, the wartime search for substitute anti-malarials was not simply a desperate expedient, born in the closing stages of the Second World War. Japan’s effort to seek alternative agents for the treatment of malaria dates back to the late 1930s. Since Japan went to war against China in 1937, many soldiers began to suffer from malaria in the middle and south of China. In addition, importation of anti-malarials became much more difficult under the war regime. This situation made the search for alternative anti-malarials urgent and some Japanese medical experts turned their eyes to traditional and herbal medicine, which had been marginalised in process of Japan’s modernisation during the previous century. Many also came to see traditional medicine as a symbol of unity with Japan’s conquered territories in Asia. They used the notion of a ‘common’ tradition to bolster the expanding empire. These practical as well as rhetorical motives pushed Japanese medical experts and the military to seek herbs and plants in order to produce alternative medicines for treatment of malaria. As the war situation became more severe, the imperative to find a substitute for anti-malarials became more urgent. Furthermore, the taking of alternative medicines became a matter of morale despite their dubious therapeutic status. Malaria Control Programmes in the Conflict Zones of Burma Atsuko Naono (University of Oxford) This paper will examine the ways in which malaria control operations in the conflict zones and border areas have been carried out in Burma historically. Burma has long been suffering from the effects of the region’s longest civil war and this is conventionally viewed as having compounded the obstacles to malaria control and other preventive medical measures for more than half a century. But the war zones also fall within so-called heavy transmission areas 4 where the levels of migration of people moving in and out of Burma, China, and Thailand have been high, would make the landscape of malaria control programmes in these border areas very difficult, unstable, and confusing even without conflict. As such difficulties in controlling malaria in the Burmese borderlands preceded independence in 1948, understanding how different governments and governing agencies approached these difficulties and their success and failure in doing so helps to explain why malaria remains such a big problem in Burma today. It also helps to establish how much blame can be directed at the civil war itself. The paper will thus compare the history of malaria control programmes with a particular focus on the administrative approaches to the problem applied in conflict zones from the British colonial government through the Allied forces of the China-Burma-India theater to the newly independent Burmese government and support from the WHO (and UNICEF) from the 1950s. Discussant: Elisabeth Hsu (University of Oxford) Room No 7 RETHINKING RECONCILIATION IN SOUTHEAST ASIA Organizer: Diah Kusumaningrum (Universitas Gadjah Mada) Panel abstract: When we think about reconciliation, more often than not, we think of truth commissions and/or tribunals. The thing is, in many postconflict communities, the processes of restoring relations and moving away from the violent past did not rely on formal truth and/or justice mechanisms. Some chose to reinvigorate local traditions, some chose to adopt practices from other postconflict communities, while others came with completely new ideas. How do communities come up with such mechanisms? What explains their selection of mechanisms? More importantly, what does reconciliation mean to the communities, what are the communities’ priorities in reconciliation – how do communities fold these meanings and priorities in their day-to-day lives? In the Southeast Asian context, do they have something to do with the states’ preference to nurture public