Papers

• ‘Milk and Murder’, Cicely William’s campaign against Nestlé in colonial Singapore Linden Magda Taylor SOAS

  This paper discusses the campaign waged in Singapore against Nestlé’s marketing strategies by Dr Cicely Williams, one of the very few female doctors employed by the Colonial Medical Service in the years immediately preceding the 2nd World War. By examining both Nestlé’s techniques for encouraging the use of their recently developed condensed milk product as a breast milk substitute specifically among the working Chinese population of Singapore and Cicely Williams’ research into the high infant death rate within that community and subsequent campaign to encourage breast feeding it will interrogate the difference between a commercial and a humanitarian approach to infant healthcare in the latter years of the British Empire in Asia

• Anti-malarial propaganda by the Imperial Japanese Army to their Soldiers Takashi Sakata Yamagata University

  Malaria was the most serious health problem for both the Army and the Navy of Japan in both the Chinese and Southeast Asian fronts during the Pacific War. Certain mosquito species transmit malaria and are difficult to cure. Therefore, the suppression of mosquitoes through engineering and the preventive intake of quinine or other antimalarial drugs like plasmoquin and atabrine were crucially important. For this purpose, the Japanese Army prepared manuals on the prevention of malaria and organized educational classes for medical doctors and paramedical personnel. The Japanese Army also prepared booklets for ordinary soldiers on general hygiene, including malaria prevention and a range of other important medical problems, before the onset of the Pacific War. The Japanese Army reported that this approach was successful in Java, where the Japanese military government inherited the Dutch hygiene system and continued it with some improvements. While the inherited health systems in other areas would have varied, this approach should have been similar throughout Southeast Asia. Japanese soldiers, particularly those stationed in “peaceful” locations such as Java, may also have seen advertisements for medical products in periodicals, reinforcing an impression of normality and reassuring them of authority for Japanese soldiers and affiliated civilians in the field.

• Sino-Vietnamese pharmacies and the print economy of health in colonial Cochinchina: the Nhị Thiên Đường catalogue of 1925 Cao Vy University of Luxembourg

  From the 1920s through the early 1940s, traditional medicine in colonial Cochinchina occupied a paradoxical position. It expanded commercially at a rapid pace, even as successive French regulations worked to marginalize its practitioners. In Cholon, Sino-Vietnamese pharmacies invested heavily in the burgeoning quốc ngữ (romanized Vietnamese) print culture. They transformed free medicinal catalogues into sophisticated vehicles of advertising, health education, and cultural legitimation.
  This paper explores these dynamics through one emblematic case: the Nhị Thiên Đường pharmacy and its 1925 catalogue Vệ sanh chỉ nam (The Essentials of Hygiene). Established on rue de Canton in Cholon, Nhị Thiên Đường was the Cochinchinese branch of a large Cantonese pharmaceutical house. As such, it exemplifies how long-standing Chinese mercantile networks, as much as colonial institutions and Euro-American business actors, shaped public health communication in Southeast Asia. The Vệ sanh chỉ nam itself was printed in runs reaching 10,000 copies and issued in multiple formats, from pocket editions for itinerant readers to finer volumes for domestic and professional settings. Its pages embedded product advertisements alongside hygienic instruction and remedy inventories. To attract emerging Vietnamese literate customers, these pages also featured serialized martial-arts novels and works by famous Cochinchinese authors such as Nguyễn Chánh Sắt, Hồ Biểu Chánh, and Trần Thái Nguyên.
  This case speaks directly to the panel’s questions on corporate interests, propaganda, and public health concerns. It argues that Sino-Vietnamese pharmacies constituted an alternative, non-European circuit of health advertising rooted in ancient Chinese commercial networks. Within this circuit, mercantile ambition, literary patronage, and the diffusion of medical knowledge to neighbouring countries in the Southeast Asian region were already intertwined long before the colonial period. Their print strategies reveal how actors marginalized by colonial regulation converted constraint into cultural authority, reshaping public health communication from below.

• The Red Cross Society of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam: Solidarity and Nation Building in Vietnam (1946-1976) Marie Cugnet University of Fribourg

  On September 2, 1945, Hồ Chí Minh proclaimed the independence of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV). Approximately one year later, as hostilities between the French Far East Expeditionary Corps and Việt Minh began to escalate, a group of Vietnamese doctors and pharmacists decided to establish a “Vietnamese Red Cross Society.” The establishment of the Red Cross Society in November 1946, which initially emerged to respond to medical emergencies resulting from the Indochina War, was rapidly incorporated into the health system of a communist state under construction. In collaboration with mass organizations, the DRV Red Cross endeavored to disseminate knowledge about hygiene practices, with the goal of promoting public health, and to provide assistance to those affected by natural disasters and armed conflicts. Simultaneously, from 1954 onwards, the DRV Red Cross sought to integrate into a socialist solidarity network, forging connections with Red Cross societies in other countries. In the context of the Cold War and the associated tensions in Vietnam, the DRV Red Cross was able to utilize this Red Cross network of solidarity to a significant extent to provide support for its struggle.
  By drawing on a range of archival sources, this paper will examine the extent to which the DRV Red Cross was able to act as a key player in the development of health policies, the revolutionary armed struggle, and the state affirmation of the DRV on the diplomatic and humanitarian scene from 1945 to the (re)unification of the country in 1976.

• Capitalism and Health Propaganda in Indonesia Mayumi Yamamoto Miyagi University

  In the early 20th century, the American insurance company Metropolitan Life began to explore extending their customers’ lives through provision of health propaganda, education and other services—naturally improving the insurance company’s profitability through reduction of claims. Another 20 years later, the Dutch colonial government in Indonesia discovered these efforts, now helping to shape government policy. Naturally, the Rockefeller Foundation had a hand in spreading information about these efforts, including the use of film propaganda and school children’s involvement in medical exhibitions which fit well with Rockefeller Foundation efforts on Java. Visual messages through films and exhibitions were very successful and effective for circulating knowledge in villages and enlightening residents about the importance of daily hygiene—from children to adults—without governmental “force.” Consequently, and fortuitously, capitalist strategies of advertisement also functioned to support public health. Japanese businesses in Southeast Asia did not have such a clear influence in government activities, however in some areas they did play a role in shaping health and medicine-conscious consumers. Advertising for mosquito-coils, a quintessentially Japanese innovation of the early 20th century, involved more than simply a product, but included an aesthetic and image that was being sold.
  This presentation will explore the types of health propaganda and advertisements in early to mid-20th century Indonesia to better understand the intersections of capitalism and health promotion during a period of rapid global expansion of public health and health propaganda.

Abstract

Keywords

• Cochinchina
• Democratic Republic of Vietnam
• Imperial Japanese Army
• Indonesia
• Japan
• Java
• Nestlé
• Red Cross Society
• Vietnam
• advertising
• anti-malarial propaganda
• capitalism
• colonial Singapore
• education
• health
• hygiene
• local medicine
• malaria
• milk
• mosquito
• nation building
• navy
• pharmacies
• print culture
• propaganda
• quinine
• soldiers
• solidarity