A persistent theme in colonial archives is the anxiety induced by Asia’s immensity: by the scale of its territories and the magnitude and diversity of its populations. For many colonial agents, Asia’s unruly vastness appeared to defy classificatory logic. The nineteenth-century records of the Dutch East Indies, for example, reveal the uncertain knowledge of those who governed, and the unease generated by rumors of local dissent.¹ Rather than evincing the operations of a centralized and sagacious colonial state, the documents disclose pervasive doubt and uncertainty.

Colonial insecurity prompted the creation of ring-fenced spaces, enclaves of certitude to mitigate the “indefinite...

Many of the chapters in this book demonstrate how well-developed imperial systems of communication not only enabled the dissemination of information and power but also facilitated the diffusion of disease and panic during the latter half of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Implicitly or explicitly, they contribute to a recent “spatial turn” in colonial studies, in which the geographies of empire are taken as seriously as its histories, and through which the essence of empire—encounter and engagement between previously disconnected polities through new forms of transglobal connectivity—is foregrounded.¹ In this exploratory chapter, I use two brief examples...

From the mid-1700s until the Treaty of Nanking (Nanjing) in 1842, Westerners in China were restricted to a tiny section of the city of Canton (Guangzhou). Here, trade between China and the West was conducted according to the Canton System through a group of Hongs, Chinese merchant houses specially licensed by the Qing government and organized into the Cohong (Gonghang). According to the Qing government’s “Eight Regulations,” foreigners were allowed to participate in trade only from October to March, and were confined to their “factories” without their women and families.

Although foreigners in Canton rarely had to worry about personal...

This chapter examines the often unanticipated opportunities that crises may furnish to individuals, communities, and states. Epidemics—and the panic that commonly accompanies them—may be thought of as “social disruptors” that create opportune conditions for social reform, technological development, career advancement, or the expansion of markets. The distraction and anxiety caused by the “shock” of catastrophic events may be exploited politically to push through legislation, wage war, or curtail freedoms.¹ As other contributors to this volume argue, epidemics and the panic that they induce have served to legitimate the proliferation of biosurveillance schemes and governmental control.² In his account...

The First War of Indian Independence in 1857—the “Mutiny” or “Uprising” as Anglos quickly coined it—gave the British a “shock which … can scarcely be understood in your part of the world,” as one panicked officer wrote to a newspaper in New Zealand.¹ As a result, he continued: “[n]umbers here are turning their eyes wildly about looking for a land in which they can live in peace, without a chance of their wives and children being cut into ribbons.” The officer, expressing confidence in his ability to “direct a real emigration from India” to the New Zealand province...

Disease–or the threat of it–has been a potent source of rumor and panic in modern times. Cholera, plague, influenza, AIDS, SARS, and avian flu have all in their time provoked fear and dread among those groups that appeared most at risk or caused waves of terror that have engulfed entire societies. It is not always the most deadly diseases that have had this effect: malaria, for instance, seems rarely to have precipitated widespread panic. Nor has the level of response necessarily been in relation to those diseases that were most stigmatizing or disfiguring, like leprosy, tuberculosis, and syphilis,...

There is good reason why epidemics make compelling stories: they satisfy a basic requirement for drama. The narrative arc of the “pandemic thriller” moves from discovery of the deadly virus through panic to resolution. In so doing, the plotline traces a recognizably “dramaturgic form.” As Charles Rosenberg has observed in the context of the HIV/AIDS epidemic:

Epidemics start at a moment in time, proceed on a stage limited in space and duration, following a plot line of increasing and revelatory tension, move to a crisis of individual and collective character, then drift toward closure.¹

Given the inherently dramaturgic quality of...

As the wind whips around the reporter and the flash of emergency vehicle lights colors the surrounding darkness, the scene looks at first like classic disaster television from the Weather Channel: a tornado has struck Kansas, or a hurricane threatens the Gulf Coast. It quickly becomes clear from the video footage, however, that a far different kind of emergency is afoot. “Oklahomans by the carload can be seen leaving the state in every direction trying to escape this deadly smallpox outbreak,” reports a newsman stationed on the Texas border. He glances nervously over his shoulder at the sound of gunfire...

This chapter explores the role that visual culture has played in producing infectious disease “panics” during the past 80 years, from concerns over cholera and yellow fever in the 1930s and 1940s, through the influenza H1N1 pandemic in 2009. A key concern in this collection is how “modern” technologies have been deployed historically to make infectious diseases visible with a view to their effective prevention, management, or eradication. As other contributors have suggested, “panic” may be understood not as the antithesis of modern strategies of disease prevention and crisis containment, but rather as one of their consequences. For example, Robert...

In late August 2013 an alleged chemical weapons attack took place in the Ghouta area of Syria. Médecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) reported that three hospitals it supports in the region received around 3,600 patients that morning. MSF’s director of operations considered that the “symptoms, the massive influx of patients in a short period of time, the origin of the patients, and the contamination of medical and first aid workers, strongly indicate mass exposure to a neurotoxic agent.”¹ This episode in the Syrian civil war resulted in tragic death and created panic of many orders, in many places. It all escalated...