Medicalizing Difference: Science and the Making of Race in the British Empire Open Access
Thadani, Siya (Spring 2026)
Abstract
This thesis examines how British physicians contributed to the construction of racial hierarchies during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in the British Empire. While medicine is often associated with ideals of neutrality and humanitarian care, medical professionals frequently used scientific authority to establish human difference. I argue that British physicians actively participated in the process of race-making by applying medical and scientific frameworks to questions of civilization, intelligence, and social order within the context of the British Empire. Drawing on archival materials from the Royal College of Surgeons of England and the Wellcome Collection, this thesis analyzes scientific writings, travel diaries, a memoir, and institutional reports, all written by British physicians. The first chapter examines the works of Arthur Keith, a physician and anthropologist who used evolutionary theory to develop and spread ideas about race, nationality, and civilization. The second chapter analyzes diaries, a memoir, and a report written by British physicians who traveled to India and demonstrated how scientific racism and medicine shaped their everyday interpretations of Indians as a racial group and medical education in India. The third chapter explores psychiatric writings and asylum reports show how racial assumptions influenced British physicians’ understandings of mental illness in both Great Britain and India. This thesis demonstrates that medical knowledge played a significant role in shaping understandings of race and highlights how scientific authority contributed to the broader cultural and political foundations of the British Empire.
Table of Contents
Introduction………………………………………………………………………………………..............1
Chapter One: Arthur Keith and the Science of Human Difference……………………………...10
Chapter Two: Travel, Medicine, and Race-Making in British India……………………………..38
Chapter Three: Psychiatry and the Colonial Governance of Medicine…………………………68
Conclusion………………………………………………………………………………………..............87
Bibliography……………………………………………………………………………………...............91
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