Mackenzie Moffat

Research

My doctoral research project, provisionally entitled Medicine and Public Health in the Post-Emancipation British Colonial Caribbean, c. 1834-1870, is an examination of the evolving medical landscape in British Caribbean territories in the wake of emancipation. It is supervised by Dr Elise SmithLink opens in a new window and Professor David LambertLink opens in a new window.

Within this project, I am investigating the status of medicine and health during a period of immense change in these colonies, seeking to understand how public health issues, raised by a great influx of previously enslaved peoples into colonial society, were approached. Any medical infrastructure prior to emancipation operated largely within the divide created by the structure of slavery. Colonial hospitals or physicians catered to the white settler population and when there there were medical facilities for enslaved peoples they were contained within plantations, supported by plantation owners. In the wake of emancipation, this structure that these colonies were built upon was turned upside down. I will be examining the health challenges posed by this shift and the subsequent responses by the British and colonial governments, questioning the extent to which appropriate medical infrastructure and measures were implemented. Within this, there will be an analysis of the following areas of disease and epidemics, sanitary conditions, mental health and asylums, hospitals and institutions of public health, and medical practitioners.

I am also seeking to understand the role of the previously enslaved population in public health and medicine in the colonies in this post-emancipation period. There is evidence suggesting that some of the shortfall of healthcare in plantations during the period of slavery was supplemented by practitioners of African descent. I am seeking to locate the continuation of these practices of indigenous medicine beyond the slave plantation and also highlight the important role of these individuals as healthcare workers in this new public health realm.

Contact

Mackenzie.Moffat@warwick.ac.uk