2023 Alf Andrew Heggoy Book Prize
A01=Guillaume Lachenal
Author_Guillaume Lachenal
Category=JHMC
Category=JP
Category=NHH
Category=NHTQ
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eq_history
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eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
French Colonial Historical Society book prizes
Product details
- ISBN 9781478017868
- Weight: 431g
- Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 15 Apr 2022
- Publisher: Duke University Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
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In The Doctor Who Would Be King Guillaume Lachenal tells the extraordinary story of Dr. Jean Joseph David, a French colonial army doctor who governed an entire region of French Cameroon during World War II. Dr. David-whom locals called “emperor”-dreamed of establishing a medical utopia. Through unchecked power, he imagined realizing the colonialist fantasy of emancipating colonized subjects from misery, ignorance, and sickness. Drawing on archives, oral histories, and ethnographic fieldwork, Lachenal traces Dr. David’s earlier attempts at a similar project on a Polynesian island and the ongoing legacies of his failed experiment in Cameroon. Lachenal does not merely recount a Conradian tale of imperial hubris, he brings the past into the present, exploring the memories and remains of Dr. David’s rule to reveal a global history of violence, desire, and failure in which hope for the future gets lost in the tragic comedy of power.
Guillaume Lachenal is Professor in History of Science, mÉdialab, Sciences Po, Paris and author of The Lomidine Files: The Untold Story of a Medical Disaster in Colonial Africa.
Cheryl Smeall is an independent scholar and translator.
Cheryl Smeall is an independent scholar and translator.
