Jennings, Eric T.: Curing the Colonizers: Hydrotherapy, Crimatology, and French Colonial Spas.
Hall, Michael R.
Jennings, Eric T. Curing the Colonizers: Hydrotherapy, Climatology,
and French Colonial Spas. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006.
The period between 1830 and 1962, which corresponds with the French
colonial occupation of Algeria, was the "golden age" of both
French spas and French imperialism (p. 21 !). In a unique combination of
the histories of tourism, medicine, and colonialism, Eric T. Jennings,
an Associate Professor of History at the University of Toronto, explains
how spas in France, Madagascar, Reunion, Guadalupe, and Tunisia
illustrate some of the foundations of colonial empire. Jennings contends
that French spas, which were widely believed to play a therapeutic and
curative role in the protection against tropical diseases, also served a
social role that was essential to the well-being of the French
colonizers. Water cures and altitude cures, therefore, were encouraged
by the French Ministry of the Colonies and served as a bulwark in the
maintenance of French colonies in the tropics. According to Jennings,
the French spas were popular vacation spots that reinforced French
cultural identity. As a result, the spas became "evocative symbols
of colonial power" (p. 2).
Hydrotherapy and climatology played a prominent role in the French
colonial experiment. Jennings explains that the reliance on water and
altitude cures created artificial conditions in the tropical zones that
strengthened the resolve of the French colonizers. In his quest to
understand the "justification, elaboration, and production" of
these colonial spas, Jennings posits that the spas "involved
exploiting microclimates reminding colonials of home," the use of
natural mineral springs that reminded the colonials of the therapeutic
waters at Vichy, and the creation of a French cultural oasis in the
tropics (p. 2). French fears of the inherent physical dangers of living
in the tropics were assuaged by the establishment of hydrotherapy and
climatology spas. Whereas several historians have devoted considerable
attention to the impact of British hill stations (which relied almost
exclusively on climatic rather than hydrotherapeutic cures) on the
maintenance of British colonialism in the tropics, Jennings is the first
historian to devote serious attention to the role played by resorts in
French colonialism in the tropics.
Significantly, Jennings contends that the connection between empire
and hydrotherapy has "profound repercussions" that extend
beyond the history of medicine and colonialism (p. 4). His study
highlights several interconnections in the histories of tourism,
medicine, and colonialism. French colonial spas were designed to improve
and safeguard the health of French colonists and the colonies became
vast testing grounds for European medicine. At the same time, however,
non-Western medical practices, even those that relied on therapeutic
waters, were viewed by the Eurocentric colonizers as either
"backward or superstitious" (p. 4). French colonists, for the
most part, were more interested in visiting the spas, which were
essentially microcosms of Vichy, than in visiting local historic sites.
The spas, rather than attempting to forge a cultural bridge with
indigenous cultures and foster cross cultural awareness, were bastions
of European culture. The spas, in essence, were "a way of
maintaining Frenchness, of assuaging the effects of acclimatization in a
tropical setting, and of forestalling degeneration" (p. 35). The
spas served as +'agents for reaffirming Frenchness overseas"
(p. 83).
French colonization of the tropics, which began in earnest during
the 1870s, resulted in high death rates from disease. Soldiers,
missionaries, colonizers, and administrators were plagued by high
mortality rates. To alleviate the health risks of living in the tropics,
the French established spas "'wherever the colonial landscape
provided the two necessary ingredients, spring water and cooler
microclimates" (p. 39). Hydrotherapy entailed more than merely
bathing in the mineral-rich waters. Treatments also included drinking
the mineral water, mud baths, rectal and vaginal douches, and water
pulverizations. According to Jennings, hydrotherapy often combines ++the
roles of pilgrimage, sometimes taking on religious overtones.... with an
element of tourism, a social function, and, in its nineteenth-century
form, a quintessentially medicalized and structured regimen" (p.
41). Those not able to visit Vichy in the motherland found the colonial
spas a welcome respite from the tropics. The French government hoped
that the spas "'could help keep colonials not just free of
disease, but also French" (p. 212).
Like the ancient Romans, the French established spas as symbols of
empire. The French attempted to make colonial spas "a feature of a
global Pax Gallica" (p. 213). The difference, however, was that the
French spas were established as a result of "profound fears over
European fragility in the tropical world" (p. 213). Jennings'
well-written study, augmented by extensive field and archival research,
sheds light on a previously unexamined component of French colonialism.
As such, it should encourage scholars to re-think the nature and process
of nineteenth-century European colonialism.
Michael R. Hall
Armstrong Atlantic State University
