Purse seine and eurydice : a history of leprosy and coercion in Hawaiʻi

M.A. University of Hawaii at Manoa 2012.Includes bibliographical references.In 1865, the Hawaiʻi Board of Health adopted quarantine as the primary means to arrest the spread of leprosy in the Kingdom of Hawaiʻi. In Practice, preventing infection entailed the dramatic expansion of medical authority during the 19th century and included the establishment of state surveillance networks, the condemnation by physicians of a number of Hawaiian practices thought to spread disease, and the forced internment of mainly culturally Hawaiian individuals. As such, efforts to eradicate leprosy came to overlap with a broader imperial program of social control. Now a tourism destination, however, the history of leprosy presented at Kalaupapa is a didactic morality tale that focuses on the life of Saint Damien de Veuster, who died during his mission work there. As such, leprosy is reinvented as an issue of personal morality that silences both the coercive function of the colony and the voices of those interred in the past