Abstract

Since 1910 the German colonial-government in Cameroon pursued the idea of a removal of all African people from the center of Duala, to change the 'negro-village' Duala into one of the 'cleanest and most prosperous colonial capitals in Africa'. The only way to realize this ambitious goal was to expropriate the African inhabitants of Duala, members of the 'Duala' tribe, and thereby to remove them from the prosperous harbor area — a thorn in the sides of the colonial rulers sinces 1884. They, of course, were sensitive enough to realize that such an act would have to be well-founded if it were not to outrage the watchful leftists in the 'Reichstag', who successfully had overthrown the 'Von Bülow Cabinet' in 1907 because of colonial scandals. Advocates for the plan were looked for and — finally found among German colonial physicians who insisted in the assertion, that the segregation of races in Duala would be an indispensable measure in the fight against malaria. They took the view, that it would be necessary to set up a 1.2 kilometer wide 'Cordon Sanitaire' between blacks and whites to prevent the Europeans from being bitten by Anopheles. They suggested that the maximum range of the fly was below this distance. Unquestionably the 'Cordon' run right through the economic center of the Duala near the river. The medical arguments were highly welcome and quickly accepted. They became most important for the expropriation of the Duala in 1914 which prompted an uprising of inhabitants stricken by the measure. Unsuccessfully they had made efforts to stop the plan by several petitions to the 'Reichstag'. Rudolph Manga Bell and Adolph Ngoso Din, suspected leaders of the uprising, were sentenced to death and executed. This paper describes the German development of the 'malaria-argument' in service of racial segregation and links between malaria-prophylaxis and racial hygiene. The colonial physicians responsible for the argument will be characterized and their scientific biographies will be followed up to 1939