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.
- Cover
- Contents
- Introduction
- Part I. The Mandated Territory of Cameroon, 1939–1944
- 1. A Showcase for Colonial Humanism
- 2. An Archipelago of Camps
- 3. Madame Ateba
- 4. Advocating for a Regime of Exception
- 5. A French Dream
- 6. Haut-Nyong Must Be Saved
- 7. Lessons in Medical Administration
- 8. Paradise: A Guided Tour (December 2013)
- 9. A Real-Life Experiment
- 10. The Invisible Men
- 11. Social Medicine, French Style
- 12. Life Has Returned
- 13. Colonel David Will Become a General
- 14. The Missionaries’ Nightmare
- 15. The Dark Waters of the Haut-Nyong
- 16. Rubber for the Emperor
- 17. “Here We Are the Masters”
- 18. Koch! Koch!
- Part II. The French Protectorate of Wallis And Futuna, 1933–1938
- 19. King David
- 20. Uvea, Desert Island
- 21. Chronicles of the Golden Age
- 22. I te Temi o Tavite (In the Time of David)
- 23. Doctor Machete
- 24. Becoming King, Part I: Coup d’état at the Dispensary
- 25. Becoming King, Part II: The Wallisian Art of Governing
- 26. Becoming King, Part III: Kicking Custom to the Curb
- 27. Te Hau Tavite
- 28. Tavite Lea Tahi (David-Only-Speaks-Once)
- 29. Doctor Disaster
- Part III. Epilogues
- 30. Afelika (Africa)
- 31. Dachau, Indochina
- 32. The Light Riots
- Afterword: Global Health Utopias from David to COVID-19
- Acknowledgments
- Notes
- Index
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