Form Follows Fever

Christopher Cowell

ISBN 10: 9882372902 / ISBN 13: 9789882372900

Published by The Chinese University Press, HK, 2024

About this Item

Form Follows Fever is the first in-depth account of the turbulent early years of settlement and growth of colonial Hong Kong across the 1840s. During this period, the island gained a terrible reputation as a diseased and deadly location. Malaria, then perceived as a mysterious vapour or miasma, intermittently carried off settlers by the hundreds. Various attempts to arrest its effects acted as a catalyst, reconfiguring both the city's physical and political landscape, though not necessarily for the better.Caught in a frenzy to rebuild the city in the devastating aftermath, this book charts the complex interplay between a cast of figures, from military surveyors, naval doctors, Indian sepoys, and corrupt and paranoid officials to opium traders, arsonists, Chinese contractors, and sojourner architects and artists. However, Hong Kong's 'construction' was not just physical but also imagined. Architecture, cartography, epidemiology, and urban infrastructure offer a critical forensic lens through which to examine the shifting ideologies of public health and space, race and place-making, and commerce and politics, all set against the radical alteration of the settlement-from shore-hugging to climbing city-in response to miasma theory, a pre-bacteriological belief in gaseous emanations from a sickly environment.This kaleidoscopic study draws upon many unpublished textual sources, including medical reports, personal diaries and letters, government records, journal accounts, newspaper articles, and advertisements. As this history is set a decade before the introduction of photography to the colony, the book relies upon a variety of alternate visual evidence-from previously lost watercolour illustrations of the city to maps, plans, and drawings- that individually and in combination provide trace material enabling the reconstruction of this strange and rapidly evolving society. Form Follows Fever sheds new light on a period often considered the colonial Dark Ages in the territory's history.

Seller Inventory # LU-9789882372900

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Form Follows Fever
• Publisher: The Chinese University Press, HK
• Publication Date: 2024
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 9882372902
• ISBN 13: 9789882372900
• Binding: Hardback
• Condition: New

About this title

Synopsis

Form Follows Fever is the first in-depth account of the turbulent years of initial urban settlement and growth of colonial Hong Kong across the 1840s. During this period, the island gained a terrible reputation as a diseased and deadly location. Malaria, then perceived as a mysterious vapor or miasma, intermittently carried off settlers by the hundreds. Various attempts to arrest its effects acted as a catalyst, reconfiguring both the city’s physical and political landscape, though not necessarily for the better.


The study draws upon many hitherto unpublished textual sources, including medical reports, personal diaries and letters, government records, journal accounts, newspaper articles, and advertisements. As this history is set a decade before the introduction of photography to the colony, the book relies upon a variety of alternate visual evidence―from previously lost watercolor illustrations of the city to maps, plans, and drawings―that individually and in combination provide trace material enabling the reconstruction of this strange and rapidly evolving society.

About the Author

Christopher Cowell teaches architectural history and theory at London South Bank University. His longstanding historical research focuses on both southern China and northern India, exploring the entanglement of modernity within European imperialism and its participation in architecture and urbanism.