Curing the Colonizers: Hydrotherapy, Climatology, and French Colonial Spas (review)

The partaking of mineral waters at places such as Saratoga Springs, Marienbad and Bath at the end of the nineteenth century was a widespread international tourist and leisure activity. In France and its colonial empire, many spas existed to meet this demand. Working in part from his previous book on Vichy colonial politics, Eric T. Jennings describes the use and creation of mineral water spas as a part of the French colonial experience. In his work, Jennings states that the French perceived colonial spas as critical for the maintenance of physical health and French identity for men and women directly involved outside of Europe with the French colonial empire.

Jennings structures his work topically but covers chronologically the years of the French imperial colonial enterprise in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. He discusses in two early chapters the medical and cultural foundations underlying the French colonial spas. Many individuals in France perceived the tropical colonies in Southeast Asia, Africa and the Americas as unhealthy for French men and women without periodic therapeutic treatments or preventive measures. The remaining five chapters provide case studies of colonial spas in Guadeloupe, Réunion, Madagascar, Tunisia and the well-known spa within metropolitan France at Vichy, the “capital of the colonizers” (201). Jennings notes these colonial spas also encompass the chronological breadth of French colonial expansion, with France acquiring Guadeloupe and Réunion before 1800, while Madagascar and Tunisia came under French administration in the nineteenth century. Jennings acknowledges there were minimal sources on similar spas in Martinique and Algeria and there existed few equivalent spas combining mineral waters and favorable climate in the French colonies in mainland Africa, Southeast Asia and the Pacific (3), thus narrowing his focus to these examples.

Jennings argues that by the end of the nineteenth century the French believed that “water and altitude cures” could relieve and/or prevent the hazards of living in tropical regions (7). In the eighteenth century many Europeans thought it possible to become “seasoned” or acclimatized while living in tropical regions outside of Europe, but this idea fell out of favor by the end of the nineteenth century. Living in the tropics became dangerous in this new view, leading potentially to physical, mental and social degeneration (24). In response, French colonial settlers, administrators, soldiers, missionaries and indigenous elites would periodically visit spas such as Vichy, with the costs often subsidized by the French government, to restore physical well-being and preserve a conscious French identity in familiar healthy surroundings. The French identified and established spas within their colonial empire, as relatively inexpensive convenient alternatives, that offered water therapy and climate that replicated the spas in metropolitan France. Jennings describes these colonial spas as emulating the treatment methods of spas in France, chemically comparing their mineral waters to those of French spas, and even constructing the spas to physically resemble communities in France. Ideally, the spas became little islands of France contained within the colonies; visitors to the spa at Antsirabe in Madagascar often could not believe they were even in a colony and not in metropolitan France (142).

Jennings perceptively observes that the colonial spas embodied many conflicts and contradictions while attempting to provide health to those who spent time there. These spas attempted to replicate a bit of France medically, socially and culturally but existed in exotic non-European settings. Spa proprietors claimed that these spas were in healthy regions, treating tropical maladies, but they were not always free of mosquito-borne diseases such as malaria (77). The spas encouraged tourists from outside of these colonies (Réunion—Mauritius and South Africa, Guadeloupe—United States) to partake of the health-giving waters, but restricted access of indigenous peoples. Indeed, spa proprietors often ignored or concealed the previous use of spa locations by indigenous populations before French rule (94). With the end of French colonial rule in these regions, local populations now utilize these spas while tourists from...