“Boys and Men”: The Making of Senegambian and Congolese Masculinity and Identities in Tropical Africa: A Reflection

Our paper focuses on two white pioneering scientists, Dr Dutton, who was English, and Dr Todd, a Canadian, employed by the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine (LSTM) to study sleeping sickness in colonial Senegambia, West Africa. We analysed photographs and some published personal letters to help us reflect on some of their constructions of Senegambian and Congolese male identities in tropical colonial Africa. In this paper, we connect with the history of tropical medicine, a precursor to public health. Public health was a research area that was central to Peter Aspinall’s work as he argued for shifts from simplistic hegemonic terminologies to refer to an incredibly diverse Black African population, as failure to do so impacts on service provisions. Within the context of tropical medicine, we reflect on the paternalistic terminology and use of the word ‘boy’ to refer to their unnamed male helpers who they photographed during these expeditions. We hope that by interpreting the photographs and reflecting on the literature and letters, exercises that are influenced by our positionality, we can obtain a glimpse into the past and obtain some insights that contribute to our understanding of the production of colonial masculinities, terminology, and race. As female authors employed by LSTM, we are aware that our positionalities influence the lenses through which we view and interpret the literature and the photos. Our paper contributes towards the ongoing debates on terminology, race, and whiteness in colonial tropical medicine.