Set Safely Apart : Public Health, Quarantine, and Identity Formation in Late Nineteenth Century British Columbia

This thesis examines how British Columbia’s state-sanctioned efforts of identity formation impacted the development of its public health policy and practice in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries through the lens of several case studies. The first chapter examines how public health authority and blame for epidemic disease were understood in the province. Chapter 2 links the province’s exclusionary immigration policies to its application of maritime quarantine policies. Finally, chapter 3 examines the application of public health policy in aiding colonial goals of Indigenous land dispossession. Examining applications of public health policy amongst groups that did not fit into a white-Anglo settler identity, this thesis argues that external state goals of identity formation shaped the structures of public health policies.