Plague, Rats, and the House in Java

This chapter considers the initial outbreak of plague in the district Malang in March 1911 as the fulfilment of a period of “anxious suspense” in which physicians and officials feared the introduction of plague into the Dutch East Indies. Despite enduring concerns that plague could find its way into the Dutch East Indies, the chapter emphasizes that the colonial government and its health services were poorly prepared when the disease was recognized. It investigates how plague, a predominantly urban disease, somehow leaped over major port cities and apparently entrenched itself in the rural interior of East Java. How were existing notions of the role of the house in plague transmission rearticulated to situate the traditional bamboo dwellings of the Javanese at the center of Dutch anxieties for this disease. The chapter suggests how plague offered Dutch state agents an opportunity to subject these “idyllic” dwellings to a thorough quasi-medical examination. The subsequent framing of the Javanese house as a link in the transmission chain of plague from rat to human on account of its very materiality and design provoked an unparalleled intervention in the built environment of Java.