Full Link: https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-031-17020-1_11

Abstract:
Victorian travel, like larger patterns of migration, was associated with a myriad of health hazards that were often seen as dangerous to the “civilisational mission” of the British Empire and its economic aspirations. Within this context, specific prescriptive regimes and consumer practices—and, with them, hand-selected “tropical outfits”—provided a portable cordon sanitaire to travellers, explorers, and the “builders” of the British Empire. Tropical outfits—a variety of objects expertly selected for the voyage—were sold with the intention of “easing” the journey’s hardships while inevitably also propelling the exchange of goods between the metropolitan centre and the colonies. This chapter re-evaluates the role of “tropical outfits”, especially “tropical clothing”, by drawing attention to their material significance within the colonial but also domestic geographies of health and disease. Monika Pietrzak-Franger argues that the juxtaposition of the outfits’ sites of consumption with those of their production sheds light on the transcontinental networks of health and disease that otherwise remain obscured.