Imperial Bedlam: Institutions of Madness in Colonial Southwest Nigeria (Medicine and Society)

by Jonathan Sadowsky

The colonial government of southern Nigeria began to use asylums to confine the allegedly insane in 1906. These asylums were administered by the British but confined Africans. Yet, as even many in the government recognized, insanity is a condition that shows cultural variation. Who decided the inmates were insane and how? This sophisticated historical study pursues these questions as it examines fascinating source material―writings by African patients in these institutions and the reports of officials, doctors, and others―to discuss the meaning of madness in Nigeria, the development of colonial psychiatry, and the connections between them. Jonathan Sadowsky's well-argued, concise study provides important new insights into the designation of madness across cultural and political frontiers.

Imperial Bedlam follows the development of insane asylums from their origins in the nineteenth century to innovative treatment programs developed by Nigerian physicians during the transition to independence. Special attention is given to the writings of those considered "lunatics," a perspective relatively neglected in previous studies of psychiatric institutions in Africa and most other parts of the world.

Imperial Bedlam shows how contradictions inherent in colonialism were articulated in both asylum policy and psychiatric theory. It argues that the processes of confinement, the labeling of insanity, and the symptoms of those so labeled reflected not only cultural difference but also political divides embedded in the colonial situation. Imperial Bedlam thus emphasizes not only the cultural background to madness but also its political and experiential dimensions.

Genres: History, Academic

180 pages, Paperback

First published August 25, 1999

Reviews

[Peter · Rating 3 out of 5]

Jonathan Sadowsky is an Associate Professor of Medical History at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio. Imperial Bedlam: Institution of Madness in Colonial Southwest Nigeria examines the history of psychiatry and mental health institutions in the colony of Nigeria. The book has a section of notes. The book has a bibliography. The book has an introduction. The second chapter discusses how the mentally ill were viewed and treated in Southwest Nigeria in the 19th Century. The third chapter is on “material conditions and the politics of care” within asylums of Southwest Nigeria (Sadowsky 26-47). This chapter looks at the development of asylums in Colonial Southwest Nigeria in the early 20th Century. The book looks at the “material conditions and the politics of care” (Sadowsky 26) of asylum in the post-colonial era of Nigerian history. Chapter 4 examines the type of people confined in an asylum in Colonial Southwest Nigeria. Chapter 5 discusses the case of a patient named Issac O., confined at Yaba Mental Hospital in June 1932. Issac O. was diagnosed with ““acute mania”” (Sadowsky 92). Sadowsky writes that ““acute mania”” seems to have been in Nigeria as a rough catchall for people who acted wild-who the people most likely to be considered for the asylum were” (Sadowsky 92). Chapter 6 is on the relationship between “psychiatry and colonial ideology” (Sadowsky 97-110). The book has a conclusion. The book has an index. Jonathan Sadowsky’s book, Imperial Bedlam, is a well-done study of colonial medical health institutions in Southwest Nigeria.

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