Colonial debate centered on labor’s racial meanings, not physiology.

Evidence

From the 1830s to the 1930s those in and outside the international scientific community repeatedly were called upon to assess whether Europeans could survive in the tropics, the health risks of manual labor, and to speculate about the political consequences of allowing colonial whites to work with their hands. The debate was transnational and transcolonial. Physiological limitations were less important than what certain kinds of labor meant for the distinctions of race and the development of moral character. — Ann Laura Stoler, Along the Archival Grain_ Epistemic…, 688

Categorization

• QUESTION: A century-long transnational scientific debate about white manual labor in the tropics — worth investigating how this protocoled ‘acclimatization science’ literature mapped onto actual colonial policy changes.
• XREF: This climate-tropics scientific debate connects to the reader’s trees-as-infrastructure piece on tamarisk/air-conditioners and ideas about environment and habitation. — connects to: White-labor versus black comparisons served to deflect abolition, not broaden it. — Noel Ignatiev, How the Irish Became White, 307