Parasitic Empires

Name: Parasitic Empires
Author: Bassam Sidiki
ISBN: 9781469697253

Infection, Insularity, Inter-Imperiality, 1880–2022

by Bassam Sidiki

Published by The University of North Carolina Press

Publication date: November 10, 2026

ISBN 9781469697253 | 254 Pages, 6.12 × 9.25 in, 18 halftones

254 Pages, 6.12 × 9.25 in, 18 halftones

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No empire is an island

Real and imagined versions of the island and the microbe come together to tell a new story about geopolitical relations between two successive Anglophone empires: the British and the American. Bassam Sidiki assembles a vast archive of literary, cultural, and medical documents to argue that claims of British or American insularity are specious; these Anglophone empires have been economically, culturally, and scientifically interdependent since the turn of the century to the present as the British century gave way to the American. Ironically, the inter-imperial relations that refute imperial insularity are often most visible in island-like spaces such as gardens, ships, and brothels, and in actual tropical islands where the two imperial powers have worked together—or at odds—to hold infectious diseases at bay.

Sidiki documents historical and imaginary representations of infectious diseases such as the plague, venereal disease, Spanish flu, and Hansen’s disease in the long twentieth century, and how these diseases brought the British and US empires into simultaneous collaboration and competition across the Anglophone world.

Bassam Sidiki is assistant professor of English at the University of Texas at Austin.

“Sidiki brilliantly contextualizes the uses of a certain medicalized figure of the 'parasite' within American and British imperial history, while his careful storytelling and eye for the compelling anecdote makes his complex ideas lucid and engaging.”—Pamela Gilbert, author of Victorian Skin: Surface, Self, History

“Sidiki’s work is a fresh interpretation of the intersection of literature and medicine in the early twentieth century and beyond, aiding scholars in rethinking our understanding of the geopolitics of race as they relate to inter-imperial rivalries between the United States and Britain”. —Neel Ahuja, University of Maryland

“ Parasitic Empires is a capacious and provocative cultural history that explores the complex relations among race, politics, and health from the late nineteenth- through the mid-twentieth century and beyond. An exciting addition to the rising field of health humanities, this book offers an astute analysis of how infectious disease laid the discursive foundation for the racial alignment of England and the United States as guardians of both health and whiteness.”—Priscilla Wald, author of Contagious: Cultures, Carriers, and the Outbreak Narrative

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Parasitic Empires

Infection, Insularity, Inter-Imperiality, 1880–2022

Parasitic Empires

Infection, Insularity, Inter-Imperiality, 1880–2022

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