Competitive Cooperation and Public Health:VD Control in the British Colony of Trinidad and Tobago During WWII

The landscape of scientific and medical help for the Global South in the late colonial period was a complex one in which technical assistance provided by nations such as America, and the work of agencies such as the WHO, sat alongside European colonial interventions. Little work has explored the tensions that could exist between British and American experts working in Britain’s colonies after 1940. This paper explores how spirit of competitive cooperation that has been said to characterize the relationship between British and America informed the work of experts on the ground. It focuses on the first joint project organized by the Anglo-American Caribbean Commission, a body created in 1942 with the ostensible aim of coordinating policy across the Caribbean possessions of Britain and the US. In 1944 the AACC launched a VD control programme in the British colony of Trinidad with the aim of addressing the very high rate of disease amongst American forces stationed on the island by tackling syphilis amongst the wider population. The programme provided an opportunity for Britain and the US to scrutinise each other’s methods. In the comparisons they made, officials and medical experts revealed the ways in which they perceived their mode of overseas intervention to be superior and their nation’s greater claim to shape the future of the region.