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"This chapter makes the case that the works of the conference and the construction of an international system of public health were largely oriented by a ‘civilizing mission’ discourse and an Orientalist ideology. By embracing these two political and philosophical systems, delegates ordered the world of nations between civilized and non-civilized and legitimise strategies to colonise Oriental health authorities and impose specific practices and concepts developed in European academies and political institutions. However, attacks to national sovereignty did not exclusively target the Orient – the Ottoman Empire, Syrian, and Egypt. The ISC’s internationalist approach also undermined the power of individual European states to trace health policies that potentially contradicted the lines defined by the conference. Bringing order to the world of international public health through its codification and standardisation cost political autonomy of regions and states."

JRA The 1851 International Sanitary Conference and the construction of a sphere of international public health