Introduction

This chapter provides an overview of the medical and political contexts of S.R. Christophers’s 1911 inquiry report (Malaria in the Punjab) into the 1908 Punjab malaria epidemic as well as an overview of current South Asian malaria historiography. It outlines the study’s framework and organisation, and the methodological and conceptual approaches employed in establishing estimates of annual malaria mortality, and for assessing acute hunger prevalence in the province across the colonial period.