Where can I find a good history of vaccination, both in its origins with smallpox and worldwide to the modern era? I am particularly interested in vaccination in relation to political economy, colonialism and national relations - for contemporary reasons that should be clear. Comprehensive monographs and articles on overlooked aspects of this history are much appreciated.
Well, cracks knuckles, let’s see what we have.
The quintessential book on colonialism and medicine (of all sorts) is David Arnold’s Colonizing the Body, which is technically about India but is a foundational text that scholars writing on other parts of the world refer to as well.
Also see: Alison Bashford, Imperial Hygiene: A Critical History of Colonialism, Nationalism and Public Health
and Poonam Bala (ed), Biomedicine as a Contested Site: Some Revelations in Imperial Contexts (I promise the book is more readable than the title suggests).
On vaccination itself, Gareth Williams, Angel of Death: The Story of Smallpox contains a rundown of Lady Worley Montague’s variolation campaign, as well as Jenner’s development of the smallpox vaccination and the campaigns against it in 19th century Britain.
Michael Bennett’s The War Against Smallpox is a little more hagiographic than Williams, but on the same topic.
Jacob Steere-Williams, The Filth Disease: Typhoid Fever and the Practices of Epidemiology in Victorian Britain is a more focused look at the attempts to control typhoid (which was associated with the poor, and eventually morality).
Hopefully this will give you a starting point (and a few bibliographies to mine!)