Historical studies have examined the period between 1851 and 1945 to investigate how international health was intertwined with concerns of imperialism, philanthropy, humanitarianism and decolonization. These works not only examine the ineffectual implementation of International Sanitary Conventions but also trace the institutionalization of international health in Southeast Asia. By the 1930s, two versions of international health ran parallel to each other: (1) the hegemonic perspective that was based on an excessive reliance on medical technology and validated health as an accelerator to economic growth; and (2) the holistic perspective that emphasized social reforms to improve public welfare and solidarity between countries. In this chapter, I argue that the discourse of rural hygiene, articulated at the Intergovernmental Conference of Far-Eastern Nations on Rural Hygiene, Bandoeng (1937), emerged from a series of Rockefeller Foundation-assisted, fragmented public health experiments in Ceylon, the Philippine Islands, the Netherlands Indies, and British India on the periphery of the colonial empire. But toward the beginning of the Pacific War (1942–1945), rural hygiene—which embodied a holistic public health perspective—was eclipsed by a narrower technocentric approach.