European University Institute Library

Mosquito empires, ecology and war in the Greater Caribbean, 1620-1914, J.R. McNeill

eng

Includes bibliographical references (pages 315-361) and index

maps

index present

non fiction

Mosquito empires

bibliography

436358468

J.R. McNeill

New approaches to the Americas

ecology and war in the Greater Caribbean, 1620-1914

"This book explores the links among ecology, disease, and international politics in the context of the Greater Caribbean - the landscapes lying between Suriname and the Chesapeake - in the seventeenth through early twentieth centuries. Ecological changes made these landscapes especially suitable for the vector mosquitoes of yellow fever and malaria, and these diseases wrought systematic havoc among armies and would-be settlers. Because yellow fever confers immunity on survivors of the disease, and because malaria confers resistance, these diseases played partisan roles in the struggles for empire and revolution, attacking some populations more severely than others. In particular, yellow fever and malaria attacked newcomers to the region, which helped keep the Spanish Empire Spanish in the face of predatory rivals in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. In the late eighteenth and through the nineteenth century, these diseases helped revolutions to succeed by decimating forces sent out from Europe to prevent them"--Provided by publisher

The argument (and its limits) in brief -- Atlantic empires and Caribbean ecology -- Deadly fevers, deadly doctors -- Fevers take hold: from Recife to Kourou -- Yellow fever rampant and British ambition repulsed, 1690-1780 -- Lord Cornwallis vs. Anopheles quadrimaculattus, 1780-1781 -- Revolutionary fevers, 1790-1898: Haiti, New Granada, and Cuba -- Conclusion: vector and virus vanquished, 1880-1914